When I started randomly picking free games to review, I didn't think I would so quickly stumble upon a 400mb award winner! Here is Rueckblende!


In Rueckblende you see the world through the eyes of a man visiting his old summer home. It has long since become dilapidated and overrun with vegetation, but he is confronted, and perhaps haunted, by his childhood memories.

Artistically, the game (in actuality it is really an interactive movie) is absolutely stunning. The house and surrounding landscape seems to have been painstakingly hand crafted and filmed with a video camera. The characters seem to have been beautifully hand drawn and animated before being scanned into the game. And unlike many art house games (The Mondo series draws to mind!) it doesn't rely on abstract imagery to be unique.


Rueckblende plays somewhat like Myst - moving your mouse over the different directional arrows will smoothly walk you through the game world with an FMV, and clicking on visual cues will start an animated cut scene.

There is no challenge to the gameplay and every aspect of the game can be explored within the space of a few minutes, however that isn't the focus here.


I was expecting Rueckblende to be a whimsical heart string puller, yet I felt a wide range of emotions while playing it. Pangs of nostalgia, joy, fear, sadness, sorrow and anger all effected me at different parts of the game.

The longevity and replay value is near nil. However, if you have the bandwidth spare to download it, and you're not afraid of a game that doesn't have violence, then Rueckblende is a fantastic and memorable experience. 9/10

The official site is here