Review for Fears to Fathom – Ironbark Lookout
In these media-rich days, full of content and creators, we have several opportunities to quench our thirst for scary stories. One of the most recent options is the podcast format, where people can post their encounters with the supernatural or the macabre, reaching thousands of listeners.
Fears to Fathom, developed by the Rayll Studios which is based in Delhi, India, has a similar objective, although it narrates its tales in quite a unique way. Instead of just listening to someone else’s story, you will be living their decisions and feeling their emotions almost first-hand, presenting the kind of experience that only a video game can provide.
Ironbark Lookout is the fourth and most recent episode in the Fears to Fathom series, which is currently in its first season. Each installment tells a tale sent by email to the developers, who then build an entire adventure around it. Playing in first-person, you interact with objects and go through the events which that particular narrator has described.
In this episode, you control Jack, who has been transferred to a new post as a fire lookout. On his way to work and interacting with a few of his coworkers, he hears rumours about disappearances and strange activities that are happening in his lookout area. He also learns that his post’s previous guard left the job because of bizarre occurrences in his section. Now, Jack will have to endure the isolation and weird events that are happening there, such as mysterious individuals lurking late at night outside his door.
As in a regular first-person game, you control the character using keyboard buttons, and the mouse for some actions and to look around. Instead of an inventory, you press two different buttons to pick up items, one for each of Jack’s hands. In this way, the player carries a maximum of two items at a time, making the experience even more realistic. It is interesting to see so many useful objects, yet have the ability to only carry one or two of them at a time. This forces you to choose what you are going to need in a given situation, such as a new area of exploration or if you are being attacked. Differing from many adventure games, though, there isn’t an item combination mechanic. The game guides you through the story as told by the protagonist and, since it provides you with a wide array of tasks and objects to interact with, it gives the player a nice sense of freedom. In this episode, for example, you get to drive a trailer, play a computer game, cook and eat, assess the wind and temperature of the forest – all so you can really feel that you are living in Jack’s skin. In this way, the player becomes more susceptible to jumpscares and the grim accounts to come.
Viewed from the perspective of puzzle-solving, though, these activities don’t offer a great challenge to the player. (It takes about four hours, exploring everything and talking to everyone, to finish the game.) Most of the tasks are fairly mundane, and Jack always tells you what to do as he narrates the story. For this reason, there is not much to solve, apart from completing some of his particular job duties. Most of the other elements involve meal preparation or lighting a fire so a character can sleep better, which feel like diversions just to create space for the tense moments. But these realistic elements do not make the game devoid of stylization. Visually, it borrows heavily from analog horror, so that you feel trapped in a found-footage video from YouTube. Together with a great soundtrack, which is pleasant and eerie at the same time, the player gets the impression of being in a weird dream – a combination which also would be great as a VR game (there are options for playing on VR).
What I found to be the best element of the game: the soundscape. Not only are the songs you hear throughout the story great, setting the mood perfectly, but all of the clicks and bips are designed for a pleasant experience. The voice acting also enhances the adventure with great performances. Finally, the most suspenseful moments in the end utilize a combination of silence and haunting sounds that can give you goosebumps even after several playthroughs.
Despite all the tension, though, there is still room for a lot of humor. You can see that the team behind the game had fun with it, providing some silly moments with eating animations, watching stupid videos on the computer and playing an FPS game in which you can even go out of bounds. Nice touches which make the experience richer for the player.
Overall, the game’s short length provides us with a quick and entertaining episode, somewhat like the podcasts we can hear on the subject. However, Ironbark Lookout embraces the interesting twists that only games can provide, such as a deep feeling of immersion, and gifts players with valuable and promising concepts for future games. Hopefully this series will start a trend that will continue to inspire even more creative narratives and mechanics.
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