Torn
Away by developer perelesoq
and publishers perelesoq, Hawthorn Games—PC
Steam
review written
by David
with a copy provided
by the publisher. Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://keymailer.co. #keymailer #TornAway
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.
Fleeing across Germany
and Poland would be hard for anyone in trouble, but for a little
Russian girl in World War Two, it would prove to be a nightmare.
We’re going to follow Asya on her journey home as an escaped
ostarbeiter in search
of her family. “War
isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a
lot worse.” Hawkeye from M*A*S*H said this, and the friends I’ve
spoken to who’ve seen live combat agree; Torn Away goes on to show
that quite clearly.
The
game opens with Asya waking up in Stalingrad, on the morning of her
mother’s birthday. Mother isn’t home, so we go about our efforts
as a little girl to make mother a birthday present. We learn some
details about life here. Father is on the front lines, mother seems
upset lately and Asya blames herself. We get glimpses into her self
image through her conversations with her two friends, a doll and a
broomstick horse.
We
are introduced to another companion during this process, as Asya
creates Comrade Mitten when she repairs one during her tasks for the
day. Comrade Mitten served on the front, and knows Asya’s father,
of course. Mother doesn’t make it home for her birthday though,
because it’s August 23rd, 1942. Today, the battle of Stalingrad
begins. Bombs are dropped, and Asya is taken prisoner.
The
game skips around a bit in the timeline, some parts as active fleeing
across the countryside and others told through dreams or flashbacks
of earlier points in her imprisonment. From working with Asya’s
mother on a time-based task that’ll determine if you two get
rations as the war prisoner slave labor you are. During her flight
portions, we get direct views into the world around her as she
escapes and explores. A note from a family begging their Nazi son to
change his course. An abandoned hut, with the skeletal remains of a
hidden survivor in the cellar completing a tragedy you begin reading
about upstairs as you search for firewood to ride out a storm.
Asya’s
story is a tragic one. Every time things look up this war slams her
back down face first into the snow. It took two of her companions
right at the start. Her father is somewhere on the eastern front. She
has nobody to turn to after she escapes the war camp due to an Allied
bombing raid on it. Everyone who shows her kindness, everyone who
helps her along the way, gets hurt by the horrific, oppressive Nazi
regime she flees from.
Torn
Away is functionally an interactive novel. While primarily a 2d side
scrolling platformer with some stealth mechanics, it is incredibly
narrative focused, and has a mix of first person exploration and
nicely varied puzzles to accent that narrative. The snowstorm I
mentioned earlier has you running between boulders to keep from being
pushed back down the hill from the hut you take shelter in. At one
point you help a crashed pilot by fixing his arm, and another you
simply cook breakfast yourself as an independent young girl.
The
emotional rollercoaster that is this game is combined with some of
the most beautifully done, and incredibly fitting visuals I’ve seen
in a game in a long time. Described on the Perelesoq website as
“inspired by social realists and French animation,” it really
sets the mood as soon as you see it, and then they pair it with
excellent, tone-setting score that they did. The story just swallows
you, keeping you moving Asya through her journey home, determined as
this little girl is to keep standing up no matter what happens.
Torn
Away is a heavy-themed reminder that video games are art. Every level
of this piece is art from every direction you look at it. Every story
beat, every note, every color placement, contributes to a combined
art piece that multiple skills and visions came together to create in
order to tell us a story based on the diaries of wartime children, to
tell us their story. The top games every year are war games, but
they’re never games that show just how beyond-hellishly full of
innocents war truly is.
Score: 10 / 10
