You should stop reading this review and decide for yourself if you like Reveil or not.
Reveil is a first-person horror puzzle game that explores the intersections of illusion and memory, told from the frame of circus entertainers and their decaying industry. Developer, Pixelsplit paints a terrifying picture about the realities we choose to believe and the stories we tell ourselves about the past. It’s a meditative skewering of nostalgia obsessed corporations and the rose-tinted glasses we all sometimes wear. Though the game is not without its faults, Reveil is terrifying, sporadic, and will leave you questioning if you ever really liked anything at all.
Players play as Walter Thompson, a former carnival handyman who looks back fondly at his time with the Nelson Bros Circus. At the start of the game Walter awakens in his home, head buzzing, and wife and daughter (Martha and Dorie) nowhere to be found. A quick intro puzzle gets you out of your bedroom and into the rest of your maze-like home. The on-ramp here does a great job of getting players comfortable with the game’s puzzles and then immediately pulling the rug, creating discomfort as you enter the rest of this House of Leaves-esque nightmare. Odd-shaped hallways decked out in strange paintings lead into rooms littered with circus memorabilia. As Walter searches the house for his family, rooms transform before his eyes. Dorie’s bedroom transforms into circus grounds. Walter’s workshop transforms into a circus train. It’s all disorienting but plays well into Walter’s fuzzy memory and how ingrained the circus seems to be in his family’s life.
There’s a variety of puzzles to be completed throughout the game’s five acts. I really enjoyed the puzzle variety through most of the game. In an early moment, Walter searches Dorie’s room for a key to unlock her sketchbook. To retrieve the key, players must complete a series of puzzles that include a wooden labyrinth ball maze, an old marble racer, and playing dentist for a toy clown. My personal favorite of the bunch is in Walter’s workshop and includes a locked safe, a mannequin, and a bunch of weird symbols painted around the room. I’ll say no more here, but it’s a great puzzle with a solution that doesn’t present itself right away. Reveil also does a great job with immersion. The items you find around the house are weird, but they fit right in given the family’s proximity to circus life. It also helps that oddities like a massive marble racer in a child’s bedroom are surrounded by things like stuffed animals and a failed spelling test. Small details like this paint a better picture of the family dynamics at work in the Thompson house.
The game dips back into the fetch quest bag just a few too many times. There are two sections that require players to gather three objects from the surrounding area and place them on a mantle. While searching for the objects, a terrifying creature lurks about, hunting down anyone who crosses their path. The creatures in these sections are terrifying and provide a good jump scare if they capture you, but the horror dissipates when you realize there are no consequences. Upon capture, you are swiftly returned to the mantle, without losing any progress. It keeps these moments in the game from overstaying their welcome, but it doesn’t stop them from halting the game’s excellent pacing as it transitions from fun and challenging puzzles to cat-and-mouse “survival” horror.
Reveil is artful in how it uses the jump scare. Others throw them around, Pixelsplit shows restraint. They know players are white knuckling their controllers and they keep players stirring in that anxiety for long periods of time. The carnival and the Thompson house are eerie settings that are plenty scary on their own without jump scares. That’s not to say there aren’t jump scares. The few that are used are clever and will leave you chuckling once the scare has passed. My personal favorite being a quick scare from an old circus friend on a train ride.
Walter slowly starts to piece things together in the search for Martha and Dorie. It’s a mystery that kept hold of me through to the end. The game touches on some interesting topics. These are explored mainly through collectibles players can find in each chapter. At one point, I discovered a contract for Dorie to perform in the circus as a tightrope walker, literally following in her mom’s footsteps. Walter’s not too big a fan of this and his comments give us an idea of the strain the decision is causing on the family.
Exploring the influence one person can have on another becomes an important theme throughout most of the narrative. Do I like Metallica or did my dad listen to Metallica so much when I was a kid that I just became a fan by proxy? What is ours and what is something we got from someone else? Where does the line between self and influence get drawn? Drawing everything back to the circus is just downright good story telling. Is the circus a magical place where anything can happen or is it this awful place where people and animals are exploited and caged? Are you a fan of the circus?
Days removed from the ending (of which there are multiple) and I’m still thinking about Reveil. It’s a spooky, weird, uneven game, but its imperfections don’t keep it from leaving some kind of impression. I’m still wrestling with it in my head, but I know I like it. I just hope the rest of you can come to your own conclusions.
