The Power of Remembering  

RE:CALL is a pixel art adventure visual novel that explores how memories can change the present. As a detective, you will embark on a journey to uncover crimes and secrets, meet people, transform scenarios, and completely alter reality through your own actions.

The game was developed by maitan69 and published by Whitethorn Games. The game's release takes place on January 17 and will be available for PC, Switch, and Xbox.



Stories from the past, possibilities for the future

A very strange crime has happened. A person dies, but she shouldn't have died, since she was alive during her own interrogation to find out why an ordinary person managed to infiltrate her secret base.

Yeah, I know... very confusing. But yes, this is how the narrative of RE:CALL will build. By reassembling pieces to reconstruct the past, you will give light to a completely new present, including for the characters.

Something or someone seems to give you these powers, but no one knows for sure what it is. Not even you.

By investigating the events and talking to the right people, you will discover elements to move forward with your investigation.

Through sequences of flashbacks, you will learn, in the past, secrets to open doors, unlock secrets, and even eliminate people in the present, without them even realizing it. The game will take you on a fun and curious journey back and forth in which the butterfly effect is the rule rather than the exception.

You will constantly experience major consequences of small combined actions, as if the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could cause a storm in Japan, or, in the game's case, how a pebble in a shed could cause the death of an important figure in a city. 



RE:CALL's narrative structure borrows heavily from the butterfly effect and asks the player to piece together their story from events that present themselves differently with each new choice, in loops that occur all the time.

Despite being built on repetition of choices and events, the game manages to be very light and fun, as the story hooks you and leaves you with a flea (or butterfly?!) behind your ear the whole time.

The story itself is not that deep, but no doubt its presentation is innovative and very immersive since the player will spend most of the time in the game intrigued by the possibilities that unfold all the time. 

Among the investigation games to which I had access recently, RE:CALL manages to be one of the most fun, because unlike games of the genre, which are more dark and dense, it is quite light, with charismatic and picturesque characters, with vibrant colors and a very interesting soundtrack, which contributes a lot to the immersion in the story.

I see the future repeating the past

Yes, you will be able to choose between leaving a guard dead or slightly wounded, all you have to do is remember, "Hm... What was that thing I had found on the ground, a weapon or a stone?" And in this way, you will experience fun gameplay with very enjoyable loops that move you forward in the story with each new replay. 

Do you know the password to that door? How about disguising yourself to enter the room and find out the password? Then you can go back in time and tell the guard the password correctly, without him ever knowing that you have been there in the past. 



There will be several comings and goings that will build up in your head several paths to follow in your investigation.

You will need a good memory since you will need to re:member (pun intended) the order and form of some events. Anyway, talking about the gameplay, as it was talking about the story of RE:CALL is a difficult task and will not do justice to the format of the game, so I highly recommend that you go on this journey to investigate and remember the how and why of everything.

The butterfly flaps its beautiful wings

Visually speaking, RE:CALL is a game very nice to look at. Despite having simple scenarios, with few visual elements and not always interactive, the game compensates with charismatic characters and a lot of personality.

The art reflects very well their personal profiles and gives us clearly how is the individual nature of each of them. For example, already in our first contact with Chester MakeBelieve, we realize that he is a weird guy, with a pimp footprint and that, for older people, reminds us a lot of Ruby Rhod, the eccentric character from the movie The 5th Element. 

We also have Dominik NewOrder, a super-blazé spy who is full of himself because he knows that his abilities are really remarkable. Besides them, we come across a sweet old lady, an introspective goth, a bully, a tough boxer, and a couple of super stuck-up rich kids. All of them win us over because they deliver super fun personalities.



Besides the visuals, the game has a very well-produced soundtrack. In addition to references to classic rock / gothic bands like The Cure, the game presents an arrangement that deepens the feeling that we are in an investigation beyond the paranormal.

At times we are presented with a softer soundtrack to focus on the narrative, at other times we are enveloped by music and effects that confuse us and throw us from here to there, as the game itself does. Allied with this, we have very nice sound effects, like the clicks when we pass the dialogs, the transition effects, shots, and so on.

The game gets it right in this point so I think it is very valid to emphasize that the sound direction and production team did a really amazing job! Congratulations to those involved.

We thank the team at Whitethorn Games for providing the Review code that made this content possible. For this review, RE:CALL was played on PC via the STEAM platform.