Review: Retrace
Spiderlily Studios’ Retrace, is a murder mystery puzzle box based on games like the Zero Escape series. You play as Freya, an introverted young woman who has been cajoled out of her room to meet her friends and crush for what’s supposed to be a local ghost tour. Instead, the group of four find themselves conspicuously alone at the bus stop before an earthquake throws them into dark unconsciousness.
This is where you make your first choice in a line of many that matter. As the darkness closes in, Freya has to grab one of her companions. Whoever you decide to grab is the person you’ll wake up with in a strange and immediately ominous building. Each companion has you wake up in a different section of the building, and has their own story path as you try to work together to explore the building and find a way out. No matter who you pick, you’ll have to contend with some sort of puzzle to make any progress as you attempt to find your other two friends and escape.
Eventually, each path leads to a dead end where you can no longer progress, and the characters you have with you will either die or give up hope–but this isn’t the end, far from it, in fact. Upon losing hope/dying the first time, Freya is transported to a dark room lined with journal-bearing pedestals. Each of these tracks Freya and Friends’ movements through the mysterious building through the game’s notebook save system. As the strange keeper of this place, Matemna, explains: Freya has been given the ability to “retrace” her path. Basically, every time she dies or gives up, she can try again, using the different journal entries as re-entry points to the living world, or resetting everything by starting back at the bus stop. Through this mechanic, you’re able to experience all the companion routes, which allows you to see how different situations play out, and how to solve every puzzle needed to progress.
The main pitch of this game is “death is your teacher” and by and large, that’s true. Dying and coming back does allow you to see the different paths in front of you and can help you to keep from making the same mistakes. But, and maybe this is just because I’m not as great at puzzles as I wish I could be, I often found myself frustrated that I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be doing to move forward. Retrace tries to mitigate this by providing clues in different colored text from some of the side characters you meet along the way, but actually executing on those hints proved difficult for me. I definitely banged my head on the wall a lot more than I would have liked.
That said, Retrace is still a really enjoyable, worthwhile experience. Both the character models in the visual novel style conversation sections, and the pixel art in actual gameplay are beautiful, and the soundtrack absolutely slaps, capturing the tone of each scene perfectly, be it creepy or touching. The ambiance in general is great, creating a constant sense of unease that’s not overwhelming or brimming with jump scares. Each of the four main characters also has a unique, fleshed out personality that never really feels tropey. I was genuinely interested in getting to know them better and see how their relationships would clash and/or develop as they made their way through this spooky world.
There’s also the added benefit of explicit queerness that permeates the game. Both Freya and Owen have crushes on the same gender friends they’re trapped with, and while not necessarily the point, these feelings are acknowledged and grappled with throughout the game. As both a queer horror fan, and a fan of queer horror, this was definitely my shit, and will likely be yours too if you’re into that kind of thing.
Retrace is an ambitious first attempt, and gets a lot right, despite being a bit too obtuse for my puzzle-challenged brain at times. Its art and music set a lovely, if very unsettling scene, and the twists and turns along the way of this time-defying adventure are definitely worth experiencing.
