"Look Outside" is a surreal survival horror RPG where you play as Sam, a man trapped inside an apartment complex after something horrifying happens outside. You have fifteen in-game days to explore the building, scavenge resources, meet survivors, fight strange creatures, and figure out what is going on. There are three difficulty modes, Explorer, Survivor, and Cursed. I first played on Survivor, then later tried Explorer to see how much the save system was affecting my opinion.
The premise is easily the strongest part. The apartment complex has a strange, unsettling atmosphere, and opening unknown doors can be interesting at first.
That is why it left such a bad taste by the end. it feels like a wasted opportunity. The idea is great, but too many design choices make the game harder to enjoy than it should be.
The game is made in RPG Maker, and that becomes hard to ignore the longer you play, the game carries a lot of the weaknesses I associate with it. Movement feels clunky, exploration feels stiff, combat feels slow, (Attacks, enemy turns, misses, and the general rhythm of battle).
Sam also missed attacks constantly, to the point where it almost felt like something was bugged. Missing would already be annoying in any RPG, but it becomes worse when resources are limited and enemies hit hard. I also ran into occasional stuttering in certain rooms. I do not know if that comes from RPG Maker itself or from how this specific game was built, but moving through some areas felt worse than it should have.
The game is also missing basic quality-of-life features (again this is RPG Maker engine's fault), Item management is awkward, which matters a lot in a survival game where resources are always important. Status effects are another problem as the game expects you to remember their names and what they do, without always making that information easy to check when you need it.
Survivor mode makes these issues harsher because saving is restricted to your appartment and time is limited each day, so, If you want to save, you often have to backtrack all the way home and dying can mean losing a large chunk of real-life progress. You can spend a long time exploring, open the wrong door, run into something much stronger than expected, get unlucky in combat, and lose everything since your last save. That made me less curious about the building and more worried about wasting my evening.
Explorer mode fixes that specific problem. Being able to save everywhere removes the real-life time loss, and the game becomes easier to tolerate but it does not fix the rest of issues such as the slow battle pacing, constant misses, awkward inventory, clunky movement, unclear status effects, occasional stuttering, and general stiffness.
The puzzles and ending structure also frustrated me. Throughout the game, you meet a group of characters called the Astronomers, who ask you for specific offerings so they can perform a ritual. The way this affects the ending feels too dependent on knowing exactly what the game wants across the whole run. I finished with a failed ritual, and after seeing how specific the correct offerings are, the better ending felt less like a natural reward for exploration and more like something most players will probably check a guide for.
The game wants you to explore, experiment, and pay attention, but it makes those things feel punishing. Some content can be missed or locked off through small decisions, the puzzles can feel obtuse, and the game does not make replaying feel inviting enough to justify how much it hides from you.
I respect what the game was trying to do, the atmosphere works, the concept is interesting, and the music and art are great, really great, but by the time I finished it, I was more annoyed than impressed. I did not feel excited to go back and uncover what I missed.
I cannot recommend it based on my time with it. Explorer is probably the better way to play if you mainly want the atmosphere without the save system punishing your real-life time. Even then, I would only suggest it if you already have a lot of patience for all the issues that don't respect the player’s time.
