Torn Away – Review

Torn away is a throat provoking “adventure” game concentrating on a young girl called Asya who’s family is ripped apart by the German invasion of the Soviet Union during the early days of World War 2.

One minute she’s sat reminiscing over a family meal with her parents, the next, coming to terms with a distant mother and an even more distant father who’s away on the front lines.

The game starts in Asya’s bedroom, with her mother’s birthday approaching, you’ll need to collect crayons to create a nice picture for her, while chatting away to imaginary characters in a toy horse, doll and later a mitten.

This all combines to give Asya a very young, innocent and immature background as you point and click through a few rooms to complete various tasks preparing for your mother’s return home. Unfortunately, War has other ideas and before you know it, Asya is ripped from her home and out in the open. This is the point the game shifts from a pretty bland, slow and cumbersome point and click adventure to a side-scrolling platform adventure similar on style to Limbo or Inside.

With your good friend comrade Mitten for company, you’ll first chase a hare, then encounter a small hut, which reintroduces a few point and click instances, but nothing that really disturbs this new found flow.

As you progress through this second chapter, the game really starts to feel established, while the slow first chapter was painful, it’s helped to build a character we care about making the second chapter more engaging and the actual gameplay system has improved ten-fold. Progressing through the game, you’ll return to the point and click style of gameplay, but there’s only one other larger section in a German town and thanks to mixture of adventure and discover as you progress it doesn’t feel as jarring as the opening chapter.

As well as a few mini-games thrown into the point & click sections, another style we see introduced is a first-person system, it helps immerse you more into the atmosphere around you, but it maintains the relatively slow pace of the rest of the game, these sections where mostly well done, if a little simple, but I would have preferred to see them all as fleshed out as one in particular about the trenches towards the end of the game.

It’s a funny mix of styles and genres thrown into one, and while I feel starting with a more action orientated level would have given a much better first impression, it’s nice to see a game unafraid to take on a different approach and try to merge some vastly different gameplay styles.

As you continue through Asya’s journey, you’ll come across a variety of characters, some you’ll want to avoid, especially the majority of those in the side-scrolling sections, but during the point and click areas, you’ll want to take good notice of who and what is around you.
Thankfully there’s a helpful hint system which highlights interactive elements when you hold RT, but things are usually pretty clear anyway. If anything, I’d say this hint system detracts from the game as it becomes a habit but equally takes away any true exploration.

In any given scene there’s usually only a handful of interactive elements and you’ll nearly always need to visit each one to either collect something or perform a specific task, so at times it does feel a little paint-by-numbers, rather than challenging the player with required exploration and discovery.

Graphically there’s a unique oil-painting style which gives a comic-like presentation throughout, there’s a few little cut-scenes, which help to fill in backstory a little and everything maintains the same appearance throughout the discover, action and first-person sections.
Some interior locations are a little bland, but outdoor locations especially seem very well detailed and have enough lighting and background details to keep your eyes entertained.

Things could have definitely looked better, but I can appreciate the direction the developers were aiming for and they’ve mostly done a good job. My only real criticism is with Asya, while the story spans the timeframe of the second world war, Asya doesn’t seem to age at all for a few years, and then in the last few months the cut-scenes especially seem to portray her as a much older child, which is in stark contrast to the character you’ll resume control of only moments later.

Audio is a much stronger showing, while again it felt a little too quiet inside during the first chapter, especially outdoors, there’s much more atmospheric ambience and background sounds, with a specific mention of another great area, the voice-acting.
The Russian voice sounds deep, emotional and fitting with the game, so it’s no surprise this is recommended by the developers (as stated in the options menu), I still can’t work out why English is set as the default option, so it’s highly recommended you head into the game options and check out both Englis and original audio.
Thankfully however, regardless which you opt for the voice acting is very good but for me, while I don’t know a word of Russian, the original speech is definitely my preference, as long as you don’t mind keeping up with the subtitles, you’ll still always know what’s going off.

Part of this could be because of the generally slow pace of the game, but for something that almost feels like a visual novel at times, it’s worth heading in with the expectation you’ll have to keep up with a bit of chatter.

Looking at the control scheme, things obviously swap and change dependent on what style you’re currently playing, either way X remains the interact button, with Z jump and Y crouch. Controls mostly work pretty well, but I did encounter a few problems.
Firstly, during the side-scrolling sections, the overall control feels a little sluggish, this doesn’t work out in your favour when you have a handful of quick accurate jumps to make, and can lead to frustration when you drop into the water or pit below a few too many times.

Likewise, walking left to right, climbing similar looking poles and jumping over similar looking rocks doesn’t inject the most enthusiasm into gameplay, the intentionally slow pace, and often repetitive tasks give the game a more narrative feel at times and I would have liked to see a little more action integrated throughout.
Another area of frustration was during the point & click scenes, sometimes holding X and then making left-stick movements just didn’t respond well. Towards the end of the game, you’re in a town-house looking for the usual interactive elements to progress, and you come across a handful of books.
Youtube and PC guides informed me these books contained a key, crucial to progression, but I couldn’t move the books at all.
This frustration continued for well over half an hour and a short break away from the game eventually resulting in replaying the entire chapter, when I was then able to move the books with a very precise movement, which I’d already tried a dozen times.

There was another crucial issue that forced me to replay a chapter, when the game seemingly froze towards the end of the second chapter, this was however a known bug that was fixed by the developers soon after release, so it’s hopefully they might take a look at how well these controls work on a gamepad and make a few tweaks for us console players.

Either way, both of these issues where pretty obvious, just like the frustration with the platform mechanics using a controller, and really should have been picked up long before the game was released, but unfortunately, we see more and more PC games ported to console and full testing on that new system seems to only be a last-minute thought.

The above issues aside, the rest of the game performed pretty well, so if you go in expecting a few frustrating platform sections and maybe having to replay a section if things don’t “click”, then you can look forward to enjoying the rest of the game.

Lasting around 3-4 hours, Torn Away isn’t a big game representing average value at the £10 price-point. Even achievement hunters will find a guide, or a few replayed chapters should get them well on the way to 1000 Gamerscore, but throughout the game, even when the two issues forced me to step away from the game and eventually replay an entire chapter, I still wanted to return, I was invested and I wanted to reach the conclusion of Asya’s story.

It’s all thanks to the character building and overall story progression that still make it worth checking out.
It could have played better, it could have looked better, but when you take into account the sensitive subject and the thoughtful and emotional way it’s delivered, gamers will find Torn Away is a worthwhile, if frustrating venture into the innocence of children during war.

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