[Review] Remothered: Tormented Fathers - Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Stormind Games
Published By : Darril Arts
Category : Survival Horror
Release Date : September 6 2019

Remothered: Tormented Fathers is a survival horror game by Italian studio Darril Arts. The story follows Rosemary Reed, a mysterious woman who, for unknown reasons, decides to investigate the disappearance of Celeste Felton, a young girl who ran away from her home only to be never seen again.

Remothered presents itself as a realistic survival horror game, and it clearly takes inspiration from games like Clock Tower and the Siren series, where the gameplay is centered on stealth and puzzles.

Our protagonist, Rosemary, is investigating Celeste’s disappearance. She decides to disguise herself as a doctor from Santa Margherita Institute, where Richard Felton, Celeste’s adoptive father, was admitted for a terrible disease. Rosemary decides to visit Mr. Felton, but Gloria, Richard’s caretaker, denies Rosemary of entrance. Eventually, she manages to convince Gloria to let her in, and, after talking with Mr. Felton, Gloria discovers that she is not a doctor, and she is kicked out from the mansion.

Later that night, after Gloria’s shift had ended, Rosemary forces her way in once again, only to discover that Mr. Felton had gone mad and murdered his wife, who was decaying in their bedroom.

The chase begins, and only her survival ability can save her.

During your stay at Felton’s mansion, you will have to explore and discover its secrets. But beware, danger is just ahead. Various stalkers will chase you until either you run away, hide or they manage to brutally murder you. Luckily, you can use various items to your advantage: you can throw vases, lamps and other items at them, or stab them with a knife when they are about to kill you.

There are also puzzles to solve. Every time you solve one, you progress further into the story. Those puzzles aren’t hard to solve, but they aren’t too simple either.

The Switch port has…a lot of problems. After the gorgeous and enigmatic intro scene, we are introduced to the game…and it’s rather ugly. The textures are of a very low quality and the resolution is low, some stuttering also occurs. The animations are a bit weird and not realistic at times and there are some bugs such as not being able to open doors despite the animation showing that you have opened it. Even after a patch was released and increased the overall quality of the game, it still doesn’t look very pleasing to the eye.

The game is not all bad though. The atmosphere is done really well, it puts pressure onto you and makes you think that something is going to jump out of a corner and try to murder you. The music is perfect. It sounds great and has that “mysterious” sound combination will make you even more anxious.

The stealth mechanics are also good. It’s not just “hide and hope to not be found”: you can try to hide inside of closets or under couches, where you will play a minigame which, if you fail, will give away your hiding spot.
The story is also intriguing (albeit confusing at times). It’s original and will not completely go the way you expect it to go.

The Switch port could have been a lot better: we all know what the Switch is capable of, and I was sad when I saw the end result. This doesn’t mean the game is bad, but if you can play Remothered: Tormented Fathers on any other system I would recommend you to do so.

In conclusion, Remothered: Tormented Fathers is a good game by itself, but the port to the Nintendo Switch wasn’t done correctly. It could have been done much better, especially since, personally, this was one of my favorite games of the genre, but there is still some good that came out of it, such as the great music and the gameplay itself.