Game 33: Look Outside

Plays All The Things
14 hours ago
31 min read

Appropriately enough I'm starting Look Outside on Halloween, and it will conclude the recent series of scary games. I was actually going to play it shortly after I got it in September, but just before starting I noticed that the devs were planning a major update for the game in October, so I decided to wait for that - this is a bigger and (I hope) better version of the game, because good things come to those who wait.

Edit: Fair warning - some of this game's images are grotesque, which is impressive given that it's pixel art. Look Outside is a turn-based survival-horror RPG, which is intriguing to me because almost every survival-horror game I've played thus far is in real time. Right away I'm drawn in by the music and sound effects of wind blowing outside, it's haunting.

Sure thing voice in the wall, it's the name of the game after all.

I went to the window

I looked outside

The cutscene for our Hero on looking outside is... well, faces are not intended to do what I just saw.

Let's try this again.

This time I have a conversation with the eye through the wall, it's my neighbor Sybil, who immediately reconsiders their advice to look outside and recommends that I not do that. Thanks Sybil, I've figured that out already.

This time around I've made it to the point where I can name my character (I suspect getting 'game over' before naming my character is a sad new record for me). We'll go with 'Patt' in honor of the blog. Sybil is perfectly nice and offers to check up on me every so often. I gather that she looked outside and isn't sure what it did to her, but she's confident that whatever is going on will end in 15 days.

I tried using social media on my laptop, and that made me fell less alone but stressed me out (whatever is happening outside, nobody understands and people are freaked out over, and is happening all over the world). This changed my 'social' by +5 and 'calm' by -5, so there's some underlying statistical thing going on.

I can't find those on the stats page, they seem to be hidden.

I walk outside my bedroom and into the rest of my domicile.

Checking the clock, I note that time is passing but I'm not sure if it's passing in response to my interacting with objects or in real time. I check the fridge - it's got a frozen TV dinner and a couple other things but there's no way I'm surviving for 15 days on what's in there

Brush every day, even - maybe especially! - in the apocalypse

All right, I've showered - which provided a huge hygiene and morale benefit, so it matters - and it's time to venture outside the apartment. At a minimum, I need to find food to survive 15 days, and since there are combat stats we'll want to make ourselves capable of fighting.

This answers the 'how time passes' question, it's based on interacting with things.

Hey - this is game 33 and I live in Apartment 33, what are the odds?

This may be a really bad idea but I'm going to follow the blood trail. Looks like that was a good idea! I found a baseball bat and some items... and the blood trail's source.

I assumed that, like most blood trails, it represented some unfortunate innocent that had been attacked and dragged off by a monster. Nope.

No innocents needed - my neighbor has gone batshit crazy

I start whacking him with the bat when he turns his knife on me, and I feel even more justified in doing so when this happens.

He was cutting himself so that 'he could see', I guess that makes sense now

Having killed my neighbor and taken his knife, I explore the rest of the apartment that he was in. There are now lots of monsters wandering around, and they move in real time.

I beat this one but it did a fair bit of damage, I can't fight everything and will try to avoid fighting too many

I found a key and unlocked the safe in that room and came away with a lot of money and some coins for vending machines. I went back to the hallway, bought some snacks from the vending machine, and avoided the monsters to get back to my apartment.

Oooh, this is a 'push your luck on your dangerous excursion' game!

A second outing to a nearby apartment yields a bonanza of items - forks and knives that I can throw in combat, a crafting kit for my own apartment, and best of all, some food in the fridge. I take it all back home and make myself a meal, which provides some much-needed HP recovery.

The game lets you save in your apartment so I can't lose too much progress if I die. Having scoured all the apartments I can get into on my own floor, I move down to the next one, and that's when things get really interesting.

I meet an astronomer who suspects that what's outside is a large, possibly living, alien object

Some of these people looked outside but, like Sybil, haven't become mindless monsters... they're just changed a bit.

This game is good at crafting a horrifying moment, and I walk past a boarded-up door twice, listening to the screeching inside - and then when I continue down the hallway the apartment doors have disappeared, and I'm in a long, messed up, doorless hallway when the beast breaks free and comes after me.

Escaping that monstrosity, I ended up in an apartment with a photographer who's also been altered. Lyle offered me some photo paper in exchange for a kiss.. which I assume I could have turned down and obtained by paying for it, thanks to the safe earlier I have over a hundred dollars.

On the way back to my apartment I was getting disconcerting messages about feeling an itchy sensation and something else going on. Eventually I checked my inventory, and found a stowaway!

I am NOT bringing a roach back to my apartment!

It's still the first day around 4:30 PM, and I feel like I've accomplished a lot. I briefly tried to access the other floors but the 1st, ground, and basement doors are all locked.

I'm curious to see if sleeping will recover my HP so I spend some time in the apartment - I'm tempted to go back to the nearby rooms and kill the various monsters that were there before for the XP but I don't want to get hurt doing it and I need to know how my HP recovers. Before bed I try my hand at crafting, it's pretty intuitive as you select an item and then it gives you a list of valid things to combine it with.

This made a Molotov cocktail - a choice weapon for anyone stuck inside their apartment building

I also try passing the time by playing videogames. You can choose which one to play and you get a little narrative of what happens in the game as you're playing it.

After finishing I'm mentally in a better place and the game hints that if I can beat this game something good will happen, so if we have extra time in a day we'll be using it here. Before going to bed, there's a knock at the door. I have 2 HP left so I really hope it's not a monster.

Thankfully it's a kind priest who gives me some food

I like that there's a mix of normal, caring humans (and altered humans) as well as horrible monstrosities wandering around. Those of us who are still sane should probably all band together and work to clear out safe sections of the building but since that's not an option I accept some food from Father Andrew and give him a $20 donation so he can keep helping other tenants who are still alive. Sleeping is a partial heal, I'm back up to half health. Survival horror is all about resource management, I want to try to discover as much as possible each day while still taking care of myself.

14 Days Remain

I'm going to skip showering / brushing teeth today, I only have one toothpaste / soap left and I suspect that I'll be better off if I save it to clean myself from some gory disaster than if I use it up now. I make a few meals and items and get ready to head out and explore more of the building when there's another knock at the door.

It's an innocent, abandoned child! Or... so it claims....

I let her in and she doesn't sprout eyeballs and try to eat me, so I take her along with me and Sophie becomes a party member. Normally I'd never consider bringing an eight-year old child with me into combat with altered humans made of eyes and teeth but I don't want to leave her sitting alone in the apartment, she might wipe out my videogame save files. I manage to find a way down to the first floor, and it looks like the building has been altered - there's now a set of parallel crisscrossing corridors that repeat and form a sort of maze. I find a door with arrows pointing towards it, and inside I find a man named Ernest (and his pet rat Colonel Squeakers) who agrees to help me for the rest of the day in exchange for a sandwich.

With Ernest's help (both he and Col. Squeakers can attack) the party has become pretty decent at fighting, so we clear out a mutant rat's nest and take all the food there, then proceed to do the same to a vine-infested apartment.

I'm fighting most of these battles and avoiding enemies less since I have help now

I even ran into a terrible monster in the first floor hallways that I felt like I was supposed to avoid, figured I'd give it a shot or die trying.

Thanks to using a Molotov and other special skills I managed to kill the Rat King and got his skull

Lastly for the day I ended up in an apartment with Frederic the Painter, who apparently painted a picture of the sky that he's hiding away in a back room because looking at it makes him feel uneasy. Apparently he must have painted it while whatever is outside was approaching earth, and even a depiction of it - even one the artist wasn't fully aware of - is enough to affect people.

Frederic also has a problem with his other paintings.

Assuming I'd have to fight paintings of things, I set off to take care of them... only to find that Frederic was painting self-portraits and they're all claiming to be the real Fred.

Even when I somehow clocked him as not being the original he wanted me to kill all the other Freds anyway

The next encounter with a Fred variant almost ended the party, and only Patt walked out of it still conscious. I figured that was a good time to return to the apartment for the day, I can come back here later and try to kill the remaining portraits. Back at the apartment I had another visitor.

He had quite the selection - including a Gatling Gun for $1,600 that I doubt I'll ever be able to afford, but I bought a bunch of shuriken and some army boots - I haven't found a lot of uses for money so once the opportunity came I spent almost all I had. That evening I finished playing Myrmidon, and good things did indeed happen - Patt learned a skill!

Don't worry guys, lemme patch you up, I saw it in a video game

13 Days Remain A minor annoyance with this game is that it doesn't save my full-screen setting so every time I start it up I have to go into options and set it again. Yesterday I got an inexplicably bad feeling about killing the roach. Also, there's a new roach in my apartment now - I'm going to choose to take comfort in them not being horrible monsters and be nice to them.

With my last bits of bread I can make another sandwich and take Ernest with me again, having an additional party member was invaluable in combat - well worth the 40 HP or so just eating a sandwich would be worth.

My neighbor / eye in the wall Sybil warns me that she thinks she heard something invisible running around in our hallway. The plan to go give Ernest a sandwich is temporarily on hold when I step outside the apartment and notice that the next-door is now open with a cryptic sign saying 'Help You'.

'Well', I say, channeling my inner idiot, 'May as well check it out.' The apartment is the home of Edwin, one of the early Astronomers that's gone missing. At first his place appears to be empty other than having a lot of helpful supplies and more food. Disconcertingly, I also find some astronomy gear and implications that Edwin has himself changed into something like a telescope, and he's wandering around unable to see his neighbors or be seen by them. The number of moons around various planets is given undue attention and hints at being necessary for puzzle solving.

Also of interest here, I can point the telescope outside and project an image of whatever is Outside onto the floor. It's implied that if I turn off the light I can get the image onto a blank disc that I'm carrying, the Astronomers would love that. If it doesn't drive them insane.

I'm about to leave when Edwin makes his appearance, putting ectoplasm or something on the walls and indicating the light switch.

Edwin is Not Nice. He is indeed a horrible telescope thing, and turning off the light not only lets me see him - and him see me - it also straight-up puts me into Silent Hill territory, warping the world into something more horrible than it already is.

This is what MY apartment looks like with the lights off

In the case of Edwin and the other creatures here, the game universally and un-subtly warns me that I 'feel a strong urge to run' when I meet them.

Even worse, they all seem to know me, existing in places I can't see them but they can see me....

After running around in terror I get back into the room with the telescope, and the one thing I manage to do is get that image of the outside burned onto a disc. I'm in real bad shape by the time I make it back to the light switch, so I limp back to the apartment and fix myself up.

The day gets further sidetracked as i find that the 'Ice Melt' I managed to make will let me get into the apartment that was frozen shut across the hallway.

Where other games have caves and biomes and such, this frozen hell is across the hallway from where I live

I raid some of the rooms and battle some creatures but Sophie takes a nasty hit in the bathroom and falls unconscious. I have a very limited supply of revival items in the form of medkits so rather than burn my last one I retreat back to my apartment and decide to play videogames for the rest of the day - I didn't even make it off of my own floor, there was so much new stuff to explore here. Playing videogames is very worthwhile, I pick up two new skills from it.

Not only do you get the narrative of your gameplay but of the NPC reactions to it

As the day drags on I get more knocks at the door - mostly merchants and I blew most of my cash on ninja stars. One pair, however, wants to crash at my place.

The two new houseguest immediately make themselves at home... and I mean they make my home their home and take over my bedroom.

I guess it's my fault for not making this arrangement a little clearer.

So, downside - I'm sleeping on my couch, and from my bedroom underneath the game's soundtrack they're playing punk rock music I can hear through the wall. Upside - two new party members to throw at monsters! That's worth sleeping on the couch for!

12 Days Remain

Ok, THIS time I'm going down to the first floor, grabbing Ernest, and getting shit done down there with a full party. I still have the sandwich I made yesterday and I don't want it to go to waste, and the party menu holds four so Sophie can chill in the apartment for a day.

Sadly Ernest isn't hungry for a day-old pork sandwich, apparently since I have party members now he won't join me (Even trying to fool him by leaving everyone in the apartment and heading down alone didn't work). I guess somebody's eating this sammich! When I started this game I was skeptical that it was going to simultaneously pull off 'survival horror' and 'turn based' - and I'm here to report that that skepticism was unwarranted. On the default difficulty level that I'm playing at, you can only save when you safely return to your apartment, and then only when 'enough time has passed', meaning you generally need to survive a full excursion and return safely to record your progress (and I have died several times, it's dangerous out there!). While combat is turn-based, getting INTO combat is not, as the monsters move in real-time and if they catch you they get a couple chances to attack you before you run away. I've got a cache of healing supplies and food - enough that I can defeat some monsters but not so much that I'm confident that I can kill anything and everything without burning through all my resources. I found a tragic case today, Charlie here did NOT look outside - but some bug flew in the window that had, and it got him. I'm really concerned that he's just going to suffer and die and I spent a few minutes trying to decide whether to kill him (as a mercy) or not. I'm concerned that my decision will end up spawning something awful I'll have to deal with later, but I'd feel terrible if I later find some way to heal him.

Charlie thinks he's doomed but he didn't ask me to kill him, so he lives. For now.

Back to exploring on the first floor, I come across a baby crying.

Or, at least, the sound of a baby crying....

This may have been a baby that looked outside...

Unable to bring myself to keep the horrible creature, I walked out - only to find it following me. Guess I'm Mama Rat now. Xaria and Monty may be terrible houseguests but they're solid party members, and they each have their own unique skillset with a lot of character. Monty can craft 'special drinks' in combat and they can be used to calm the paintball-gun wielding Xaria if he freaks out too much.

Sometimes Monty 'screws up' the brew and you get a useful healing item. Sometimes it explodes and harms the whole party.

I've made an incredibly useful discovery. Last night one of the merchants that visited the apartment sold rings that protect from various status effects, and it turns out that just putting them on after you, say, get poisoned will cure the poison without needing to use a consumable item.

Just one Lapis band and I don't need antidotes anymore

I make some progress with the Painter's apartment, killing some of his more aggressive incarnations but not others - one just seemed genuinely scared and innocent, and this one just seemed happy and strange.

They were nice, they gave me a blessing!

I must have killed enough of them though, because the Painter gave me a canvas so I could conceal the painting of the thing and give it to Aurelius the Astronomer. I hope I gave him the right one - I had to guess based on wet paint colors which painting was correct.

It... might be a painting of that, I didn't look at it!

And then... I ran into a wall.

I noped right out of there... into an infinite liminal hallway. There was no escaping the Mouth, I had to feed it something.

It would not accept my food as a substitute. I refused to feed it the poor defenseless rat baby. That left one option.

Technically two options, with dire consequences

I really hope the Rat Baby appreciates today's sacrifice.

On the bright side I got to name the Rat!

Seemed appropriate for someone that's here because it wasn't eaten

I spend the rest of the day in the apartment nursing the lost arm and playing through the videogame collection (fortunately THAT does not appear to be hampered as much as it likely would be).

And then we get a wonderful visitor - Sophie's mother comes around looking for her daughter!

He took great care of me Mom I only got knocked out once or twice!

Well, I guess it's just me, the punk rockers and Leftover the Rat Thing now.

Spending time with Leftover I'm pretty convinced it was indeed a human baby at one point.

I'm really enjoying this game, it's one of the most unique and creative RPGs I've ever played - it's set entirely within a single apartment building but each day new stuff keeps happening, the themes and writing are phenomenal, and the game keeps throwing surprises my way. For people who might be on the fence about the survival-horror part of needing to survive excursions, there's a difficulty option that lets you save anytime so you can just scum your way through - you'll still have a great time. And boy, do your decisions ever have consequences. I've lost an arm and it hasn't been a week yet!

And SOMEONE is feeling judgmental about it

11 Days Remain

I had terrible nightmares - yesterday there was a brief encounter with a scary clown-puppet who was simultaneously very nice and polite but was also utterly and incomprehensively terrifying, and now visions of the puppet Pierre are haunting me. Also, yes, I slept on the couch again. At least with Sophie gone I have some privacy in my living room. Annnnd now there's someone - or something - new in my apartment.

Xaria says Juicebox is cool and I shouldn't freak out about him.

I'm not the only one having nightmares, they're getting to Sybil too.

Given our actual situation, having nightmares is probably par for the course.

Once again there are new apartments open on my floor - I think they're ALL open now so I might be able to focus more on making progress later!

Yeah it's probably okay that the apartment is a mouth now, let's check it out.

The interior of Apartment 32 Teeth is one of the more disturbing areas, culminating in the horrific incarnation of a crying, teething baby crawling out of the darkness to attack us.

I didn't WANT to kill it but surely it didn't WANT to live

Adjacent to that was a relatively normal apartment full of taxidermied animals in which.... nothing happened except for one Taxidermied Evil Figure appearing and disappearing. I'm sure there will be follow-up there on a future day but for today, easy source of supplies. I burned most of the day searching the two apartments and made some progress on the first floor, which I still can't find my way around in very well. I'm obtaining planetary discs which act as keys - the mouth / arm incident gave me the Earth disc, and I was able to use it to get into a room where I got the Mars Disc.

The denizens of said room were not pleased to see me.

I revisited some of the first-floor apartments that I hadn't fully cleared out and took a beating from some of the enemies still wandering around, so I limped back to the apartment for the day. The skills I've been getting from videogames are invaluable and while I've been treating them as a thing to do in my spare time, there's a perfectly valid approach where you'd simply want to play them as soon as you obtain them to prepare yourself better for excursions. Staying in the apartments brings visitors, and today Pierre the scary clown puppet paid me a visit.

Pierre is super-nice but Patt can't stand them.

Patt, it turns out, has a phobia of clowns and is more terrified of Pierre than anything else in the game (despite how utterly nice Pierre has been.) It makes for an awkward conversation.

10 Days Remain

Leftover the Rat Thing is now old enough to join the party!

So much happened today.

I started by summoning up the courage to visit Pierre and engage in some exposure therapy to try to lessen my fear of clowns. Then I figured out how to use a projector in a nearby apartment to get an image of the Visitor outside onto a piece of photo paper, and asked Lyle to develop it for me.

I'd have done it myself but Lyle won't let me into the darkroom.

I visited one of the second floor residents who has opened up a shop. I've been building up my cash reserves and now have a lot of ways to spend the money.

Now having the Mars and Earth discs I was able to unlock the ground floor and explore it.

I finally retrieved Jeanne's laundry, she's been waiting for days.

I went to check out the entrance and a bus slammed through the door, spilling out monsters.

I visited Sophie and her mother in their apartment, they're doing just fine except for Jeanne having broken through their walls.

Jeanne turned into a hydra with killer heads

Jeanne can't stand that she's grown lethal heads and asks me to kill her body to end it all, but instead I kill off each and every other head that isn't being nice to me and leave her alive. I forgot to give Jeanne her laundry but I don't think it would fit now in any case. And then... I had had enough of my houseguests, and I don't mean the roaches. Xaria got pissed at nothing and kicked Leftover. Monty and Xaria may be powerful characters, but damnit, they can get the hell out of my room and out of my apartment!

I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!

I have Leftover and I can still ask Sophie to tag along if needed (her mother will be thrilled), I think I still have a viable party without those two. Just going to sleep in my own damn bed feels like a big damn accomplishment.

9 Days Remain I was getting ready for the day ahead, showering and considering how bad the loss of Monty and Xaria are to the party's combat capabilities when there's a knock at the door.

She may LOOK like an axe-murderer but Hellen is very polite.

Hellen needs a place to crash, I invite her in, and she doesn't immediately commandeer my room. Welcome to the party Hellen!

Incidentally, despite the ominous nature of the visitors to my apartment, to date none of them have been outright hostile to me - opening the door and chatting with the visiting figures has never been a bad thing (so far) regardless of how frightening they may appear.

The one thing about Hellen that gives me pause is that she said she looked outside, and it was beautiful.... Eh, it's probably fine. We've established that some portion of people retain their minds even if their bodies get warped into unconscionable horrors. Speaking of which, I've finally given Jeanne back her laundry.

She can't wear any of it of course but at least she feels better.

I stopped by Lyle's place to pick up the developed photo and gave it to the Astronomers. Then Lyle invited himself over to my place to join in the fun.

This would be a lot less awkward if you'd just asked while we were in your apartment five minutes ago

Having gotten more ice-melt I cleared out the frozen apartment and found another planetary disc (for, as it happens, the hottest planet - Mercury).

Revisiting the taxidermied apartment, I end up fighting a really nasty patched-together creature there that sends me scurrying for home with one surviving party member. Guess that's all the adventure I'm up to today!

He's especially nasty because when he drops one of your party members the taxidermy wires come out and control their unconscious bodies, which is both thematically awesome and a real pain in the ass to deal with.

8 Days Remain

Something huge strikes the apartment and shakes the building, but before I figure out what that was, I have revenge on the brain and take a second crack at RhinoMooseBear, barely beating him with only Hellen still standing at the end. Returning to the apartment and resting, Hellen and Leftover are getting along very well after an initially fraught first interaction. Leftover draws Hellen's face after seeing it and Hellen is so touched that she starts wearing the drawing instead of the hockey mask. Also Leftover picks up a couple stalker-ish skills from Hellen!

It's a very sweet scene but Leftover sucks at drawing

Returning to the ground floor, the source of the rumbling appears to be that creatures from the bus have busted through the landlord's door and entered his apartment.

Mr. Henderson is a wheelchair-bound veteran

Together we fight them off but not before a horrible wriggling hand forces itself down the landlord's throat. By the time I run to the bathroom and back with some medication (This situation warrants somethings lightly stronger than Tylenol) the landlord has gone missing and the Landlord's apartment has expanded into a liminal space featuring an entire warzone.

Currently regretting not picking up the basement key when I first saw it on the table

Battling through twisted soldiers and explosives I eventually find the basement key and hightail it back home just before nightfall. There's an interesting element to this where the Landlord blocks your way forward, demanding progressively higher amounts of 'rent' money to proceed. 7 Days Remain Hellen takes me aside and says that she's noticed me taking good care of my houseplant, and since she's a gardener, there's another plant she wants me to help take care of.

Hellen's been a good houseguest and a good party member so I'm happy to help.

I'm sad to report that sometime in the days between when we last saw Ernest and Col. Squeakers and now, something bad happened to them.

Hellen leads me through a foliage-themed apartment that I had partially cleared before meeting her, and unlocks a new room that holds the plant she's caring for.

Hellen is adamant that we continue caring for this plant in the days ahead

Having done that, I explore the basement now that I have the basement key. There's an apartment down here with an anime Otaku that has to be murdered, and access to a whole sewer system filled with dead bodies.

And, tragically, a school bus full of transformed children.

I accidentally release a powerful, horrible creature that chases me around constantly so exploring down here isn't easy.

While exploring I find there are living ducts to a furnace-creature that I try to clear ticks off of, but one tick strikes up a conversation instead of attacking me.

I want it off the duct so in my 'embrace all the things' motif I let Tickle use me as a host instead

So far there isn't much of a downside to having a tick ride around on me - it actually gives me a couple extra combat options. The sewers are extensive and use up the majority of my day until the party is battered and beat up, and I make my way home. 6 Days Remain Leftover went through a growth spurt! He's come into his own as a strong party member. Adorably he's got a skill called 'Copy Dad' which lets him repeat Patt's actions for several turns.

I've settled into a morning routine - first, we water our houseplant and make food for the party BEFORE we talk with Sybil and save the game, so if anything bad happens those tasks are already in the bank and we can set out again from that point.

Sybil thinks the world is doomed, it's been over a week and things are not getting better.

After that, it's clown exposure therapy with Pierre followed by plant-tending with Hellen.

With that out of the way, I decide to try to take care of unfinished business - I head back to the Landlord's war zone with a bunch of money.

Something I've noticed in this game is that in many places you can obtain what you need to progress forward early - such as the basement key here- but if you stick around you can find something important later, such as the planetary disc for Saturn that I located after stomping this mole-man soldier freak.

He was blocking the way to the Big and Tall Helmet store

The whole party is very powerful now, and I have plenty of items to spare as crafting can produce lots of bandages, plus judiciously returning to the apartment and cooking food can stretch your supplies quite a bit. Back in the basement, I find my way forward past the sewers to meet a group of nice people / monsters that appear to be refugees from a nearby soup kitchen.

They're all very polite and happy to share their food.

One of them is perhaps generous to a fault. Like me, they were drawn in by the conversational, polite ticks.

Eventually I make my way into the parking garage, which has some pretty nasty monsters. I finally get the opportunity to use a car key I found days ago and loot one of the trunks, finding a shotgun and some ammo.

Some of these cars have fused with their drivers and will come after you

This is the first day I actually spent exploring all the way until nightfall. Things in the building do seem like they're getting worse, these dark ghostlike monsters have started appearing and attacking me.

They were really weak at first but they seem to be getting stronger

5 Days Remain Exposure therapy with Pierre went right off the rails.

Never, ever getting over my fear of clowns now

Hellen's comments about the plant we've been caring for have grown increasingly ominous.

As in 'bearing the fruit of a new world' ominous.

I found a man's feet sticking out of the ceiling in the basement, so I went back to the ground floor to try to find his upper half. I didn't find it but I did find a whole new cafe / shop full of monsters and exotic items.

There's great stuff for sale here, I wish I'd found it earlier.

I also found the last Astronomer, Jasper. I suspect one ending for the game involves trying to get all of their various Visitor-related observational items to these guys wherein they conduct a ritual on the roof to try to communicate with it, for better or for worse. Unfortunately I appear to have messed up that possibility because I think I gave the wrong painting to one of them, and even though the game will let me take the painting back from the Astronomer it won't then let me swap the painting with another option in the painter's studio.

No dice, Jasper - I don't think that's happening on this playthrough.

Back at the apartment around midday, I manage to combine materials I got from the ghosts and some weird mushrooms in the basement to make a 'Catalyst'. No idea if that's something incredibly useful or just another crafting ingredient.

I like the crafting system, it's very simple and you get to discover things on your own.

As with all time spent in the apartment, visitors continue to show up and say hello. This time a junk dealer, Morton, asks to stay at my place after I give him a bunch of junk.

He's easy to please. Welcome to the party Morton!

I returned to the basement and at long last finally broke through to something I'd been hoping for all this time - the building's elevator.

In one of my favorite encounters of the game the elevator music builds during the elevator ride.

Until the beat - and the elevator - drops

Now I can travel up and down floors quickly as well as access several areas that are only accessible via elevator.

Using my new transport I found the man - the building's janitor, as it happens - that I was trying to help in the ceiling, but it turns out he was merely the tongue of a very deadly monster designed to lure us in...

This worm was tough even for my highly experienced and capable party

I also checked out part of the 2nd floor that I couldn't access before, and even now the game continues to throw delightful surprises my way - an underwater apartment!

The entire party can hold their breath for several minutes.

Finally I ran into an Author who looked outside and is now constantly writing about what he saw.

Unfortunately he's a bad author - so boring he put my party to sleep

That was one hell of day. I still have so much that I can do in this building, with only a few days left there's no way I can do it all, not to mention whatever I missed so far. I'll just have to see what I can manage.

Back at my apartment, there was one more surprise in store. Today we found some 'Wizards and Mazes' sourcebooks, and it turns out Lyle is a GM - so tonight doesn't end in videogames. It ends in a tabletop RPG.

Let me tell you about my Giant Warrior named Cratt (CRush All The Things)

4 Days Remain

The building power has gone out.

Honestly, I expected this to happen much earlier in the apocalypse.

I'd been prioritizing eating any raw/frozen food I had first and now I'm glad I did (though I still have a lot left and thankfully my gas stove still works).

It's time to see what the deal is with Hellen's plant.

The way Hellen has been talking about this thing I suspected this might end the game and 'birth a new world'.

The 'fruit' turns out to be a sad little purple person.

Hellen still wants to eat him.

He turns out to be pretty tasty.

Hellen gives me her personal gardening shears which are the best weapon I've found so far, except I can't use them because I've only got one arm because I let a wall eat it so I could save a rat-baby named Leftover that is now wearing a baseball cap this game is awesome. What I really wanted to do today was go back to the Aquatic apartment and try to finish it because I suspect that the Neptune disc will be in there, given the theme, but now that the power is out I can't take the elevator there. In fact a lot of routes are cut off today because of the power outage, it's a big problem.

Instead, I head back into the sewers and decide to try to take on the big nasty thing down there that chases you around down here. Turns out he's not that bad (at least compared to my current strength) and now I'm free to explore the sewers.

This wasn't even the chasing-thing but I forgot to screenshot the other guy

I find all the school bus kids and return them to their spider-teacher (They've only been left alone down here a couple days, I'm sure they're fine), and after clearing all the ticks off of ducts I have the option of attacking the central furnace itself.

Somewhere down here in the basement should be generator that I can use to get building power back on, so I explore and run into a mushroom / mold filled area.

You can see trippy stuff breathing the air down here

Some people are trapped down here by the fungus and I free them.

There's... there's a whole Collectible Card Game I can play in this now?

And I can get expansions for my apartment?!?

I feel like I'm finding these things pretty late in the game but such are the consequences of having the degree of freedom to explore that Look Outside features. I'd come down here earlier on a future playthrough.

There's some difficult fights at the end of the fungus-area and between them and the furnace I burned through a lot of great items today, but with just a couple days left it's use 'em or lose 'em.

While I didn't find a generator in the fungus area, I did stumble upon exactly what I wanted today:

How is this NOT in the underwater apartment?

Things really went off the rails when I ended up INSIDE a car / monster that attempted to drive me into Hell itself.

And then, after much searching - success. I found my way to the generator room and got building power switched back on. There's not much time left in the day but I manage to squeeze in a little progress on the underwater apartment and another M&M session with Lyle. I really want to see how the RPG thing plays out so I think I'll set aside time for it tomorrow.

3 Days Remain

I wake up late - it's already past 10 AM - to an ominous knock at the door. Thankfully it's only the Priest making his rounds - we have a nice chat, he drops off some spare supplies and I send him away with a generous donation (I've got a LOT of money now).

Today, it's Mazes and Wizards until we finish!... or not. Lyle only wants to play in the evenings and needs time to prep between sessions. Damn you realism!

Let's see, taking stock of my situation, it looks like I have every planetary disc (which act as keys for door puzzles) except Saturn. I'll try to find it, and my main candidate remains the underwater apartment, so we're diving back in.

Yes I have a guinea pig. No, I have no idea what it's for.

On my way there I suddenly remember the infested guy on the third floor who was inhabited by fly eggs. I decide to check on him to see if he's ok.

He was... not ok. I put him out of his misery.

I push my way through the aquatic apartment and defeat the tenant there, Summer, though I'm left wondering if there was another way to handle her situation.

The end of the apartment leads to some strange type of fleshy door requiring a key that I don't think I have. I've actually encountered a lot of such doors in various places - I'm sure I'll be playing this game again in the future, and the second time I'm going to make a list of all of these doors so I can keep track of which ones I still need to open and which keys go where.

I traded in some cassettes to hand-man here for an excellent piece of armor

Speaking of keys, I have one that leads to a convenience store on the first floor. I killed a horrible centipede-creature in there and looted the place.

It LOOKS like there's a lot of stuff on the shelves but you can't take most of it

I now have every planetary disc EXCEPT Saturn so it's time to take a crack at this door. I'm glad I wrote down the number of moons around planets.

Obtaining Saturn now means that I should be able to open every planetary-locked door in the place, so I go around doing that. I find the last thing the Astronomers want from me by making a VHS tape of the security feed from outside.

The Astronomers are ready to go to the roof and perform their ritual. I assume this will be the end of the game so I'm going to hold off for a bit.

In my explorations I found an unlabeled game cartridge, and unfortunately it's defective and I can't play it.

I don't think I have enough time left to play all my games (also true in real life)

In the evening, more progress on Lyle's campaign.

We're ramping up to the final confrontation with the evil wizard so I have hope that I can finish this!

2 Days Remain

I slept past noon. Why am I sleeping so late in these final days? I got stuff to do!

Sybil is starting to lose it. I talk her out of it... for now.

I'm not really sure what to do next while waiting for Lyle to be ready for roleplaying tonight, so I wander around for a bit and I find this guy in the parking garage - pretty sure he wasn't there before.

He has a nasty antennae-whip that hits the whole party

And just behind him, in a hole in the wall... an Iris key. Is this what I need to get past that aquatic door?

I step beyond and... I'm in Meat World.

The amusement park we neither wanted nor deserved

I explore Meat World for a bit but given how late I woke up the evening comes pretty quickly, so I hightail it back to the apartment for the most important thing in the game: Lyle's Mazes and Wizards campaign!

It didn't earn me anything. It used up valuable time that I probably could have used to help save the world, or at least some of the people in it - but damnit, I wanted this, and I got it.

1 Day Remains

I'm left with a lot of unsolved mysteries. Remember that painter? I never killed all of the other manifested paintings of him because some of them were just scared or friendly rather than hostile. Could I have fixed his brain by killing them anyway? Could I have fixed this blank game cartridge and played it? Could I have saved the guy with bug eggs in him? What lies at the end of Meat World? And where the hell do I actually find cards for that collectible card game or the materials to expand my apartment?

These and other mysteries will have to remain so for now. There's so much going on in this game that I don't think it's possible to do everything in one run - and that's ok. I had an incredible time getting here and wholeheartedly recommend Look Outside to anyone who can stomach some visceral pixellated horror.

I encountered a wonderful cast of characters, emotional stories of people having to deal with becoming twisted things and possibly losing parts of themselves, and others who's minds were as warped and twisted as their outward forms. I hacked my way through a jungle and soldiered through frozen halls without ever leaving my apartment building. I even (arguably) slew a dragon.

What I've learned is that it may be possible to communicate with the Visitor, and if that's possible then it's worth trying. It's done untold damage to the world by now but that may never have been its intention.

I'm going to go to the Astronomers and try their plan. It's better than just waiting for the end - even if one of their items isn't correct, maybe it'll still work out.

I hope.

Moments later, I'm standing at the doorway to the roof.

It's been weeks since I've seen the sky.

It's beautiful, and I'm all right - still human, anyway. The Astronomers are too, so I speak with them while they prepare.

That was probaby the high point of my day. It went downhill from there.

I knew that I'd messed up and gotten the wrong painting. What I did not know was that I had in fact screwed up nearly ALL of the ritual components.

He should thank me, he's got bigger eyes to Astronomize with now

In fact, only one Astronomer has what he needs and tries to conduct the ritual. He gets sucked up into the Visitor and becomes the Chorus of One, which is not much of a Chorus, and I end up having to fight it.

With the Astronomer / Chorus defeated, I stumble back inside.

I should have sat on my damn couch and played videogames all day.

When I got back to my place, my companions stared at me, horrified. Even Leftover - you don't look so good yourself kid!

Joke's on YOU universe, I was beating video games with one hand, wait till you see what I can do with seven!

What a game! It feels good to end my scary game streak with an all-time banger, even if I got a 'bad' ending. As though just exploring more of it wasn't enough, now I have even more of a reason to play it again.

There are many endings but this one is mine. This time.