After ten minutes of playing this I wanted to put it down and never pick it back up. Remothered: Tormented Fathers is an independent survival horror game created by Italian developers Stormind Games. Your first few minutes with the game will be the game at its absolute worst. It’s slow, confusing and immensely unpolished. But the game is yet to truly begin.
You play as Rosemary Reed, a mysterious woman who bears a striking resemblance to Jodie Foster in The Silence Of The Lambs, she is investigating the mansion of Richard Felton who lives there with his wife, 21 years ago his daughter ran away and was never seen again. After your interview with Felton you get thrown out of the mansion for asking too many questions about his daughter. Later that night you sneak back in and find Felton roaming the halls almost naked with a giant sickle, you must find a way out of the mansion and discover what really happened to the missing daughter.
Throughout most of the game you are pursued relentlessly by Felton. He wanders the three floors of the mansion on his own and will hear you if you make too much noise. He will also appear when you absolutely least want him to. A lot of the game is spent crawling your way around the mansion gathering items and solving puzzles. Countless times when I thought I had some breathing room to be less cautious, I would open the door in front of me to find him running at me with his sickle at the ready. At one point in the game the lights to the mansion go out and when I was creeping around trying to get the lights back on I remember seeing him in the distance slowly walking towards me, an ever present threat.
Most of the game works on this cat and mouse set up. If Felton spots you, you have to hide or get far enough away from him so that he loses his scent. You can stun him for short periods of time but that's all you have against him. Unlike a lot of other indie games that feature similar mechanics but get annoying quickly through their aimless nature and pure reliance on jump scares, you have a real momentum to continue the game and get to its conclusion.
The Story
The story is immediately engaging, it has so many questions that you want to know the answers to asap. It's hard to put the game down once you’re fully immersed. Sure it twists and turns in ways that are probably fairly obvious, especially if you are a fan of Giallo films, but those twists are delightful and the story has a massive heart too, with its ending being a standout as its massive exposition that somehow still works. A lot of the storytelling in the game is communicated through notes that tell you little bits of information that help you piece together the narrative of the game and the relationships between the characters but it works wonderfully and I found myself getting extremely invested in the game's story.
The game's presentation is lacking in a lot of areas. The character models look rubbery, it’s way too dark, and you will see odd animations where Rosemary slides across the floor to interact with an object. But that all fades away quickly, you forget the game's obvious flaws as you get further and further in. If you enjoyed the unrelenting horror of Mr X in the Resident Evil 2 remake you will really get a kick out of the pursuer enemies in this game and how they play with you and surprise you.
The game was created as an homage to the Clocktower series of games, Chris Darill who wrote, directed and produced the game originally tried to create the game in RPGmaker. He completely changed the project when his demo of the early version of the game caught the attention of investors. I haven’t played any of the Clocktower games but looking at fans of clock tower’s reactions to the game and how the creator of Silent Hill and Siren, which are two other big influences on the game endorsed it, you have to imagine it’s a bang on revival project.
Remothered: Tormented Fathers is a must play for horror fans who don’t mind a bit of jank with their horror. It’s a consistently tense and enjoyable survival horror game that got me in its grips and never let go for its 3 hour or so run time.
Click here to get Remothered: Tormented Fathers for Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch
Enjoying our work. Check out our social media links and give us a follow.
Keep it Gamer. Keep it Commie.