Out of Sight is by far one of my absolute favorite games I ever played.
Out of Sight is perfection that is simply cut too short. I wouldn’t necessarily call this game a horror title, it has horror elements with visuals and tense moments, but it fits more along the lines of The Little Nightmares and your favorite Tim Burton movies. In the layers there are horror elements like ghost children, creepy hallways with faulty paintings, and grumpy elderly people trying to kill you, and it’s all well crafted, but the game is restricted from darker elements found in other horror titles.
Out Of Sight
RELEASE DATE: MAY 22nd, 2025
DEVELOPER: The Gang
PLATFORMS: PS5, XBOX SERIES X|S, PC (VR coming soon)
The game provides a forced perspective of a child named Sophie who lost her eyesight. In order to see, Sophie needs to use the power of a teddy bear to see for her. This is the basis of the game, and the puzzles within, as the bear can only be set on purple blankets throughout each level leaving a very limited view, while Sophie wonders about completing push and pull puzzles to find her way out of each room. It’s quite crafty to use a first person view while holding the bear to look around the room, find secrets in the corners of every room, and think of an overall gameplan. Then you set the bear down and the game transforms into a second person view as you assist Sophie in solving the puzzles, while hiding from apparent dangers.
The horror elements really kick in when you set the bear down and feel kind of helpless when an enemy barges into the room, and Sophie is trying to hide. You watch in fear, hoping your hiding spot is good enough, while the limited view tells Sophie where to move about the room unseen. At times the limited view can even cause an uneasy feeling when Sophie isn’t totally in view.
There are several moments where the bear is taken for a ride which leads to some insanely suspenseful chase sequences that utilize the various force perspectives the game offers. It’s incredible how the game can go from first person to third person so easily, but also break that 4th wall when a character moves the bear unexpectedly. Watching Sophie run towards or away from the bear had me gripping my controller. After these sequences I literally took a second to just absorb how incredible it was.
Each level in the game requires players to venture out, leave their bear, and then find their way back to the bear in a new way. These adventures are enhanced by sound effects and tense situations that induce panic, as being caught without the bear results in failure. These moments highlight your vulnerability and effectively builds suspense in ways that only the game’s mechanics could do. I mean you’re essentially a child holding your teddy bear tightly by your side, and this simple concept is insanely effective.
The game also has some stealth moments that I was afraid of at first, but they ended up being some pinnacle moments. The game again utilizes its perspective to build the suspense. There are puzzles that have you outright working alongside the beastly elderly figures themselves, and any slight sound at all would make Sophie go hide behind a couch, or in a cabinet, and make you see how small you really were. The game does a good job of not always making you run from something, the villain figures generally have their moments then let you figure out your puzzles before returning, which I loved. But ultimately you felt like a kid because you were able to play hide-and-seek in a living room, or under tables.
Adding to the suspense is the outright masterful audio design and amazing visuals. The game feels creepy, mostly because you have the forced perspective of a child looking upward at overly large objects that tower over you in every hallway. The creative blend of pastel colors to brighten certain areas of a room, and blend them with dark corners and imagery of chains and cages in the background, never let you mind be at ease. Throughout the game you’re told to “follow the moon” and every time a beam of light broke through the wooden cracks of the home, you felt hope. Even the animations had you wanting to reach out and help as Sophie would slightly struggle to climb up even the most basic of chairs.
Throughout the game there are whispers that surround you and echo through each speaker (including the controller itself if you’re on PS5). Sophie’s footsteps would change based on where she was walking, but you could hear the wood creaking beneath her feet with each step, and when a plank broke it would engulf you in fear. Each roaming enemy even had their unique sound with one thumping his way with every footstep as he walked near you, and the other whispering to herself like a crazy lunatic waiting at the end of a hallway. In one scene there is an enemy that is trying to barge through a door and you feel it to your core as the door would bend inward and the booming sound would echo through the speakers, while Sophie would start to panic.
I fell in love with Sophie as a character the second she started talking, but the voice of every character in the game is done with such perfection. You felt the evil tones of villains, the soft innocent tones of friendly ghosts, the fear and dread as Sophie ran for her life. The dialogue is minimalistic, with each line having a powerful reason to be spoken. The game is a visual storytelling masterpiece that is heightened by Sophie’s minimal yet highly effective dialogue.
This means the game doesn’t really have a “true” story to go alongside it. Every detail you will be given about the world is given to you through visual pieces you come across in the game. You will see that kids tried and failed to escape before when you come across bandana’s hanging in rooms, for example. Things that Sophie had a bad experience with usually have a larger overbearing view to her, while other areas are filled with pastel bright colors. At times dialogue might strengthen certain aspects, but it never expressly tells you what is going on. There are no hidden notes or segments to explore deeper into the story, which will leave you with many questions in the end. Like how can the bear see for Sophie?
This is mostly due to the fact that the game is incredibly short. You could speedrun the entire game in about 2 hours, but most people should get 4-5 hours out of their experience. Coming in at a lower price I felt it was a good length vs cost. But this never lets the game dive too deep into the story, and more importantly it never lets the game become too complex. In later levels we finally got some slightly new mechanics where the bear and Sophie need to “twist” in a way to reveal puzzle segments, and it was interesting to see how rooms would transform to reveal dark areas. But things never got overly complex, which allowed the game to maintain a pacing from beginning to end that was satisfying overall.
With how tremendously done everything was I was truly sad to see the credits running so soon, but at the same time the condensed time frame allowed the game to make a big impact on you and then say goodbye.
