Luto Review – Luto Great Scares To Be Had

Horror has always been a stand-in for our deepest fears. Death, chief among them, takes many shapes and forms depending on the type of story you are trying to tell. It could be a relentless monster that takes everything away from you. Or a silent killer that slips into your house without you noticing. The worst of all, though, is the friendly voice that takes you gently into that good night. Luto, or grief in Spanish, is a psychological horror game that very maturely depicts depression in the most effective way possible: through a series of well-placed jumpscares and an eerily relatable narrative.

Developed by Broken Bird Games, from Spain, Luto is a first-person experience that very quickly will remind you of other horror games in the genre. Visage, Outlast, or the mythical P.T. will come to mind fairly easily, but make no mistake, Luto stands on its own. Starting from its disarmingly simple premise that you are just “moving houses”, a deeply unsettling feeling that there is something really wrong sets in not long after the first few moments.

Accompanied by a perhaps too gentle narration, you gain consciousness in front of a bathroom mirror and walk towards a corridor. An air freshener startles you. You pick up your keys to leave the house. Rinse. Repeat. One day, there is a strange sound coming from the basement. Apparently, there is an underground area you were not aware of before. Do you want to investigate? You know you do. It’s your childhood home, after all.

Luto wears its many influences on its sleeve to great success, starting from the book House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, an experimental read in which the titular house is way bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside. Much of this psychological horror’s ingenuity is best left unsaid for players to discover, as the unraveling of your character’s facade feels just as gripping as it is perturbing.

Where Luto shines is in its puzzle design tied to the exploration of the house’s depths. Once you have felt comfortable within the foundations of this surreal space, a person under a bedsheet will seem to be hunting you. Actually, that implies action and running from it, when Luto is quite slow-paced in that regard. Stalking would be the right word. There is something extremely wrong in this area. Maybe it’s a physical representation of your protagonist’s psyche, or it could be an actual monster. The only drawback to this frantic search for answers is that it may leave you retracing steps with no clue as to where to go next, leading to a brief moment of frustration. Regardless, the effectiveness when the jumpscare finally happens cannot be understated.

A personal work that lets you peek into the lives of characters that look so real, it will make you wonder if it is truly fictional. Luto is grounded in the coming-of-age home of kids in the late 90s. Items that will transport you instantly to that era, like Tamagotchis, a nondescript game console reminiscent of the times, or an old-school PC, do their best to give that nostalgia hit. A CRT TV playing Night of the Living Dead in its entirety in the background ties it all together perfectly. It works because it represents a bygone era of a whole generation, unafraid to delve deeper into what characterized that specific point in time.

Verdict

What Luto does best that sets it apart from the usual first-person psychological horror is how unequivocally human the story is. Depression is as real as it gets, and while effectively using bedsheets in your face to hammer home how inescapable it can be, it is also heartbreaking. Luto is a narrative of loss, grief, and bargaining with that temptation to give up. A cathartic experience that is equally nerve-wracking, Luto is one of the best psychological horror games in years.

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