I thought this game looked interesting and knew I'd like it but it seriously surpassed my expectations. If it looks even remotely interesting to you, I would strongly recommend you to grab it. I love the premise in this game, I find it's such a powerful hook. What's happening outside? Why can't you look? It leaves so many questions unanswered and that's exactly the kind of things that makes me want to keep going and find out. It's a survival horror old-school RPG, reminiscent of earthbound and the likes. The more grotesque body horror reminded me of LiSA which I also really like. It has the typical turned-based combat system but it's surprisingly well-designed. It requires you to think about what you're doing each battle (instead of just spamming 'Attack') and has some pretty tough challenges. The game progresses in a sequence of 15 days as you explore your apartment complex. As you - and time - progresses, more doors and paths open up. Some of them even change over time. The gameplay loop works very well in that you need to come back to your own room every now and then. It does a great job at pacing, especially in a horror game. You see a new path or enemies that look pretty strong and it's late, so you go back home to rest and prepare. Knowing exactly where you want to explore on the next day... Or maybe you just want to cook up some food, re-arrange your party, play some video-games, then get back to it! There are a lot of events that are a bit more random, where you need to make choices that may be in your favour or not. They don't feel obvious or predetermined... A situation that looks bad may actually be good and a situation that looks harmless might actually be a trap. The unpredictable nature of it all makes for a very fun and exciting experience. It's easy to miss out on a lot of unique things in the game. But it only makes it that much more replayable, it's usually cool things but nothing that will ruin the game or make it impossible to finish. I did find that there is sometimes such an overwhelming amount of places to go and things to do (especially with the content added in 2.0 onward) that it's easy to get lost or waste time. There are quite a few endings, most of which can be done in a single save file. I really enjoyed each of them and was happy to see there isn't very much overlap between each of them. I found that different endings often gave you different parts of the answer rather than the same answer in a different way... Which makes it really worth going after more than one ending if you're curious to have a better understanding of the story! I honestly had to stop every now and then to think about the fact that this was actually made with RPG Maker. They did such amazing job at giving it its own identity, it doesn't have that typical "stock" RPG Maker feel that often make those types of games feel cheap. I felt like I was playing a long-forgotten SNES game. I know it sounds really cliché but it really made me feel exactly like back in the early 2000s, when I'd play random SNES games I had never heard of on an emulator. It really captures that essence.I was also super happy to hear creator Francis Coulombe is from the same piece of earth as I am. Seeing characters with Québécois names and all the little references in monsters, gear etc. always made me smile. Really appreciate seeing a bit of self-insertion and representation in games! The value is absolutely insane for the amount of content you get. I was really surprised to hear that the game was made in less than a year. And a year later, they're still adding quite a bit of content. Just really shows that RPG Maker can absolutely still pump out great games when put in the right hands. Wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who likes horror and old-school RPGs!

A good atmospheric little game. Nice setting and cool syncpop music. Good for the price.

Look Outside es una inquietante y brillante propuesta de horror cósmico que transforma un RPG retro en una experiencia profundamente tensa y perturbadora. Su narrativa, diseño de criaturas y atmósfera sonora construyen un mundo opresivo y memorable, donde cada decisión pesa. Aunque su combate tiene limitaciones y su estilo no es para todos, destaca como una de las joyas ocultas más impactantes del género en años recientes.