My favorite cosmic horror RPG is still being updated, and thanks to this latest patch 'The rat child's Copy Dad ability no longer copies gun skills for free'
Summary
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines may be the better personal horror RPG, but Look Outside wins for cosmic spooking.
The sky is broken. Anyone who looks at it turns into something out of Call of Cthulhu. Fortunately, the authorities say they'll have it fixed in 15 days. Maybe they're going to turn it off and then on again? Until then, you just have to hunker down in your apartment building with your baseball bat and your videogames and wait the whole thing out.
Of course, you venture out and explore that apartment building. Your neighbours keep knocking at the door, and sometimes slithering. Some of them might have ignored the warnings and looked outside a little bit.
Look Outside is a cross between Yume Nikki, Fear and Hunger, and World of Horror, a cosmic horror RPG with Earthbound-style menu combat, but one that every real CRPG head should try. It's full of surprising interactions and unexpected quest solutions and companions you didn't realize you could recruit until you tried that One Weird Thing. It's a bottomless well of horror and delight.
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Though it was shadowdropped out of the blue last year, Look Outside has continued being updated. Version 2.3 is out now with a substantial list of changes, including a huge amount of balance tweaks. The strangeness of Look Outside comes across in some of these, like "The rat child's Copy Dad ability no longer copies gun skills for free" and "Made Col Squeakums' bites not have a chance to remove sleep, confusion or charm effects from the target."
Enemies that have been improved include "Shrimp Knight, the Shark, the Starfish and Lethargy" and Monty's pyromania skill "now does much less damage to the party than what it does to enemies." That's good, I guess?
Some of the patch notes deal with spoiler-territory stuff, and boy howdy there are a lot of them. Just trust me that it's cool an indie horror oddity like Look Outside is still being updated. If you need another reason to check it out, it was cowritten by CBoyardee of Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden fame, and if that doesn't intrigue you I don't know what will. Look Outside is available on Steam and GOG.
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