A really great episode. I think it is superior to the first 2, but just shy of 3. This developer really is something else. He has a raw talent and vision for these stories and he does a great job at capturing them.

This particular story is like if you took Firewatch but turned all the lights off and had creepy guys watching you. But that works quite well! Production wise this is the best one. The setting is excellent and there's lot of great sound design and stuff going on in the background. I think the slow pace works best here because the job you're doing is literally waiting around for stuff to happen.

That said, while I think the bad guys work, you don't feel that same connection as in episode 3. I think the ending here is a bit lacking as well.

Still great overall

Fearts to Fathom is problably the best horror game "franchise" out there right now. Seeing the mostly solo dev improve tremendously over each release feels so refreshing, always adding more content without bloating the experience while adding more and more subtle horror without relying entirely on jumpscares, though it never forgets it's main driving force of entertaining you and the psychotic baboons you call friends.
Extremely recommended if you have like 2 hours of dead time with friends and want to experience a solid horror story about being in the woods.

Ironbark Lookout is the second Fears to Fathom release from Rayll this year, and certainly the most ambitious yet for the series. This chapter takes us out into the dark woods as a new watchman in a fire tower. Think about the unease of isolation in Firewatch, and add some genuine horror elements, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this one is going for.

Jump scare games are a dime a dozen on Steam, but the Fears to Fathom series distinguishes itself from the pack with how much love and care are so clearly going into them. There's so much detail going into creating the environment and immersing you into living at this fire tower that you can't help but appreciate it. You visit a full realized diner that I'm sure took a while to render right at the start, and nothing of real note happens there other than a bit of foreboding dialogue. I liked figuring out how to do the little tasks for the job along with everyday routines like getting more wood for the fireplace or cooking pasta. The runtimes of these games are getting longer, but they aren't really packing in extra scares. I continue to think Rayll seems more interested in crafting these environments and simulating living in them than the scary parts.

When the spooky parts do come, they will get your blood pumping but feel pretty rushed after all that build-up. I wanted one or two more encounters with this game's main threat, since it felt like it was all over right when shit hit the fan. There are some great moments right at the end but the credits are rolling in no time.

Despite the weird pacing of these games they have a ton of personality and charm and I find myself enjoying them more and more with each entry. I'll of course be looking forward to whatever is next from the Fears to Fathom franchise.

Ironbark Lookout é sem duvidas o melhor capitulo lançado para o Fears to Fathom e provavelmente o melhor jogo de terror de 2023.

Gameplay: Soube muito bem como usar suas mecânicas para entregar uma tensão bem maior que dos outros jogos da série. As mecânicas de câmera e do trailer são sem duvidas as minhas favoritas.

Gráficos: Não é perfeito, mas tem uma qualidade bem alta que te deixa imerso do inicio ao fim.

Narrativa: perfeita, nunca me caguei tanto com uma floresta e um rádio ligando do nada.

Áudio: tu se caga até com o som do mato se mexendo.

No fim, esse jogo com certeza é um 10/10.

Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout asks an important question: what if public bathrooms didn’t have any toilets? What if there was instead a room where everybody has to piss on the floor?

…Playing this game before there were any patches was maybe not the greatest idea. In addition to the restaurant piss room mentioned above (where the toilet I was meant to pee in did not have a visible model), my playthrough was fairly marred by glitches and other technical issues. On the default graphics settings the game can’t handle itself: things slow to a crawl, and there’s this motion blur when looking around which is rather sickening to have to deal with. Setting them lower doesn’t help, either: all it does is make the lighting so bright as to be painful, and the game still didn’t seem to be capable of handling its rather expansive areas. Not to mention the glitches: how I got softlocked at one point because my attempt to put down something it turned out I’d later need clipped through the floor and out of bounds, and how you’re not fast enough to be able to clear the final chase… unless you move diagonally, zigzagging somehow being faster than just… running normally. I was excited to play this game upon its release — as I’d really liked the previous games in the series and wanted to go into one of them blind — but I think, maybe, I needed to wait a bit longer, because the issues that hadn’t been patched out yet were enough to effect my overall enjoyment of the game.

Which is a bit of a shame, because otherwise I liked a lot of what this game had to offer. What this series in particular excels at is managing to capture how it feels to be where you are: both the natural horror that can come out of the situation you’re in… and also the serene, the pretty, the parts that… almost feel like home. Namely, I’m struck by the picture it captures of national park life: all the routines you have to go through each night, all the times you have to upend everything because somebody in the park did something they’re not supposed to, becoming friends with a disembodied voice on the radio, and how you slowly make your assigned firetower yours: opening and closing the shutters each night, throwing all your shit through the floor across the place, and slowly getting a familiarity of the space around you as the days go by. It’s a surprisingly comfy game, even as things start building up around you, and frankly it made me wonder if I’d personally be into the park ranger life. It plays well with the horror aspects, as the intrusions on your idyllic park ranger life turn from normal to absolutely not, and even if… I do have some questions about whether this really is a true story somebody sent in, I can’t deny that it otherwise works. Even if I should’ve waited before I otherwise experienced it for myself. 8/10.