Developer: Yakov Butuzoff
Publisher: DANGEN Entertainment
Platform: PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on: PC
Loretta – Review
As Shakespeare once wrote: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In other words: don’t mess with your wife. Loretta is a point-and-click adventure inspired by film noir and classic horror novels, telling the story of a housewife in the 1940s who is pushed to the limit and murders her husband. Made by a single person – Yakov Butuzoff – and published by indie studio DANGEN Entertainment, this game offers a refreshing mix between narration and puzzles with enough difficult choices to leave the player wondering if they made the right decisions. That being said, you’ll need some patience to get the full picture of what’s going on here.
Story
This game takes place in the tumultuous period of American history right after World War 2. Loretta is a simple housewife married to Walter, a novelist. After inheriting a farmhouse from his parents, the pair abandoned their upscale city life for rural domesticity instead. The move leaves Loretta dissatisfied with her marriage and her life in general, and soon enough cracks in their relationship become insurmountable gaps. The game starts when Walter is already missing and Loretta readily admits in the opening narration that she killed him. But then the story goes back to the start so we can see exactly how she got there.
Choices matter in this game and there are plenty of branching paths and endings to explore, though overall the conclusion you reach in the final chapter is still fairly linear with two major ‘routes’. Chapter selection makes it so you can go back and pick different options, though the game’s pace is very slow and this does make replaying more tedious than it has to be. Especially considering some story elements are hidden in a specific path, meaning you won’t really get the full context of the plot without a couple of playthroughs.
Graphics
Loretta‘s beautiful pixel art is a treat for the eye. The game effortlessly switches between the less detailed style used when you’re moving around the areas you explore and are solving puzzles, with the much more intricate style used for close-ups and cutscenes. The shift is never jarring and is instead used to shock the player at important moments. The game can be played in color, but as an homage to its main source of inspiration, a film noir version is available so all the graphics are in black and white. Since some puzzle hints are color coded though, this isn’t ideal the first time you play it.
Sound
Music is not very common in this game, though that doesn’t mean you’ll be listening to dead air. Loretta almost exclusively uses sound effects for its background noise, meaning that when there is music, it hits harder. The sound effects themselves aren’t half bad either, adding a tense and creepy atmosphere when needed. The only one that might get annoying is our protagonist’s footsteps, but you can actually turn those off in the main menu. The game does not have voice acting, so be prepared to do a lot of reading.
Gameplay
Loretta is a thriller adventure with a very heavy focus on the narrative over the gameplay, and the controls are very similar to a point-and-click game. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any puzzles to solve, though they take a backseat to the plot. The game is divided into chapters, and your choices alter how the story unfolds. To guide you along, the game gives you a set of objectives to follow that at least keep you from wandering around aimlessly. You can walk around whichever location you’re in and have an inventory for your items. Some puzzles are as simple as finding a code or key. Sometimes things get more complicated, such as with actual sliding puzzles.
During the dialogues, you have options on how to respond to other characters. This dictates not only what kind of information you get but also what they might think of you. Endings might come rather abruptly, even at the very start of the game. And since you’ll have to replay from the start of the chapter each time, it’s not a bad idea to think your choices through. An option to skip text that you’ve already seen thankfully makes the flow of the game a little better.
Overall, the biggest issue with the game might lie in the controls. You can play with a controller and perhaps that’s even the recommended way to go because the mouse tends to lag and not show intractable objects when it should. Sometimes it can be a bit finicky to know what items you can pick up or inspect or where exactly you need to hover your cursor. The same goes for seeing what doors and hallways you can actually pass through and what are set pieces.
Conclusion
Loretta offers a compelling story packaged in simple gameplay and beautiful pixel art. While the game isn’t long, the plot itself basically mandates at least two playthroughs for the two major routes, more if you want to get to all the juicy details of the story. This means that despite the game’s short runtime, there’s a lot of content here to explore. And since it’s a relatively cheap game, we’d say this story is worth it to experience.
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