The Past Within (2022)

A new Rusty Lake it's always cause for celebration in this household. My girlfriend and I have played all the Cube Escape and Rusty Lake games together, trying to solve the puzzles using the same phone. This new entry is an offline co-op, so it's almost custom-made for us.

My spider sense started tingling when the first thing you get after pressing start is a title card that explained all the mythology in one little sentence. What I love about the series is the weird eeriness and it's somewhat ambiguous plot. Having it being laid out in plan language ruins it a bit.

In any case, the story is that there's a special machine that allows you to communicate through time. Each player chooses to play as The Past or The Future and need to communicate to solve puzzles.

The move to co-op turns almost everything into a code sharing experience. For better or worse, gone are the days of inventory puzzles and multiple-steps long key hunting. One player needs to find the code and the other needs to know where to find it; and that's pretty much it. By the end, when many of the tools start to be reused with different codes it becomes a bit formulaic and repetitive.

The consequence is that it feels easier and with fewer moments of feeling lost not bowing what to do. This is also due to the extensive and explicit instructions given by the machine, to the extent that in one case it literally says "both players need to tap the box for ten seconds" (or something along those lines). Again, this might be good or bad depending on your experience but for me, those moments of utter confusion were never a deal-breaker since they matched the surrealist and fantastical tone of the games. Having everything explained so clearly took me out of the experience.

The creepiness factor is amped up a bit by the new sound design, which makes some scenes particularly disgusting. But with fewer WTF moments (or perhaps I'm desensitised by almost a decade of weird grossness). En in the end, though, it still has the Cube Escape DNA, with a lot of its charm and appeal.

The atmosphere is so good! Love the eerie and unsettling vibes it gives.

Probably the thing I like the most are the sound effects, I think it is what makes every action feel nice (and weirdly "fleshy"). Without them I don't think I would have reached the same level of immersion.
Second place goes to all those creepy stuff that happens, and especially the black shadow watching you or moving on the walls (like in the 3D section).

I loved the visual style of the 3D section, the textures are so good and I like the black outline style, which also makes it feel like a proper transition from the 2D style.
As for the 2D style itself, it's good enough but very classic, both for the series and for this kind of escape room games.

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It was very funny to try to communicate what we have to do to solve the puzzles, the only issue for me was that, in the end, it was mostly just a "code sharing" thing and a "code hunt" overall.
It's not like this ruined the game at all though, it was still fun to collaborate and tell each other what was happening on our side.
Besides, thanks to the amazing unsettling atmosphere, the collaboration with my friend, and the general curiosity about what would have happened next, I played through the game with a good dose of involvement.
I've only played the past side, so not sure if this could be said also for the future.

That said, even though the 3D part is marvelous to look at and playful to interact with, I think it was a bit lacky, and when I got more bored as soon as the initial amazement faded.
It was basically no exploration and just waiting for my friend to do stuff and get me the code, so I could get another one to him.
The 2D part on the opposite is more visually classic, but more fun to play since u are able to actually explore a bit between a code and the next one.

By the way, I loved the concept of being inside of the cube the other was watching, and it was very surprising to realize what the other one was doing (interacting with the cube while u were inside it) and to realize what that creepy eye was!

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My friend had to push me a bit to play this with him, but I am happy he did because I ended up enjoying this quite a bit!