Look Outside starts as it means to go on, hinting at a choice and then standing back smirking. The room’s dark; strange light leaks through closed curtains, and a beady eye poking through a crack in the wall urges you to peek out the window. You don’t have to do it; it’s not a formal decision point as such, just a gently presented possibility – and you can practically hear developer Francis Coulombe cackling as your curiosity wins out and all your innards explode through your eye holes.
For reasons that may or may not eventually become clear, Look Outside’s world is in the grip of some cosmically peculiar meteorological phenomena, causing anyone that gazes upon its unnatural light to mutate in the most horrible of ways. Giant eyeballs bulge from gaping wounds as partygoers continue their endless reverie a few doors down from your apartment; teeth sprout through ruptured skin across the hallway, splitting heads into grotesque smiles; even the paintings have gone rogue a couple of floors below. But there’s hope: all this should pass in 15 days, you’re told, so if you can stay inside your apartment building – if you keep the curtains drawn, your fridge stocked, and your sanity in check – you might just make it through.
Despite its jovially cartoonish veneer, Look Outside is a wonderfully, surprisingly grim thing; a smothering, gooey miasma of seeping innards and gut-tightening existential dread that also happens to be a sly, silly, and relentlessly oddball adventure, all the while walking an impressively assured tightrope between humour and horror. Tonally, it’s very much its own thing, but if I had to make comparisons, I’d say its combination of oozing retro dread and top-down, turn-based battling feels something like the lovechild of Jasper Byrne’s cult survival horror hit Lone Survivor and Toby Fox’s ode to old-school JRPGs, Undertale.
There’s definitely something of the classic survival horror feel to Look Outside, as you prowl the shadowy halls and gloomily lit residences of your apartment block while discordant throbs and hums fill out its ambient soundtrack. It’s there too as you fend off its parade of gleefully inventive abominations while hoovering up food, crafting materials, and makeshift weaponry – even if its turn-based battles lend a different sort of rhythm to proceedings. Sure, this might be a game where monsters disguise themselves as hats and you’ll encounter a crossword puzzle so boring it can completely drain you of resolve, but outside the safety of your apartment, things can be tense. Partly, that’s down to its unpredictably weird enemy encounters and the fact your weapons are prone to disintegration, but there’s also a canny XP progression system that rewards you for staying out and avoiding saving for as long as possible, push-your-luck-style.
But none of this, really, is what makes Look Outside so fascinating. Rather, it’s the game’s gleefully confounding spirit and relentless, wily narrative invention. As days pass, more of the apartment block opens up to be explored. As it does, more of its oddball residents enter your orbit, and things get brilliantly strange. It’s difficult to say too much without spoiling the fun, but this is a game crammed with imaginative scenarios and unexpected detours. At one point, for instance, you stumble into the domain of a resident apparently so enamoured with taxidermy they’ve decided to remodel their apartment out of themselves. The first floor of the building, meanwhile, has transcended the boundaries of time and space. Elsewhere, an artist’s having a hell of a week as his doppelgangers incessantly paint themselves into existence, and a nice woman upstairs is slowly inching her way along an ever-narrowing passageway, oblivious to the fact she’s started to leak out into the basement. And let’s not talk about the neighbours.
Look Outside’s horror might be softened by a tone that’s more menacing whimsy than outright nasty, but it’s surprising how often its sharp script manages a gut-punch swerve from daft to something genuinely troubling. Its absolutely favourite thing is to complicate a seemingly straightforward objective with a dash of moral ambiguity, then just leaving you to sweat your way to a deeply uncomfortable, often faintly harrowing conclusion. And, boy, does it love to twist the knife. These nine doppelgangers all think they’re alive, you say, and you want me to make friends with them so I can decide which eight to kill? I can sacrifice my shooting arm to get this hungry demon door open or I can feed it this adorable mutant rat baby?
There’s a lot of these kinds of decision points seamlessly threaded into the exploratory, turn-based action. Sometimes they’re obviously presented as choices, often they’re not; some prove beneficial, others comically, abruptly fatal. It makes Look Outside feel fascinatingly malleable, even as its mischievous unpredictability means you’re never entirely sure where your actions may take you. Perhaps your shoulder develops an ominous itch that chirps like a bird, or a shadowy creature with a porcelain grin takes a slightly unnerving shine to you – and you’ll wonder how, and why, and whatever next? And that’s without considering exactly why Look Outside might be tracking a strange swirl of slightly opaque stats as you brush your teeth, play video games, and pass time with pals in your apartment.
Even with its slightly one-note combat system, which tends toward serviceable rather than genuinely exhilarating, Look Outside was a real surprise when I played it earlier this year – a brilliantly unpredictable, wildly inventive, and surprisingly chilling little thing (also, it’s got a great synth-horror soundtrack). It’s currently discounted by a whole £1.80 in the Devolver Steam Sale, and it comes highly recommended. And if you fancy something thematically similar but substantially more harrowing, then hey, do I have the game for you.
