It is not very often that we see video games tell a story through the second-person perspective. Where the narrative is experienced not directly through the protagonist or over their shoulder, but through that of another character. One that exists simultaneously alongside the protagonist in the world they inhabit. Out of Sight is one such game. A unique, single-player, puzzle horror title told through the eyes of a teddy bear and developed by The Gang and published by Starbreeze Studios. Yet in spite of the distinctness of the second-person perspective, what lies just out of sight is an uninteresting story trapped within a highly repetitive gameplay loop.

Out of Sight puts the player in the shoes of Sophie, a young girl who is blind and who has been kidnapped by an inhumanly tall and slender woman known as Mother Janna. On the night that Mother Janna plans to use Sophie for a nefarious ritual, Sophie miraculously regains her sight through the eyes of her beloved teddy bear (aptly named Teddy). With Teddy’s guidance and Sophie’s newfound vision, the pair must find a way out of the mansion before it is too late while evading their captors and uncovering the many dark and troubling secrets hidden deep within the mansion’s walls.

Not only is the game’s narrative frankly quite rudimentary, but it is also highly predictable, unimpressive, and a struggle to engage with. The story never delves any further than its most basic premise, and given that it is, at most, two hours long, it ends up leaving a lot more to be desired. This is a shame considering how much detail has been put by the developers into building strong character motivations, coupled with the impressive use of environmental storytelling to drive home the urgency of Sophie’s situation.

Sophie will find leg restraints bolted to the walls next to empty children’s shoes, discover stashes of lollies deep in crawl spaces where kids must have hidden from Janna, and encounter the ghostly figures of lost children that haunt the mansion. While all these little hidden details that can be found littered around the mansion highlight the stakes at play if Sophie does not escape in time, the player can just as easily miss them. And the lack of a compelling narrative does a disservice to the established themes and character-building that these tidbits of information create.

Despite Out of Sight’s lacklustre story, its gameplay is distinctively unique, seamlessly blending the first and second-person perspectives through exploration and puzzle-solving. But soon after you experience the shift in perspective for the first time, it becomes extremely repetitive and downright boring. I will note that as someone heavily prone to bouts of motion sickness, I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth the transition from first to second-person was each time. Not once did I have to take a break while playing to deal with any nausea or dizziness.

During exploration, Sophie holds Teddy in her arms to navigate the mansion in a pseudo-first-person perspective. Whenever she is holding Teddy, Sophie can lift him to peek over walls and navigate the mansion with the ease of depth perception. She can also crouch down and crawl under tables, or sneak around her pursuers and enter crawl spaces. As Sophie progresses through the mansion, she finds that her path is frequently blocked by obstacles, requiring that she place her beloved Teddy down to free up her arms. Teddy can only be put down on pink blankets scattered around the various rooms of the mansion, and when Sophie gently rests him down, the camera remains at his stationary position and we officially enter the second-person perspective. Allowing Sophie to climb up on chairs and benches, push obstacles, and collect levers and keys needed to progress.

The dependency on Teddy to proceed through the mansion adds an extra layer of dread when you must put him down. Without Teddy, Sophie does not stand a chance of escaping from Mother Janna. But as the only source of comfort in this horrifying situation, what would happen if someone took him and Sophie lost her only means of sight? How soon would Mother Janna find her alone, scared, and unable to see? It’s the same level of fear and panic we experienced as children when we misplaced or lost our favourite toys.

However, Out of Sight is not only considerably easy, but it is tediously slow as Sophie moves at a snail’s pace. Exploring the dark and dreary floors of the mansion becomes increasingly frustrating, and as a result, puzzles don’t take long to solve because of their difficulty, but because it takes far too long to move from one side of the room to the other.

Although the game features both stealth and chase sequences, the flow of movement is also wildly inconsistent, and as a consequence, these moments barely stick out. The tense anxiety that should be present when someone is right on your tail is instead replaced by the soulless grind of Sophie’s unfazed movement speed. Sophie will sometimes gain a sense of urgency and sprint down hallways during a chase sequence, but will quickly return to a leisurely walking speed the moment the threat is gone. Which feels even more juxtaposed with the fear and alarm that actor Lily Turnbull captures in Sophie’s voice. But when you’re going down the same-looking hallway after hallway for the umpteenth time at such a slow rate, with a voice in your ear begging you to run and get away, the lack of speed starts to wear you down and leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Out of Sight is deeply atmospheric and establishes a relentlessly oppressive tone through the use of dark, dusty, and dilapidated hallways. Helping urge the player to escape the mansion as quickly as they can. But the game’s greatest strength is its well-crafted audio design. Every step, creak, or bump in the night has a stress-provoking weight to it, building an atmosphere that makes it feel as though something may lurk behind the next corner. The halls of the mansion are eerily silent, and the absence of noise is only broken by Sophie confiding in Teddy, the threats that hunt her down, or the whispering of lost children lurking behind closed doors.

Out of Sight performs remarkably well on PC. On an RTX 3060, I was able to push the graphics settings to the max and still maintain a framerate that never dropped below 120. Notably, the graphics aren’t anything impressive, but they certainly aren’t bad either. There is a nice contrast between lights and darks, and while the character models may look quite uninteresting and bland, the use of lighting and shadows adds depth to make what little colour they wear stand out.