As with some other reviews, this one will be a bit lengthy. But it’s okay, because we’re in this together — you and me trapped in the middling, logic-defying hell that is Remnant Records.

I’m a big fan of the ghost-huntin’ game Phasmaphobia. I’ve put well over 100 hours into it — mostly with friends, but also alone. But we wanted a similar game with fewer glitches and more quality-of-life improvements.

Enter Remnant Records, a game that tried my patience in ways few games have managed to do. This game can be fun…except there’s a massive cognitive disconnect between the game’s logic and the player’s logic, and this particular point is actually the entire crux of my review. Not the gameplay (strictly speaking) or graphics, but the logic.

Let me explain.

If you get a “double jump” ability in a game and then see two blocks, you’ll think, “I need to use that new ability here”. If you find multiple gemstones in a puzzle room, you know they each have to be used at some point. The environment tells you this.

However, Remnant Records defies that logic for some inexplicable reason.

For instance, one of the stories we got was that of an addict who seemed to be close to OD’ing. There were needles everywhere, and we figured that since he was an addict (and there were 10+ needles strolled around, with multiple being in literally almost every room), at least two of them should be placed on the evidence board. Because multiple copies of a key item should mean multiple uses, especially when you know that overuse of the item leads to the exact problem you’re trying to solve.

Well, that was incorrect — and incorrect guesses can result in you being hunted by the entity, and killed. Only one was needed.

Another hint in one of our runs was a note that said “a friend betrayed me and stabbed me in the back!” That’s clearly not a literal phrase. However, there was a very literal bloody knife that we had to use as evidence. Why? The point is to find items that were significant to the entity and led to their death. Since it wasn’t a literal stabbing, that shouldn’t have counted. The game used very, very literal logic.

…Yet in another run (I believe the same one with the addict), the entity talked about being captured by police and not believing he, of all people, would slip up like a common criminal. The piece of evidence we were supposed to use for this was a gun.

But…why?

“Criminal” should not automatically translate to “gun”, especially when no violent acts were mentioned are alluded to. It felt like the game took a logical leap that not all people are going to make, because that leap is actually incorrect. The frustrating part about this was that one of our members suggested this outright, but we reviewed the note again and concluded that it didn’t really make sense to use it, despite it being such an obviously out-of-place item, so we skipped it the first few times and got hunted.

About the hunts: each type of entity has a specific minigame that you must complete once you’ve gathered the correct items. This is a really neat idea that, again, misses the mark because of how the game presents its ideas. The Mannequin Entity is the one that broke the camel’s back for our group. The game tells you to “Find the odd one out” after finding the correct evidence. Creepy mannequins then appear all over the house, some of which may be crouching, etc. But we noticed they were missing a right arm and figured the “odd one out” either had both arms or was missing the left instead of the right. Makes sense, especially since I’d played another horror game that did this exact same thing, and the answer was in the positioning/limbs.

Well, this was also incorrect. After getting wiped twice, it turns out that you have to train your flashlight on the “real” one to release and capture a soul, and this will speed up the timer that allows you to succeed. Missing limbs, positioning, etc. has nothing to do with finding the “odd one out”.

But the game doesn’t tell you this, and doesn’t provide any hint that this is what you should do. I only found this out by giving up and looking it up online out of frustration, because we’d nailed the evidence this time without incident, but were systematically picked apart by the entity because we didn’t know what the game wanted us to do. Keep in mind, the mannequins change locations every few seconds, during which time the REAL one can and will spawn in front of you and kill you, all while your flashlight is flickering. If you happen to bump into the real one in the interim, prepare to join the entity on the other side.

And it’s not just the Mannequin that does this sort of thing. Another one tells out to play hide-and-seek and survive. So, we naturally hid in separate rooms from the demon child before his countdown was finished. This one seems self-explanatory: avoid his line-of-sight.

Well, I’ve never played a version of hide-and-seek that included the heavens opening up and shining a light down to reveal my location so that a demon child could beeline his way to me. Yes, that’s a mechanic and no, you’re not warned about it. You just see a giant light moving around in the room you’re hiding in, have enough time to think, “What’s happening??”, and then you’re dead. It felt like the game cheated. We helped the sole survivor from beyond the grave by telling him when and where to dodge so he could miss both Heaven’s Spotlight of Doom and the Demon Line-of-Sight.

These were the starter missions, by the way.

On the positive side: the game has a lot of good mechanics to really mix things up, including classes, a fully fleshed progression system, and the ability to purchase more information on entities to aid in your survival. I can’t help but feel that the vague, trial-and-error nature of the game was done intentionally to balance out how helpful the progression system can be. The graphics are a bit better than Phasmaphobia, with the trade-off being that a bit of that Uncanny Valley feeling is lost as a result. Model movements don’t match the level of detail in the models themselves (specifically the Husher), so when the camera focuses on them for more than a second or two, you lose the scare effect.

VERDICT: Overall, this game has AMAZING potential. And despite my criticisms, it isn’t bad at all — everything else I saw, I really enjoyed. But the vagueness and odd logical choices are a critical miss that really detracted from all the other great things it has going for it.

Note: This review was originally posted on my Steam profile. It has been updated to better suit this site.