A downloadable game for Windows.
An Outcry is a very interesting experience, it's an horror story about the need to step up from adversities despite how hard it would be for you to do so in the situation you're currently, and on the consequences of your indolence in the face of obvious dangers.
The story takes place in Vienna in a run down apartment. Our main character "Unnamed" finds themselves locked out of their own lot after rushing to go out for a smoke, while doing so in the courtyard they witness a big outcry bursting out in the night, and it's right after that cry that some strange looking birds start appearing the apartment, their form is twisted and some of them as big as humans, their eyes are huge and glowing of a bright orange light and weirdest of all... They can talk. The birds start running throught the whole apartment tormenting the tenants and it becomes quickly clear that their intentions are violent. Is at that point that the "Unnamed" is faced with a choice, they can follow the Outcry or they can just ignore it and move on with the night.
Is at this point with the story that the narrative splits. The game as two main routes to explore and a total of 5 endings to uncover. The story deals with very heavy subjects, especially during the Ignore route. Unnamed is a character that is going through a lot right at the story starts. They're trying to get over their smoke addiction, their relationship just broke down in a bad way with their lover potentially showing up at their lot uninvited and they don't feel comfortable in their own body. They're a nervous wreck at the moment and this is the main reason why they feel so powerless to deal with the birds, they don't have the strength or the energy to go through with it and during the ignore route they do anything in their power to just pretend everything is still fine. But it's not fine, there's abuse and violence going on people that the Unnamed might not necessarily like but they still need to be protected and by ignoring the problem you may actually become a part of that not realizing it. The game really wants to emphasize the call for action and anyone despite whatever they're going through and how powerless they might feel at the moment, everyone still needs to do their own part because every little helps.
The writing is the game strongest suit which is matched perfectly by the art direction and music, the game is made with RPG Maker and for the most part it looks like a roleplaying game from the 16bit ere. The atmosphere for the most part is pretty gloomy but there are sections where the Unnamed feels safer where the colors pop up their brightest setting up the tone perfectly, there are also a lot of Visual novel style CGs and Cutscenes done with a gorgeous animated pixel art that give off some really powerful visuals. One thing I ended up really liking is how the main character is portrayed by always having this black bar on their eyes. I thought at first it was mande only to make them seem more neutral as possible for the player to identify itself with it but you get to occasionally see their eyes and in some of the endings that black bar is used very creatively to signify how the character is either fallen or advanced depending on your choices.
Being a very narrative driven game the bone of the gameplay is just exploring the various dialogue branches to get the most out the characters and events and see all the endings, there are occasions where the game decides to get a bit meta and throughs some hidden dialogue options that can be only found just by pressing cancel once you have a multiple choice, signifying that the Unnamed has decided to speak their own mind and break the narrative structure decided by the writer, it was a cute addition and in reinforces the narrative about the main character needing to take action themselves. Talking is not the only gameplay element we also have a typical turn based RPG combat with ATB but compared to a classic RPG, you don't get experience, you don't level up, you barely get any equipment. You just have one character for most of the game a set of abilities and most of the battles have you are more meant to survive the encounter until you get a chance to flee rather than actually win the battle. Not to say that every encounter is unwinnable but for most of them you will be put at a disadvantage and you have to really learn how the game works to win. I personally don't mind that combat is mostly secondary in this type of game especially since you can't just resolve everything by just fleeing and sometimes you have to find your strength to succeed.
Overall I really enjoyed my time with this game. It's a very simple and short 5 hour adventure but the strong themes accompanied by a very strong narrative turned this into a personal favourite of mine that I can easily reccommend to everyone especially if you are into horror stories.
