It feels like we’re still riding the viscous, dark-red crest of a retro survival-horror revival wave that’s lasting for years. Genre behemoths Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame have all had remakes or rebirths (in the first’s case, both) over the past decade, and a deluge of retro-inspired indie releases have slithered and swarmed into the gaps in between – most notably, SFB Games’ isometric PS1-era-inspired (to my eye also evocative of ellipsoid marvel Ecstatica) Crow Country. At this rate we’ll be getting a finalised P.T.
One series that seemed to be firmly dead in the water was Remothered, Stormind Games’ Clock Tower-inspired paean to the genre’s prerendered backdrop heyday. In fact, the studio and original director Chris Darril parted ways and focused on very different horror projects – A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead in the case of the former, and last year’s handdrawn Bye Sweet Carole in the case of the latter. It probably didn’t help that 2020’s sequel/prequel hybrid Remothered: Broken Porcelain launched with a litany of bugs and didn’t receive the same level of plaudits as the 2018 series kick-off, Remothered: Tormented Fathers.
That didn’t have much of a dampening effect on fans of the series, though – around 850k of them bought the games according to Stormind, and they’ve been clamouring for another installment for the past six years – despite Darril confirming via Twitter in 2021 that any such project was “not in [his] plans”. Those pleas haven’t fallen on deaf ears, however, and now, fresh from co-developing Mafia: The Old Country, the studio has revealed that it is working on the third part of the trilogy, Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy, with new director Antonio Cutrona (who was a programmer on the first game, and a producer for the second) at the helm.
Habit of a lifetime
Red Nun’s Legacy broadly echoes the second game’s split timeline setup, taking place both 20 years after the events of Tormented Fathers while also including sequences in which you will explore the Cristo Morente convent, where the legend of the Red Nun (who, if you’re a series newbie, has been making a nuisance of herself since the first game) began. You play as Susan, a woman searching for her young daughter, Agata, since she disappeared over a year ago, who follows a recent lead to an abandoned villa nestled at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily. Abandoned doesn’t mean empty, of course, and while there’s no suggestion yet that you’ll encounter any naked-except-for-an-apron psychotic doctors, there are plenty of brainwashed Red Nun adherent stalkers (the ones I see are also, curiously, half naked) to worry about instead.
Stormind wants to remain faithful to the core gameplay mechanics of the series – what it calls “discovery under pressure,” which in the past has included exploration, hiding, distracting enemies, stealthy sneaking, and even tying off doors to buy time. This is evident in the returning QTE prompts – like keeping the cursor within a circle to stay quiet while looking at a stalker’s ankles from under a bed, for example – and environmental UI elements which, as far as I can tell, are exactly the same as prior entries’.
This time, however, you’ll be able to fight back as Susan is pretty handy with a melee weapon. It’s more last resort than power redress, however, as these tools are fragile and the stalkers formidable – whacking them will buy you time to get away, but you’re still going to want to find a cupboard to cower in until they give up the chase.
Resonant evil
Puzzles remain a big part of proceedings, nodding heavily to classic genre examples. One of the examples I’m shown involves finding a lever arm for a crank that lowers a chandelier with a doll on it. It drops through the rotten floorboards, unfortunately, so there’s more terrifying exploration to be done to retrieve your prize, but the simple environmental interaction and creaking sound effects do a great job of evoking the kinds of roadblocks you encountered in the original Resident Evil back in 1996 – and I mean that wholly as a compliment.
Susan fills a good chunk of the screen thanks to the game’s over-the-shoulder, close-cropped camera. It makes for a pleasingly claustrophobic viewpoint, and the devs demoing the game gleefully demonstrate a number of chases in which the camera is pointed back at a pursuing stalker – not a strategic choice I’d make while prioritising survival, but a good demonstration of their unnerving, lolloping gait. The fear of what’s behind you comes into play when using mirrors, too, as Susan can now use them to distort reality and reveal hidden objects and clues in the room – but it’s difficult to take your mind off what’s lurking through that dark doorway just behind you while you search.
Red Nun’s Legacy is shaping up to be a faithful, and loving continuation of a cherished series. Modern tech has given it a layer of glow-up polish which includes some handsome lighting effects, but don’t worry: the game remains just as dark and oppressive as its forebears. The addition of melee weapons should provide players with a wider range of options, too, and allow for more dynamic decision making in stressful situations. But at its core, this loop-closing entry in the trilogy promises to deliver the high tension and thoughtful pace the series is known for. If Stormind can get this out of the door bug free, then it’s going to make a lot of long-suffering, faithful fans very happy indeed.
