Lost Within Review

[Think you could use a little help with navigating through Lost Within's spooky halls? Check out our player's guide]

Survival horror seems to be enjoying a renaissance on iOS, and Lost Within is the latest of those examples. Is it scary? Not really. Even when you stick earphones in it probably won’t make you jump, but it is quite fun in an oddly unchallenging way.

You play a policeman who’s doing one last patrol of an abandoned asylum, before it’s torn down and demolished. Obviously, this all goes terribly wrong because, guess what? There are scary things afoot in there! It turns out some equally insane doctor performed awful tests on people there, and they’ve turned rather evil because of it.

Lost Within is a survival horror game though, not an action game - meaning you’ll mostly be running away from things or hiding. Lockers are your main source of hidey holes, allowing you to be secreted away from scary things. Except it’s mostly mildly tense rather than scary.

That doesn’t stop Lost Within from being quite interesting, though. Heavily focused on the narrative, you can collect pieces of paper and other bits and pieces which tell you what happened in the past. Some of these are quite cheery, others make you realize what a terrible place this really is. There are flashback sequences too, filling you in on the past and what that evil doctor did. It does a decent job of adding to the atmosphere, even if you won’t be too fearful. That also means you don't have to worry too much about the slightly inaccurate controls as speediness isn't essential. 

Despite the sense that it’s open-ended, Lost Within is actually quite linear, detracting somewhat from the exploration side of things. This is a game focused on telling a good story rather than allowing for flexibility, but it does that storytelling well.

As a taste of a more console or PC-esque gaming experience, Lost Within is the ideal antidote to far too many breezy freemium games. While it doesn’t always hit the spot, it is quite memorable.