Red Bow

Overall, the title is ridiculously restricted, and while there are different endings encouraging multiple playthroughs, you’ll have seen all that it has to offer in hours.

Red Bow has a lot of potential to be great, but it's simply not. There are a lot of strange technical issues and downright poor creative decisions that make up for a dismal experience. While the story is effectively the only thing holding this title together, it's not nearly enough to warrant a recommendation.

Red Bow proves to be more of an incoherent dream than a lucid one. The cryptic puzzles and lack of focus manage to sully the overall presentation, making it a tough playthrough for even the most diehard of horror fans.

Red Bow bears the visual hallmarks of a 16-bit era RPG but once that impression gives places to a more involving experience, something else becomes clear: Red Bow is a horror game, and does a good job at demonstrating that a horror game does not need a realistic looking world. While a short experience, Red Bow has enough reasons to mire players in with its simple gameplay, plot and replay value. Perhaps it can also raise the banner for simple-looking horror games.

Despite its accessibility, Red Bow is not going to be for everyone. This isn't just because of its darker themes, but its rigid, basic structure that shifts between item gathering and NPC interaction. Even at the $5 asking price, it's tough to recommend to anyone but those who really fancy horror adventures with ample reading.

Red Bow features an engaging story set in a creepy 16-bit world. The puzzles are fun without being frustrating. You'll want to see it all; unfortunately it's over rather quickly.

Red Bow struggles to understand how horror game stories are told, and adventure games are designed. There are some ideas buried in there, and when the developer is more experienced it would be great to see him revisit this but Red Bow itself its a bit too hollow for its own good.

With a visual pixel art style that does have a creep factor but has elements reminiscent of the developer's previous release, My Big Sister, I found it hard not to have a bit of deja vu playing this title...