Re:Turn – One Way Trip is a horror adventure from Red Ego Games and Green Man Gaming Publishing that puts you in the role of Saki, a female college student who goes on a camping trip with her friends. Things seem to be going well for them to begin with but soon they need more wood and split up to find more. Surprisingly this doesn’t lead to someone going missing immediately. Unfortunately, a jealous boyfriend quickly leads to an argument and one character being outed as gay, causing him to run off into the woods alone. Deciding to give him some space, the rest retire to their tents.

Later in the night, Saki wakes up alone and thinks the rest must have gone looking for the one who ran off into the woods so she decides to look too. Searching for her friends, Saki happens upon a spooky old train in the middle of the woods and, with no better option, she boards it to search for her friends. She doesn’t even make it through one carriage before the evil force manifests in the form of a giant eye outside one of the windows.

This leads into one of the most impressive parts of Re:Turn – One Way Trip; the writing. Saki herself is very well written. She’ll try to rationalize the supernatural and doesn’t freak out even when transported to a past version of the train. Even overhearing a passenger say there’s a war on doesn’t faze her, though after seeing a giant eyeball in a window and losing all her friends that’s probably the least of her worries.

Soon Saki realises that people in the past can’t hear or see her and, being an intelligent and resourceful protagonist, she finds other ways to communicate by moving objects. As we’d all do, she tests this ability by messing with a couple of passengers in the dining car and getting a kid in trouble with his stressed mother. Saki meets a little girl who can see her shortly afterwards and learns that the girl sees other ghost friends regularly.

All these interactions feed back into the exploration and puzzle aspect of the game; for example the little girl tells you about a teru teru bozu doll (a type of doll hung by windows to ward off evil spirits) she lost somewhere on the train. For anyone who knows a little Japanese culture, this ties the doll into a small noose in a window that Saki found previously. Puzzles aren’t all putting X item in Y place; some are a matter of talking to the right people to gain access to new areas or finding information needed to solve another puzzle.

While exploring the past version of the train it becomes obvious that more is going on. We don’t want to spoil the story because it’s worth experiencing but there’s cheating, intrigue, and plenty of drama. As an unseen entity Saki can eavesdrop and semi-passively take part in everyone else’s business. This can lead to getting side-tracked a bit but constant forward progress makes sure it never feels like a waste of time to wander around the train.

By this point you’re probably wondering why we haven’t talked about how terrifying or freaky the horror is but honestly none of it is scary at all. To be fair, we don’t really get scared by things on a screen so we might be being overly harsh in our previous statement. While light on scares, Re:Turn – One Way Trip delivers big-time on disturbing in almost all its major horror moments including a fairly graphic portrayal of the hanging body of a teenager.

Art is mostly slick too. Backgrounds are detailed and have an excellent sense of depth thanks to good use of lighting and colour. Some areas even have a slightly out of focus foreground plane that gives the impression of something lurking in the woods watching Saki and her friends. Sprites are also well drawn and animated, using a semi-chibi style that allows for a nice balance between expressiveness, detail, and simplicity. My one gripe about the sprites is that they have a really awkward standing pose that looks like they’re thrusting their crotches forwards at all times like their assorted genitals will act like divining rods. It undermines otherwise serious scenes but can be ignored easily enough.

We’re not such big fans of the static art used to illustrate some scenes though. Shading is used nicely to give creases and curves depth but in one particular scene the whole group are standing around a campfire and some characters clothes are positively glowing from the light of the fire. Bodies are well drawn but faces feel off, the more realistically proportioned and coloured bodies and clothes clash with the anime style faces. Some of the horror scenes (which we won’t spoil) are also subject to these illustrations and usually fare a little better but not always. This isn’t the case in all the art though: The title screen image is sublime and character portraits that pop up when they’re talking look perfectly fine and are much closer to what we’d consider a typical anime style. Saki in particular has some great portraits that convey her emotions despite the distracting amount of “plot” hanging out just below her face.

Our hats are off to the composers and musicians who worked on Re:Turn – One Way Trip, the piano heavy score is deeply atmospheric with the title theme in particular setting the tone for the adventure. The intro credits sequence, thanks to its pacing and music, is quite reminiscent of a modern Godzilla movie and speaks of the high production values and passion the team obviously have for this game. Sound design is lacking in other areas though; choosing to start a new game results in a cheesy evil laugh that’s less soul stealing spirit and more alcoholic mall Santa desperately cry-laughing as he pours whiskey over his cornflakes. Other sound effects aren’t so lame and blend into their scenes much more effectively.

Gameplay-wise, Re:Turn – One Way Trip controls well – it is a 2D side-scrolling game after all. It’s hard to mess up moving left and right and occasionally up and down a little bit. Sometimes you have to walk quite a distance, or just get stuck and end up wandering, and in these situations a run function is sorely missed. Vibration is also over-used on the title screen, triggering every time you move the cursor to a new option. Frankly though, that’s a pretty petty complaint and at this point we’re just nit-picking because that’s our job.

It’s worth noting that we played an unfinished build of the game and so polish and bug squashing haven’t been a priority for the devs yet so bare that in mind as we talk about bugs: Part way through chapter two of the build we got to play some conversations would only have a single portrait and name, even when there were multiple speakers, so it was impossible to tell who was saying what. We also ran into a single crash but it’s hard to pin that on the game, especially an unfinished one. Some text also impressively ruin the horror of a situation; for example, when you hang the doll it splits open and is all bloody but the text box calls it a “teru teru bozo.” Given that it’s a romanji translation of a Japanese word one could make the argument that either “o” or “u” are fine but only one of those letters makes the doll a “shine shine idiot.” All in all, these were very minor bugs that didn’t affect our enjoyment of the game at all but we’d be remiss in our duties to not at least mention them.

Overall, Re:Turn – One Way Trip is shaping up to be a sleeper hit in the indie horror space. Red Ego’s passion for the project is evident. The writing and music are outstanding. Saki is a fantastic character who tries to rationalize situations but is also intelligent, resourceful, and loyal to her friends; a far cry from most horror protagonists who wander into obvious supernatural danger like they’re trying to become someone’s new human skin rug. We’re looking forward to the finished product and if you’re a fan of indie horror you should be doing the same.