Each room is filled with little details to make the world feel lived in, a contrast to the cold, clinical steel of the walls. The space station is gorgeously realized, set in an alternate reality where humanity made a base on the moon shortly after the initial landing. The slow pace of movement also complements the scavenger-hunt aspect of the game, encouraging the player to take their time to look closely at every little detail.
The controls are used to make the player feel weak and helpless, heightening the impact of every story beat. The fleshy humanoid monster that serves as the game’s villain is much faster than the protagonist, flitting in and out of view at the most startling of times. In a room full of spacesuits that have craned their figurative necks to stare ominously at the protagonist, the player has no choice but to wade through at a snail’s pace, despite every instinct screaming to run and hide. With reality becoming increasingly scrambled and monsters lurking in every shadow, escaping the space station is an incredibly dangerous task. All the while, a terrible creature is stalking the halls, waiting for just the right moment to attack.
As the player explores, the nature of the world starts to shift in strange and alarming ways: Rooms begin to repeat, space suits slowly turn their heads, and a caged rat flickers between life and death. A soft robotic voice commands the player to leave through the exit hatch, but the device is locked with a password, the clues to which are scattered all across the station. We Went Back begins with the player awakening from cryogenic sleep to a seemingly empty space station. Tightly paced at about an hour long, this worrisome walk-’em-up keeps players on their toes from beginning to end. We Went Back, developed by Dead Thread Games, is an intense horror experience that utilizes anxiety to build a tense, creeping atmosphere. By pouring real-world fears into the game experience, we gain a way to fight back against those negative emotions, giving a punchable face to existential dread.
While a peaceful game like Animal Crossing: New Horizons makes for a pleasant escape from the constant anxiety of a worldwide pandemic, a frightening experience lets the player harness that stress and uncertainty in a different way. A strange appeal lurks within the horror genre when times are uncertain.
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