Barcelona, Jan 2025
Outline is superlative in a number of ways. Including for the most extravagant use of smoke – I didn’t realise a smoke machine was capable of creating such a fog that you can’t even see your own outstretched hands. The hosts did say at the end that they’d maybe overdone it a bit in our session. However, that was only a relatively short part of the experience.
In Outline we were entering an old abandoned factory in search of a journalist who entered and didn’t come out again – which is up there with ‘hey, let’s split up’ as an example of people in horror movies making bad decisions, and of course the factory turns out to be not a safe or reassuring place. This is by all measures a scary game, and it works hard to frighten you, and the characters within it employ some impressive techniques to do so. I was glad to find that they don’t resort to what I consider the cheap tactic of sudden screams. Most of the time you’re also not expected to run or hide, which mitigates the potential terror level somewhat. For me, I also found the scares less effective after I’d had the ominous voice helpfully suggesting a hint for how to find my way out of the dense fog.
We played as a three, and naturally the game was designed to split us up in different ways at different times. With a two hour game it would be easy for it to get repetitive, but Outline is inventive in the sets and the situations it puts you in, and the types of interaction. So much so in fact that the later stages felt almost like we’d strayed into a different game – still horror, still exceedingly well built, but different in tone and visuals and type of story, less industrial and a bit more puzzle-dense.
It’s huge and elaborate and full of dramatic moments, as well as more than a few nice puzzles, and I’d recommend it to everyone, except of course it’s going to be well out of many people’s comfort zone. If you’re on the fence about playing a horror room, then this probably isn’t the one to dip a toe in the water with – it’d be more of a plunge at the deep end. Then again, if you’re going to try a horror game, there’s something to be said for picking one that does both scares and puzzles to this level of quality. 
