Recall: Empty Wishes (Review)

Recall: Empty Wishes is brought to us by indie developer Puff Hook Studio and Dangen, known for publishing a wonderful collection on indie games. Between its spooky premise and Dangen’s track record, it caught the attention of a few of our staff right away.

Starting Recall: Empty Wishes feels like being dropped straight into the midst of a Taiwanese horror film. Before the story’s beginning, Yonny’s brother Tommy Lin disappeared. The disappearance is unexpected – after all, Tommy is popular, a skilled artist, and loved by his classmates, friends, and family. Where could he have gone? Everyone will say it didn’t seem like anything was wrong - could that really be true? The player starts off helping Yonny’s friend Phoebe with a ritual that doesn’t appear to be going as planned, as they try to step into the memories and dreams of Tommy’s friends and family. Like everyone else – or, really, even more than everyone else – Yonny is desperate to know what happened to Tommy. He has to be out there somewhere. There must be an answer.

Screenshot: Yonny, Phoebe, Mocky, and Eartha celebrate Tommy’s 15th birthday

Exploring the memories of Tommy’s friends and family uncovers secret after secret, but unfortunately Phoebe and Yonny didn’t plan for how nightmarish this ritual could become, and soon they start encountering horrific ghosts, and even eventually a creature that shows up when lingering in a place too long.

Presented as a 2-D sidescroller, the gameplay is straightforward – Recall plays like most point and click adventure games, and there’s not really any way to get it wrong outside of missing something somewhere. Players should interact with everything they find to unlock new items, phone numbers, and clues. Along the way, there are a couple light puzzles, but nothing too challenging. The result is a game that rewards you for exploring properly without holding you back from experiencing the story.

Screenshot: Phoebe and Yonny’s dream-exploring turns into a nightmare

There’s a lot to love in this game. I appreciated how the story was up close and center – even as a puzzle gamer, sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and have an experience. Being able to focus on exploration and putting together the clues from Tommy’s loved ones helped highlight a heartfelt, tragic story. The art combines lovely character art and stills with a classic pixelated feel that will be reminiscent for anyone who grew up playing some of the classics. With creepy graphics, lots of dark corners, and some pretty high quality sound cues and audio, players really will feel like they’re exploring a classic horror story.

Screenshot: Phoebe and Yonny encounter ghosts in the memories they explore

Mechanic-wise, I kind of wish Levi hadn’t existed. I understand that having an undefeatable enemy adds a layer of fear and urgency in the later stages, but it also sometimes just became annoying. In one particular instance I found that he wasn’t disappearing as I hid in the closet trying to wait him out – ultimately, I had to end up letting him kill me instead so I could reset in the bedroom and move forward. This is a common trope in these kinds of games, so maybe it’s a me-problem, but it felt like it just made progress painstakingly slow every time I was about to grab an item or solve something, and instead had to go hide.

Screenshot: Gameplay involves interacting with the world to find hidden items and information

Where Recall: Empty Wishes shines most is definitely the story, which I’ve struggled to write about for a few minutes now because I don’t think there’s any way to talk about it without setting expectations and spoiling the experience. There are a couple different endings to find that will affect your understanding of the story’s events, and also probably how you feel about the whole experience – you may walk away feeling like you experienced a story about resolving grief, or perhaps realizing that even normal people can have a deep, awful darkness inside of them.

In the end, this is a story I wish I could experience more of, and I’m excited to see what else Puff Hook has to offer in the future.

Overall Rating: 8/10