Room Escape Artist

Fully Retro

Location: at home

Date Played: August 2024

Team size: 1

Duration: Approximately 20 hours of gameplay

Price: $9.99

REA Reaction

Full Quiet is an homage to the long ago days of 8-bit gaming. As a proud owner of a Nintendo Entertainment System back in its heyday, I have a fondness for many modern retro games. Sometimes, the retro aspect in these games is mostly a reference to having pixel art. Retrotainment’s Full Quiet offered much more than that, creating a game that would have felt (mostly) at home on the shelf next to Metroid and Castlevania. Retrotainment’s booth at PAX East 2024 caught my eye when I recognized NEScape! on display as well Full Quiet, their newest game.

One of the key components of many Nintendo games was difficulty. In the era before easily saving games, difficult games meant replaying them many times on the road to mastery. Full Quiet’s system of exploration, near-mandatory note taking, and doubling back to previous areas elicited feelings of frustration punctuated by moments of joy when finally completing an area.

Full Quiet is not for everyone. It told an engaging story, but some of the draw to this particular retro game is nostalgia. And while it had some modern affordances (client-side screenshots made note taking easier, and controls were more fluid compared to an original NES game), the gameplay felt older and might not be the choice of a modern audience. But if you’re a millennial looking for a challenging retro game cut from the same cloth as the games you grew up with, Full Quiet would be a good choice.

Who is this for?

• Story seekers
• Puzzle game and metroidvania lovers
• Retro gamers
• Nostalgia-seeking NES gamers
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• A strong feeling of nostalgia
• The challenge level of NES titles with some modern affordances

Story

With your son missing and strange things taking place, you must reactivate the radio stations throughout the dangerous forest. Along the way, you will find clues about how your own father and his friends maintained the woods and kept them safe.

Gameplay

Retrotainment’s Full Quiet was an NES-level difficulty videogame in the metroidvania genre with some survival horror elements. Puzzles were centered around exploration, remembering or taking notes of important information, and connecting information and items. Morse code is heavily featured. There is also side-scrolling gun-based combat against enemies.

Analysis

➕ Full Quiet keeps true to the feel of an NES game. The art, music, and gameplay all send me back my childhood.

➖ With all the affordances this game has, a few more modern touches such as more checkpoints and a fast travel system would make it more playable to a modern audience.

➕ The in-game manual is another strong tie to this game’s 8-bit roots and is full of important an easily accessible information.

➕ The different zones are distinct and memorable. Each area feels like a new and dangerous place with unique challenges and enemies.

➖ The PC version has a frame rate issue that is mentioned in the system requirements but has not been addressed since release. Temporarily adjusting your system to correct the problem is possible but seems like something that should be fixed permanently.

🎮 Note that the PC version requires a controller to access all game functions.

Tips For Players

• Required Gear: Full Quiet is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, XBox, and NES.

Buy your copy of Retrotainment’s Full Quiet, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Retrotainment provided a complimentary game.