DISTRAINT: A psychological thriller in your pocket

During the reign of the PlayStation, everyone was talking about horror games. An endless array of titles appeared on every possible platform, and during the second generation of consoles the trend hit its zenith. One could say that the genre bifurcated into two streams: psychological thrillers (à la Silent Hill) and the so-called survival horror games (like Resident Evil). We’re currently seeing a spawn of easy-scare horror titles incubating from YouTube stock, which is precisely why the arrival of a game like DISTRAINT to Android is such great news for the genre.

DISTRAINT puts you in the skin of Prince, an ambitious young man who decides he must evict a poor old woman. His doubts about his work run up against his eagerness to shine in the big company where he works, but things start to get complicated from the get-go. Upon entering the house to be evicted you’ll start feeling strange things going on around you while the atmosphere becomes more and more oppressive.

The first thing to grab the attention in DISTRAINT is its graphics. Everything is drawn by hand, with a meticulous attention to detail and a slightly cartoonish character design unlike what you’d typically see in a horror game. The game development should be more than familiar to anybody who’s ever laid their hands on a graphic adventure: you move from left to right through a 2D space and can interact with objects around the level. You’ll have an inventory of up to 3 objects and can use them to solve puzzles to keep moving forward through the story.

This game is the work of Jesse Makkonen, a proper one-man-army who’s done literally everything in DISTRAINT. This title is a port of the game of the same name available on Steam and there aren’t any notable differences between the versions. The only change is that now you’ve got a minimalist interface on the screen to control your character. In basically everything else it’s a perfect adaptation, a game that can be asphyxiating at times thanks to its darkness.

DISTRAINT brings back the tradition of games like Silent Hill where what matters is a good story and a powerful setting that confounds and perverts players’ minds. It doesn’t look for cheap scares – it goes in more for keeping you in a state of tension for the full two hours that the adventure lasts. A real experience.

DISTRAINT for Android on Uptodown [APK] | Download