Review falithes 5/5 · Jul 8, 2026
Fear and Hunger without the dicks
This game takes a lot of influence from different games spanning classic JRPGs, survival horror and body horror to great effect. Fear and Hunger (FaH) certainly plays a big role in this game, but it also makes a lot of conscious departures from that game, dicks and all. Something that makes FaH a fascinating game is how it intentionally subverts …
This game takes a lot of influence from different games spanning classic JRPGs, survival horror and body horror to great effect. Fear and Hunger (FaH) certainly plays a big role in this game, but it also makes a lot of conscious departures from that game, dicks and all. Something that makes FaH a fascinating game is how it intentionally subverts expectations. Saving your game is only safe once. After an initial save, you toss a coin and have a 50% chance for something terrible to happen and since you are saving you are stuck with those consequences and they can be truly disturbing. This creates weight to your actions, while at the same time encouraging you to push forward since trying to save your progress is a high risk in itself. This is a more extreme version of Resident Evil (RE), where save locations were one of the very few safe havens in the game. Saving was still a limited resource, making you less likely to save as often, but there was still a risk, albeit very low risk in RE.
Look Outside takes a middle ground approach to this. There isn't ever a risk to saving your game, but you can't save whenever you want (as long as you play on normal difficulty). You need to put yourself in danger before you can save your progress, or go to sleep. Going to sleep will restore your life, but also cost you time. The main plot of the game is on a timer, so this is a consequence for saving. Either way, time is required to save. Whether that's you safely going to bed or exploring the dangerous apartment complex. Also you can only save in your apartment. I do like this design, because things do change in your apartment as you recruit more party members. But it's also the only location where you can cook food and make items. There's other mechanics with the apartment too, such as playing video games to unlock powerful abilities, or having random encounters with other residents. All great stuff. Some issues games can have with hubs/safe spaces are not giving the player adequate reason to go back frequently. Maybe this is because the level design makes going to the hub inconvenient as the world expands. Look Outside gets around this by not only making it the only place to save, but also giving you constant shortcuts throughout the apartment. Making returning home and going deeper easier.
Another subversive element to FaH is with the combat. A staple to all RPGs is consistently rewarding combat. You will get experience or an item that will either power you up or aid you in some way. In FaH, combat rarely rewards you. In fact, combat is always a risk, even if you are geared up. There are no levels or experience points and while enemies can drop stuff, it's completely random and not reliable. If you kill an enemy, it does mean you don't have to deal with them again, but aside from that, most battles can feel like pyrrhic victories, where the enemies can infect you with permanent debuffs, such as losing a limb for the rest of your playthrough, or of course death. Some bosses are required to kill to beat the game and some late game enemies will allow you to trap their souls for some of the most powerful accessories in the game. But for the most part, combat is rarely worth it which is honestly mad genius design. This is all done thoughtfully to create one of the most hostile and unpleasant game worlds ever made. Combat is still simple, but each fight feels like a boss fight. You can target limbs, some a bit more... private than others... and while simple at face value, it does add tension and depth to otherwise simple gameplay. Rewarding you for playing tactically and exploiting enemy weaknesses. This is the only spot where Look Outside feels less complex.
At face value FaH feels like an immensely unfair game. Your character is constantly complaining about food. Your food is rotting away at absurdly fast rates. You need to toss a coin for nearly every action, turning something that should be good, into something terrible. The hunger and food rotting is actually a clever element to the world building and atmosphere, it's firmly part of the lore and evil of the game. Causing people to go mad from hunger, allowing their darkest impulses, whispered by the cosmic gods, to take hold. Furthermore, the game actually gives you significant advantages over the enemies. Yes they can dismember your limbs, but so can you. Yes you need to flip a coin, but you can get a second coin to double your odds over the enemy (given this is a powerful and limited item). You can set traps, such as a bear trap, and lore an enemy over it so they start the fight already vulnerable to a crit. Or you can just instantly kill them outside of combat with a bow. FaH is definitely an immersive sim.
Combat in Look Outside is honestly quite simple in contrast and doesn't have immersive sim elements. There is a rock, paper, scissor system where different damage types will have better or worse effects on enemies. But aside from that, it's pretty simple and combat is often over very quickly. This isn't a bad thing in my book. You also get XP and enemies will not come back, so you are always rewarded for fighting an enemy. The survival elements to Look Outside are certainly limited resources, weapons can break easily forcing you to keep using different makeshift weapons and perhaps saving your strongest weapons for bosses. There is a hunger mechanic and limited healing items. So there are a lot of systems in play at once. You are front loaded with a lot of excess weapons, food and healing, which can make the game feel less survival horror, but I started to feel the pinch as I got close to the 15 day deadline and plunged ever deeper into madness. Fighting the hardest enemies and bosses the game has to offer.
The combat is simple but still manages to feel scrappy since your sword or kitchen knife can break in the middle of battle. Some skills will do high damage, but significantly increase the risk of damaging your weapon, creating a good balance of risk vs reward. Where Look Outside's combat really shines, is in the enemy and boss variety (there is a staggering amount of variety for an indy low budget title) and the truly gnarly and inventive art design. This game is gross, but it manages to stay playable due to the pixel art design. Honestly, this is some of the most creative and horrifying body horror I've seen that honestly goes beyond John Carpenter's The Thing in really impressive ways. If you can stomach it.
Much like FaH, this game is about plunging deeper and deeper into one location and the fabrics of reality fall apart at the seams. Both games deal firmly with Cosmic and Body Horror. Exploring madness and the darkest recesses of the human condition. The main difference is I would actually recommend Look Outside to more people and FaH I would honestly recommend to only a few people. Look Outside examines trauma and anxiety as its main horror, FaH examines the deepest recesses of depravity and the absolute evil humanity is capable of. Both are horrifying in different ways. One is firmly more enjoyable and fun to experience. Hint, it's not FaH.
The way reality deteriorates is always very creative and the game has so many secrets. Honestly you can play through Look Outside time and time again and have a very different experience. Not only are there over a dozen different endings, but many super bosses and completely optional and well hidden secrets. This game wants to be explored and it consistently rewards your curiosity, even if with madness as well. FaH has replayability in a different way. It takes a more rogue-like approach to design. Where you have pre-made level layouts, but each has different variants. So each playthrough randomly permutates between premade floors. I think this is the best of both worlds. You get the replayability without the frustration of terrible procedurally generated levels. There is still tons of RNG, where each crate or barrel you loot is completely randomized, and can be garbage thanks to a failed coin toss. But FaH does make sure key and some truly powerful items have set locations. So you can always beat the game even if you have truly terrible RnG. Look Outside has a set world with set items. But events are randomized and there are moments in the game where you have freedom to explore where you see fit.
As simple as the pixel art is, the game doesn't spare any expense with it's creativity and depth. I was truly impressed with the story and rich lore. Not to mention how elaborate many of the different endings feel. Very creative and would make for a great stand alone novella/short story in their own right. I also think this game strikes a good balance of humor and horror. The game knows when to horrify you and it knows when to give you a break for pacing. Some of my favorite moments are the brief moments of peace in the middle of the madness. Such as
The game is certainly punishing. There were multiple times where I lost tons of progress due to an instant death moment, right before saving. But hey, I did choose to play the survival horror experience and there is an easy mode that removes this frustration. This game is a cypher with lots of depth, but it importantly has a simple surface level plot that is easy to follow. There is a deep well if you are curious and brave enough to look. Just don't look outside...
