Paratopic (PC) review "Complex, lies and video tape"

During one opening scene in Paratopic, a character peers outside the window of a cafe, staring at a half-eaten human body. Crows pick at the corpse, and even though it's obviously been there a while, no one has come to clean it up. In fact, the protagonist doesn't even seem perturbed by it. Why? Does it matter? Does it tell you something about the world it inhabits or the events that unfold? Maybe...

The thing is you can't take this game at face value. You see a cadaver, a monster, a person mutating while watching a forbidden video tape, a man turn into a television set... In and of themselves, these concepts aren't supposed to make sense and come across more as symbolism or surreal content. What lies at the core of this game is that it gets you questioning its message, which it delivers through a totally odd, albeit sometimes uneven, experience.

Paratopic doesn't tell you this straight off, but it features multiple protagonists who in some way become loosely entangled in illicit activity. In their dream-like, dystopian world, certain VHS tapes have become contraband. Some folks smuggle them as part of a black market, with the “juiciest” cassettes acting like drugs toward their viewers. However, you catch glimpses of other activity throughout the short campaign, including assassination and what appears to be spying or sleuthing (I won't spoil it for you, but it's actually more innocent).



The game features an art style that has become all the craze lately with horror games: 32-bit aesthetic. It resembles an early PlayStation game, with low polygon counts and pixelated textures stretched across unnaturally shaped surfaces. It gives the game an almost monstrous look on its own, plus its earthy, downbeat color palette lends itself to the game's brooding atmosphere. Lazzie Brown's musical score also gives the game a retro, almost exploitation film genre vibe that fully completes the game's seedy style.

Each scene plays out in a way that reveals more about the world, but also brings you closer to understanding its message on media consumption. Every conversation revolves around video tapes or a power company involved in shady dealings, though other topics pop up, including aliens, local economics, or well-hidden secrets.

For the most part, every segment revolves around chatter, but others build mood in various other ways to varying levels of effectiveness. For instance, one scene concerns pressing a button on an elevator and waiting for ages for it to arrive. I'm not sure what point the developers were trying to illustrate, but the moment comes across as filler. Maybe they want you to take in your surroundings, which even then only takes a few seconds. This occasion, however, pales in comparison to the three lengthy, pointless car rides you perform in which you merely drive forward and listen to incoherent voices on the radio. Sure, it's obvious those segments are there to explore media consumption through talk radio, but they could have edited down these monotonous portions of the campaign.



Personally, my favorite scenes involve moseying through a forest. Here, you get to take snapshots of the woods and the wildlife, though you receive no prompts instructing you which kinds of pictures you should be taking, so you just shoot whatever looks interesting: trees, valleys, streams, birds, dilapidated buildings, an old windmill, shipping containers, a massive concrete structure, more shipping containers, abandoned storage facilities, more shipping containers than any forest should have, some strange humanoid that blurs your viewfinder, additional birds...

Everything comes together as you search the forest: the black market on tapes, the smuggling, the aliens, the corrupt power company... No, the game doesn't spell it out for you, but it leads you to the assumption that it's all connected. And maybe that's what the game is playing at. We all naturally form theories based on the media we consume, and that leads us to generate conspiracies as well. For all any of us know, these events could be completely unrelated, but inexplicably became intertwined because of chance.



The game leaves you with no answers, and that's just as well. At the same time, it leaves you wanting more. Maybe some folks want their questions murdered violently because not knowing bothers them, but personally, I just want more strange material with all the mystique kept in place. Half of Paratopic's strength comes from its refusal to simply tell all, but show you. I want more of that, and the game's forty-five minute playtime only scratches that itch so much.

My only fear would be that players are going to expect answers to their questions or more in-depth world building, but part of this game's charm comes from only knowing so much. The more it shows you, the less likely its content will leave an impression and the less terrifying it's eerier scenes come across. You don't know why there's an ominous figure floating over your car while you gas up, or what the birdwatcher ran into at the end of her hike, or who hired the assassin, or what was up with the security guard at the beginning of the affair. None of the “whys” matter. It's the “whats” that make this offering great, and I would love more of that.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 21, 2025) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.