Re:turn – One Way Trip Demo Impressions on Steam

Re:Turn – One Way Trip, by developer Red Ego Games and publisher Green Man Gaming Publishing,  has been released on Steam as a demo, and I had the opportunity to play it to see its current state. The game is a horror adventure puzzle game that centers on a group of people camping in the woods. You play as Saki, a lost camper trying to find her friends after an earthquake separated her. You find an abandoned train that you slowly discover transports you to a different time with the help of some morally dubious apparitions.

The gameplay in this adventure is a bit up and down but has some great elements to it. Most of your time spent in Re:Turn – One Way Trip is spent solving simple puzzles to advance the story. A lot of these puzzles are straight forward, putting an item together with an interactable object. Others take some thinking and really respect your intelligence, never too easy nor impossible.

Re:Turn – One Way Trip makes you feel brilliant once you figure out a puzzle. A nice feature is the game has pop-ups to tell you what you can interact with. I’m glad I didn’t have to walk through whole rooms pressing “E” over and over in hopes of finding what I needed. If I wanted to nitpick, I wish item selection was faster. I wish I could have dragged the item with the mouse from an inventory screen. The current setup is not sluggish, but it’s not the fastest either. Also, a sprint feature would be great. I kept holding both WASD and the arrow keys simultaneously in hopes it would increase my movement speed. The fun gameplay elements stood as one of the most robust features of Re:Turn – One Way Trip.

The presentation left something to be desired. Most of the game is in a great 2D pixel art style, which puts a lot of great detail in the background. Where it starts to lose me is the more detailed art. Often the game will show scary moments with a painting. These painted versions of the characters also appear during dialog sequences. These characters are drawn like teenagers unless they are much older, which became weird with certain story elements. The main character and one of the group members are engaged, and it’s odd seeing a teenage-like character refer to another teenage-like character as her “fiance.”

The music ranged from average to below average; if you gave a robot 30 James Wan-Movie-Esque horror soundtracks, it would spit this out. I wish there was more variety too, a lot of the music blurred together. The story was not very engaging, but not god awful. It’s a shame since the gameplay had so many great moments for the rest of the game to falter.

I know this is just at the demo stage, but this game needs to grow a lot. The gameplay is great but needs more polish. The visuals are pretty, but the story and music need to pick up the pace. I really hope Re:Turn – One Way Trip can improve a lot because it has great potential. The current state has many great elements, and now it’s just making them into a more cohesive experience.

Check Out the Re:Turn – One Way Trip Demo Developer Walkthrough Video:

Re:Turn – One Way Trip is slated to release for PC via Steam on October 14, 2020. You can wishlist the game right now as well as play the free demo.

For more information, please visit: https://redego.net/

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