Summary
Tormentureis a creepy indie puzzle game inspired by retro classics like Adventure and ShadowGate, where you’ll find yourself swapping between the real world with full 3D graphics, set in the ‘80s, and the digital world of your computer with pixel graphics. It’s possible this appealed to me more than usual because I remember actually living that way. We owned that ‘80s Speak & Spell, we had one of those chunky cassette tape players (and spent a lot of time trying to record our favourite songs from the radio on it), and cartridge gaming – where you had to blow into it a few times to get it to work – was the norm. We even had one of those creepy toy phones with faces, which makes a cameo in Tormenture too.
Pixel games like King’s Quest where you moved around from one static screen to another was largely how gaming was back then, and you’d never be fully sure of what you were doing in adventure games. Good luck with those, as there was no internet to help you out back then. Pixel graphics were a luxury. I remember playing plenty of games that were just text-based adventures. I realise I’ve just outed myself as an oldie, but all these formative memories came flooding back when I played Tormenture at Gamescom.
Tormenture as a setting is pure ‘80s vibes, then you take into consideration that the gameplay pays tribute to retro gaming too and that it cranks that up to 11. (That’s another ‘80s reference for you.) The whole thing is one giant puzzle, filled with lots of little puzzles, that link to other puzzles. It’s puzzle-ception. (There you go, a reference for you youngsters.)
During my preview, I was traversing through different pixel screens, dodging projectiles and ghostly enemies, and I knew I had to find a key. There are so many screens to explore, but fortunately, you’re able to bring up your notepad-like map of the area so you can see where you are and where you’ve been. Different screens offered different puzzles: doors you had to open, rivers you had to cross, enemies to avoid, and you didn’t know whether any or all of them were relevant to what you were actually trying to achieve. It was exactly like the games I played in my childhood.
Once I had the key in-game, I had to figure out where to put it. Dropping it down a well for forgotten things seemed like a risk, but it paid off. It was time to leave the retro pixels and return to the more modern graphics of the ‘80s bedroom. Lo and behold, there was the key in the real world. This led to puzzling it out in the bedroom, clicking around and ultimately realising I had to use the cassette tape to play music in the bedroom so that I could then return in-game to make a pixel guy dance. The logic is as random and vague as classic games, so get used to that.
I also got to take a peek at the next part that saw me going into a creepy haunted mansion where a pixel piano player-boss was waiting for me. In this preview, I didn’t actually have to face him, but given how I kept dying to random hand grabs in some levels, I doubt I would have fared well anyway.
Tormenture is a quirky puzzle game with a focus on haunting, cursed gameplay that retro video game fans will adore. I’ll undoubtedly have to look up a puzzle solution or two during my playthrough, but I welcome the challenge to try and figure it out for myself first. The nostalgia Tormenture gives me because of my own childhood is one thing, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from having a kid of my own, it’s that these days gamers aren’t as patient. I’m not so sure that modern players will be as forgiving at having to really struggle to work out obscure puzzles in this way, even though it’s very on point for how games were back then.
