Those Who Remain

An unfortunately anonymous experience, sometimes even unnerving when it ends up in the maze of trial and error.

Those Who Remain tries to generate horror but quickly loses strength due to its clunky narrative and repetitive and uninspired puzzles.

Those Who Remain deserves major points for creativity of ideas and premise. The title holds a lot of promise, but ultimately fails to deliver a memorable, cohesive performance. Because puzzles force players to run back and forth to find solutions which can take time away from immersion into this world. Those Who Remain is a title committed to psychological horror, but has self-sabotaged with mediocre gameplay. It lovingly sets up a thrilling ambiance, but doesn’t allow players to fully experience the title. The use of various ideas like alternate dimensions and ever-persistent shadow people are great, but aren’t executed well. Additionally, characters are not uniquely fleshed out and don’t support the flat story that held a lot of promise. Characters feel generic to the point where it’s difficult to even like them. Edward is truly an everyman but doesn’t have enough uniqueness to capture attention. Even the “choices” made don’t ultimately make drastic changes you may have been hoping for. I wanted to like Those Who Remain, but it failed to capture my attention as a standout indie horror.

Those Who Remain begins with a cool premise that can keep it intriguing for a while, but that quickly fizzles out. There's just not much reason to stay and finish the game out, despite the fact that it can be completed in a few hours if you can figure each puzzle out quickly.

Overall, Those Who Remain is fine. Just fine. It’s not terrible and doesn’t deserve to be hate-played or mocked or anything like that. Edward is a fine protagonist, the eerie atmosphere starts out strong and devolves to fine, and the gameplay is fine. I’m sure a lot of work went into this experience (I say this a lot, but I mean it), but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything keeping this game safe from the gaping maw of irrelevance.

Although it often looks cool and has some strong level design, Those Who Remain is tedious, and loaded with boring item hunts and frustrating "stealth" sections.

A clumsy, sluggish and uninspired horror adventure.

Though the narrative and moral questions presented are interesting, this horror game is marred by frustratingly tedious gameplay and lacking mechanics.