Nintendo Switch Review
Horror and Terror on the Nintendo Switch
Remothered Tormented Fathers is, hands down, one of the spookiest and likely craziest titles on the Nintendo Switch.
The game and this review are only suited for mature audiences or 18+, whichever comes first.
I’ll try to minimize storyline spoilers for this review since the main reason for playing something like this, outside of pissing yourself, is to play through the entire experience and see what happens, or doesn’t happen in the end.
Does a well-made horror experience make an actually good game to sit down and play? Take a journey into the Felton mansion and creep around our Remothered Tormented Fathers Switch review. You may find more than you bargain for.
Developer: Stormind Games
Publisher: Darril Arts
Hours Played: 6
Price: $29.99
Review Copy Provided
The Nintendo eShop listing for Remothered Tormented Fathers bills itself to be a realistic survival horror video game. The game is largely played by moving around the Felton mansion as Rosemary Reed, all of which is done via a third-person camera.
Remothered Tormented Fathers feel like it’s broken down into two distinct parts. The first being a more stealthy, exploration-focused experience and the latter a more terrifying action-filled horrifying experience.
The game also maintains a sort of task log so you can always check and see what your next objective is, even if you don’t know how to get there or where it is. That part is up to you.
First You Hide
The first part of Remothered Tormented Fathers primarily consists of avoiding roaming stalker-like enemies while hiding in closets with most of the main objectives consisting of seeking out and discovering the different items and the various rooms of the mansion.
Since the focus is on stealth gameplay it’s awesome to see Remothered Tormented Fathers implement camera shoulder switching.
This becomes quite handy for peeking around corners without fully exposing yourself to the terrors of Richard Felton’s house.
The first section of the game would fall really flat if it weren’t for how the game keeps the tension high as you sneak around corners and dash down hallways all while avoiding murderous stalkers.
Then You Run
The second half of Remothered Tormented Fathers picks up the pace and is more focused on quick thinking, sequence order, and timing.
The game accomplishes this with more aggressive enemies and quick-time-style events.
The game really ramps up the scariness factor during the latter half of the game.
There were many times where I ran through a sequence, performed the correct actions, and hoped I made it in time as the evil bad thing was breathing down the back of my neck.
This was also the point where the game started to wear thin and make me angry with my many failed attempts all due to what felt like unfair odds.
The flaws in the baseline gameplay really start to show through here. Aiming and throwing items feels like molasses and there’s a good chance this will cause you to die and reload a few times till you understand what’s going on and how to compensate for it.
Rosemary’s movement speed is also an enjoyment-reducing factor during the action-filled sections of the game. With stalkers that sometimes feel like Usain Bolt, there’s not a whole lot you can do but to hit them with something, run, and hope it gave you enough time to hide.
The Tormented Fathers Have a Story
As you progress through the story with Rosemary Reed you’ll start piecing together who Felton is and why you are there. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t fully grasp every single part of the storyline as it happened.
After finishing the game I quickly ran to find a complete synopsis on the internet to round out the story.
I feel like Remothered Tormented Fathers did a good job at wrapping everything up with the ending cut scenes but there were still a few questions that I felt like I either forgot or didn’t retain in the first place.
I can’t really fault the game for this but it’s probably directly attributable to playing the game over 3 or 4 sessions rather than powering through it in a single day.
That being said, Remothered Tormented Fathers is absolutely worth playing through for the ending. The things that were said, the surprising revelations, and the not-so-ending-ending made the experience entirely worth it.
Scattered throughout the mansion are collectible items you can pick up or look at in the form of pictures, notes, folders, and even pictures. Each of these collectibles rounds out the backstory a little bit.
For instance, you may find medical case notes that describe why a certain someone is acting a certain way. Remothered Tormented Fathers usually don’t come out and tell you most of these pieces of information. You have to find and read them for yourself.
They really add to the atmosphere of the mansion and further help tell an already engaging and utterly scary story. After you complete the game you’ll unlock a sort of gallery with all of these items so you can re-read all of them if you choose to.
Experiencing The Sounds of Real Terror
A lot of the story is told through cinematic cut scenes but it doesn’t stop there. As you stealthily move around the mansion you’ll also hear a wide variety of creepy sounds and voice lines from the stalker enemies.
Remothered Tormented Fathers does this really well with positional audio but it did sometimes feel like you could hear through the ceiling and floors more than you should be able to.
This game must be played with the audio on! If not you’d miss the cries of anguish and the raking of the claws across the slatted closet door as you hide inside hoping they don’t pull you out. The audio cues help you locate where the stalkers are and combined with the shoulder switching camera provides you with everything you need to stay alive in the Felton mansion. Well, mostly.
You’re still going to die a lot.
Scary Problems and Questionable Issues
One of my biggest issues with Remothered Tormented Fathers is with the movement speed. Rosemary moves at the actual pace that the Rosemary the herb grows.
She feels like she walks at the same speed that she crouches.
I’m sure the developers did this to make the stalkers more threatening but the speed at which they move compared to Rosemary’s when she’s not running is absolutely ridiculous.
I’ll come out and say that Remothered Tormented Fathers doesn’t look anywhere near to what a million bucks looks like. The textures look and feel really muddy but it’s not very noticeable through many of the interior areas of the mansion.
I almost quit. I almost threw in the towel during the last sequence of the entire game and walked away without finding out what happens.
The last area of Remothered Tormented Fathers takes place in the attic and is a prolonged running action sequence where you need to make it to an objective and back without getting caught.
It could use one or two more save points, some speed adjustments, and an overall rework.
It’s usually a gratifying feeling after you’ve completed a tough section of a game, but this time it just felt like the game was being overly cheap for the sake of being creepy and creating a difficulty that didn’t really exist prior to the end.
Conclusion
Remothered Tormented Fathers is an overly demented, dark horror, creepy, mature audiences only game for the Nintendo Switch.
There’s not a whole lot of these games like this available on this platform but it doesn’t get a pass just because of this. Thankfully there’s actually an engaging horror game with a really interesting, yet sometimes confusing, storyline.
The actual gameplay elements might be a bit shallow as they primarily consist of only moving around but the overly creepy atmosphere, excellent audio cues, and overall dark tone help thrust this one into a Nindie Nexus Full Heart rating.
Slow and highly irritating movement speeds combined with a reload, reload, die, die, die last third of the game really pushed this game outside Golden Heart territory for me.
For anyone looking for a horror game experience on the Nintendo Switch, this is the best there is and it’s definitely worth a pickup during the next eShop sale or not.
