Reviews
[Review] ‘Sagebrush’ Takes a Haunting Look at the Aftermath of a Religious Cult
Cults, real or fictionalized, can make for a fascinating storytelling device. There’s the usually enigmatic leader, so assured of their special set of beliefs. Are they steely-focused on achieving a spiritual goal? Or is there a more sinister end product to their new religion? Then there are the personal tales of those who choose to follow. Are they just poor souls who lacked guidance and now have something meaningful? Or are they foolishly walking themselves straight into a slaughterhouse? Redact Games’ Sagebrush poses such questions and brings some intriguing answers.
While most video games involving cults tend to put you right in the mix and usually has you fight them (Far Cry 5, Resident Evil 4 etc) at the height of their powers, Sagebrush takes place in a cult compound after the demise of its flock. It’s a ghost story of sorts, if not in the traditional sense, and offers an interesting take on the cult of…well, cults.
You’re investigating the Black Sage Ranch, former home of the Perfect Heaven Millenial cult. Your job is to search this New Mexico desert ranch for clues about the lives of those in the cult before they took their lives in a mass-suicide years before.
This is a short narrative-driven adventure. There are some spoken parts where a follower recollects their memories of the people at the compound via tape recordings, but generally, Sagebrush is about reading the rooms and the notes, timetables, and reminders dotted about the compound. It’s not building to some great reveal or crazy twist, it’s just telling the diverse stories of why people chose to join a cult and ultimately sacrifice their lives for the cause.
You get to roam the entire compound as you investigate. You need to find keys and relevant information to access certain parts of it though, and that flows naturally through your discoveries for the most part. There is a map if you get lost, but on occasion, you’re likely to get lost trying to figure something out. The pace is fairly serene despite being a sub-2 hour game, but an obstacle to progress can make Sagebrush feel like a slog. Thankfully it’s a rare occurrence.
Sagebrush is presented in a low-fi, low-resolution, low-poly manner that is married to some modern conveniences. The low-fi visuals certainly don’t prevent Sagebrush from creating an effective atmosphere. It’s used in such a way that it perfectly replicates the hazy open quiet of an abandoned desert ranch. There’s just the right amount of detail to convey what the game wants you to see and it’s truly a credit to the developer’s vision that they got this balance right. The package is wrapped up nicely by the inclusion of a haunting ambient soundtrack that lilts away in the background, and good use of sound effects, be it creaking floorboards, squeaky doors, or the ambiance of the New Mexico wilds.
So Sagebrush certainly looks and sounds the part, but that’s only a relatively small part. Sagebrush is about storytelling first and foremost and it needs to succeed at that more than anything. Largely, Sagebrush does indeed spin a fascinating yarn. It’s mostly via the audio recordings that you get the meat of it, as the ranch itself is a tad sparse in terms of opportunities to help tell the story via the scenery, at least for the first half of the game anyway. Locations, while well realized, hold a loose connection with the letters and audio you pore over. They rarely feel like they give you enough visual insight beyond their emptiness.
Luckily the story told via words and sound is interesting and informative enough to make up for it. These tales of cult members and the reasons behind their choice to join Perfect Heaven are not all infatuation and brainwashing. People have a variety of reasons for joining, often they’re searching for meaning in their lives after a major setback, some are just disillusioned with religion and Perfect Heaven’s whole schtick of unpacking the lies of regular religion makes it an appealing alternative.
Not everyone is entirely happy or committed to the cause though. Throughout the game, you come across instances of rebellion and doubt, which is made all the more tragic when you consider these people still ultimately died for the cult despite this.
Sagebrush aims to look at the humanity behind the subject matter, and while it doesn’t always work as well as it could, it does reach dark and revelatory heights from an unexpected angle. Its slow pace should be its greatest strength, but there needed to be a touch more environmental storytelling to make the most of the wandering you do.
Review code provided by the publisher
Sagebrush is available on Steam now
With all the hullabaloo surrounding Kane Parsons’ big screen adaptation of/sequel to his Backrooms web-series, it’s easy to forget that the Backrooms phenomenon itself actually began years ago. Since 2019, countless creators have tried to leave their own unique mark on this memorable piece of collaborative fiction, with game developers being especially interested in exploring the architectural nightmare of the rooms in virtual environments.
However, now that this once-niche creepypasta has escaped the online bubble and permeated all of popular culture, several of these developers have decided to rework and rerelease some of their old titles in order to reach a new audience. Puppet Combo did this with their interpretation of The Backrooms last month (originally released in 2019 as Day Seven), and now Cortez Productions is doing the same with the console release of The Backrooms: Lost Tape.
However, Lost Tape is more than just a cleverly timed rerelease, with Vini Cortez having taken the time to completely overhaul the 2022 game’s graphics and transfer the project over to Unreal Engine 5.6 – complete with bug fixes, exclusive new content, and a brand new visual style that’s a little too impressive when compared to what the original version of the game was trying to do. In fact, I’d argue that this is more of a remake than anything else, though it’s still built over the skeleton of that original game.
In the updated title, which is presented as a found footage anthology where each “tape” tells a self-contained story, players initially take control of a movie theater usher named Josh as he no-clips into the titular Backrooms and tries to find his way out of a liminal labyrinth. The second (and final) tape follows Josh’s brother Nikolas as he attempts to track down the missing usher and ends up embarking on his own journey through infinite hallways and not-so-empty pools.
What follows is a highly atmospheric first-person walking simulator with the occasional light puzzle and a handful of thrilling chase sequences. While the liminal environment is obviously the star of the show here, the rooms are actually populated by monsters in this game, and our characters have plenty to say about the situation they find themselves in.
Unlike Parsons’ more introspective take on the Backrooms mythology, Cortez has decided to incorporate the multiple levels of the Backrooms wiki as well as several crossovers with the SCP “franchise”. While I personally don’t mind this inclusion due to the creepypasta’s collective origins, die-hard fans might be bothered by the fact that you can run into SCP-173 (affectionately referred to as Peanut by some fans) while wandering around the yellow hallways.
However, the real problem here is the fact that the game is simply presenting imagery and ideas made by other people without adding anything new to these familiar elements. There is an undeniable novelty to exploring these beautiful renditions of classic liminal environments, but Lost Tape offers little in the way of originality in both narrative and presentation. This extends to the unfortunate use of generative AI in some of the new textures and audio files – issues that weren’t present in the 2022 version of the title.
Though Cortez has promised that he’s working on bringing back the VHS filter that made the original experience so grungy and atmospheric, the glossy new visuals make the game feel a lot less scary while also consuming way more computing power than can be reasonably expected from an indie title. Sure, the game is pretty in a “tech-demo” sort of way, but there’s no reason for it to be hogging resources like a blockbuster AAA title.
This is made even more frustrating by the fact that this found footage anthology is technically still incomplete. The two existing tapes only scratch the surface of the setting’s narrative potential, and Cortez has announced that the next ones will only be available as (likely paid) DLC. Josh and Nikolas’ tapes are self-contained yarns that’ll each get you about a feature film’s worth of entertainment, though a lot of that runtime is taken up by very slowly walking from one point to another. But it’s a shame that there isn’t a concrete promise of more content to come.
At the end of the day, Backrooms: Lost Tape isn’t a bad game. Cortez really nails the liminal atmosphere and even breathes new life into tired SCP tropes, and the upcoming VHS filter will likely resolve most of my gripes with the revamped visuals. That being said, I find it hard to recommend a project that took a completely functional experience and spoiled it with AI-generated assets and poorly-optimized “upgrades” that no one was really asking for – especially since it doesn’t give existing owners the chance to roll back to a previous version of the game.
So, if you’re looking for more Backrooms-related thrills after enjoying the A24 adaptation, Lost Tape isn’t necessarily a bad place to start, but there are certainly better and more original options out there.
Backrooms: Lost Tape is available now on Steam and PS5.
You must be logged in to post a comment.