Game Thoughts - The Rewinder by Misty Mountain Studio

Note: This is a repost from our Tumblr.

We put this on our Steam wishlist ever since I got into this Chinese point-and-click game fixation. And at some point, we decided to buy it, despite having a lot of other games in our backlog.

I did not regret this purchase and playthrough. - Kochi

What’s It All About?

You play as Yun, the last of the Rewinders, people who are given the ability to alter timelines by delving into spirits’ memories. One day, Mr. Black and Mr. White give you an assignment: to investigate a strange happening in Reed River Village, where several people have been stuck outside of the reincarnation cycle. When you get there, you soon find out that this first assignment of yours is more complicated than it seems.

Writing

At first, I thought this would be a typical saving people from a big problem sort of thing, but it breaks my expectations from the main character, Yun, alone. I would go so far as to say that he’s a pretty interesting character.

For one, I thought he would be the dutiful kind of guy, but it turns out, he’s more pragmatic, I guess? The reason he works for the gold from Mr. Black is to just have something shiny on display, not even for something to buy. (Then again, if you think about it, gold ingots don’t have any value in the Underworld, and therefore wouldn’t have any value to him, who was raised his whole life in the Underworld.)

He also has quite a bit of sass, which I like, and it’s blended with a bit of naivete as well. Being raised in the Underworld, he has almost no idea of how things work above ground.

I also find it interesting that even though he probably has a different set of priorities from the average human, he’s still pretty human. Like, he can still die, he gets hurt, and he also feels some insecurity regarding his abilities/duty as a Rewinder. And for me, that makes him pretty relatable.

It’s not just him who’s interesting, all the other characters have their own charm. And for something that deals with spooky stuff, even actually scary stuff, there’s a lot of love involved in this story.

You see a lot of relationships between people, most being romantic in nature, a few friendships, and even familial ones. And it’s nice that when you go back in time, you get to see how these relationships develop.

If you think about it, the problems in-game happen whenever these relationships are torn apart. For example, if Ash goes out without bringing Amber along, Amber eventually becomes a victim and becomes a resentful spirit. Another example would be Rusty becoming a beggar and eventually dying to the Yaoguai because he was ashamed of going back to his mother.

And in a way, solving the problems and altering timelines involves reconciling these relationships. Even Yun and Light go through something like it, despite being the main characters.

I guess that’s what makes this game beautiful for me.

Art

From the moment you open up the game, you’re treated to lovely pixel art. You’ve got scenic views reminiscent of those Chinese ink landscapes, and I love how they sometimes make use of foreground and background layers that move along with you.

It’s also worth noting that we played this windowed, and even then, the details are so good that you could still recognize objects (either that, or we've played too much picross). One set of objects that really made me realize this would be the animal stones when you go in this cave maze. You could tell for the most part what animal they are even if you don't zoom in to look at them up close.

Related to this, I also like that important things that you can pick up or interact with are highlighted without being too obvious that it would stand out like a sore thumb. Some hints are also visible but subtle.

Audio

The title screen alone has really good music, no, pretty music and I knew from that point on, I was going to have a good time listening to the soundtrack. And it was even reinforced by the little tinkling sound when I moved the cursor between the options in the main menu.

All the themes and tracks are pretty nice, and my favorites are the theme for the Ghost Market (such a bop), and the music that plays while you’re exploring the cave maze and setting up the spell (this one makes good use of local instruments). The ending song is also something that you may not want to skip as the credits roll, kind of like that song for Devotion.

The worst part, though, is that the audio tends to reset to its default levels whenever you open up the game, even if you've adjusted them before, making the adjustment kind of useless.

Gameplay

For the most part, it’s your usual point-and-click. You move your character by either using WASD or clicking with the mouse. Then you click on certain objects of interest with the mouse. The cursor changes depending on what it’s hovering on, which is nice.

Sometimes you get dialogue choices, but it’s not that much of a dilemma, as most of them aren’t really choices per se, but questions of some sort, all of which you'd need the answers to, anyway. Some choices also lead to the same result anyway, so nothing too puzzling when it comes to that.

And speaking of puzzles… They’re the meat of the gameplay, the problem and puzzle-solving. I like that the devs had this in mind, as they made the puzzles challenging enough to make sure you pay attention to details and notes (some of which are given by the game) but not too difficult that you’d give up entirely.

The kind of puzzle that stands out as unique in this game is the memory stages, where you change the timeline by influencing what people do in the past. And you don’t do it by actually moving things around yourself. You do it by getting potential motivators and giving ideas to the right people at the right time.

It’s nice that you can start a section of the stage over in case you mess up, lessening the frustration of having to redo the whole thing from the start when you do. Also, after you beat the game once, you can revisit stages and get flowers that you haven’t, since those are key to the secret good ending.

The worst puzzles for me, personally, were the rewind shrine puzzles because you have to do everything in reverse. Also, there’s the spinning wheel puzzle, which took me a few tries, and also the quick time events with the big spider, who killed me a few times as well. But as I said, it wasn't so frustrating that you would give up on it completely.

Overall

It’s a beautiful game, with charming characters, lovely art and music, and solid gameplay. I would recommend it to anyone who is into point-and-clicks and loves lore and how things and events are intertwined. It also presents a good challenge, puzzle-wise, and makes you think quite a bit.

You can get it from Steam or play it on Switch. Also, they have a DLC that I'm kind of interested in, and you can also get the soundtrack.