One of the best indie horror games to return to whenever spooky season comes around each year has got to be Ib, a psychological horror RPG that takes place in an art museum. The game combines a gritty art style that is dark and beautiful, and the dramatic shadows create a haunted Tim Burton look of each character you come across. It has a compelling story that is tense and terrifying when played through the view of a young girl with barely anything to defend herself within a building that is full of nothing but danger and deceit. Not only has it made waves through the indie horror game community when it first released in 2012, but it has now seen its remastered remake.
We follow the perspective of Ib, a young girl who is attending an art gallery event with her parents, starring an artist named Guertena. They are famous for their cryptic artwork that often borders on eldritch, but a lot of the titles and the concepts behind the art go over Ib’s head as we see her unable to read most of the titles of the art she comes across. After examining one of Guertena’s pieces, the power cuts out and as Ib further explores, she steps through one of the paintings and enters in a world that is both enticing and dangerous. Mannequins, paintings, and traps lie on the other side ready to take her life all while she adventures through a haunted art museum to find the painting that had originally transported her to this world. Along the way, she meets other uncanny characters who were thrown into the situation such as Garry, a timid lanky man in distressed clothing, and Mary, a young girl around the same age as Ib with bright blonde hair. Together they must search the museum for a way out without losing themselves to artwork.
Role-playing games made in RPG Maker normally have a small community, but Ib blew up in popularity thanks to a few YouTubers who covered the horror game around the time of its release since it prided itself on its dreary story and scares. Both horror game fanatics and RPG fans could both agree that the game was fantastic since it had compelling characters despite there being a relatively small cast and twists in the plot that made it difficult to receive a good true ending. The scares that were present in the game were not just ones that made players jump out of their seats, but could make your skin crawl and have you looking over your shoulder just to check there wasn’t a marionette head leering over you.
The game’s new release is a remastered version of its old self, adding more detail into the sprites of the characters while brightening up the features that can be seen in their profile pictures when they speak back and forth to each other. The artwork that can be found around the museum has also seen a refresher, becoming more detailed and more colorful to better represent the messages and portrayal of the different types of art seen throughout the museum. While the game does seem to lose a bit of its haunting landscape by brightening up the former gritty style it has employed before, it’s balanced out by focusing on the different paintings and displays to be found around the museum and the amount of detail that was put into them.
Puzzles in Ib have always been the standard RPG fetch quest, but in a way that isn’t frustrating since it pushes you to think about multiple rooms you come across. They are better refined in the remastered version but still hold their classic vibes of mirroring rooms, sorting through statues, tearing open cute dolls and finding the honest painting out of a group of liars.
There is also a cute addition of hearing the feedback of your party whenever you go through different areas, opening up more dialogue that either elaborates more on the character themselves or provides hints to the player if you find yourself stumbling. It’s a wonderful game to play and if you have the chance, feel free to try both. The games do not take up too much time at about three hours each, including Main Story and the Extra Endings, and each has its own charm that could enchant gamers who are interested in a little horror or a little art reference when looking into indie games. And just like with books and movies, it’s always a great idea to return to the classics when enjoying a genre.
Jordan is a student studying Digital and Print Journalism at the University of North Texas. After discovering how much fun gaming journalism can be, she hopes to make a career in it once she graduates. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing games such as Genshin Impact, Ace Attorney, and Fire Emblem or watching Murder, She Wrote late at night on weekdays.
