While there is a numerous amount of horror themed adventure games made on RPG Maker, I’ve never been fond of them usually. There have been some good examples here and there, but more often than not these games leaned too hard either in pure tasteless jumpscare territory or were simply too poorly written, relying on shock value or extreme themes. Due to that, I had no knowledge of Ib when it became an extremely popular free game back in the early 2010s and would have not paid attention to this 2022 updated (and no longer free) remake, if not for catching a few streams and videos on it. I am glad, however, that other people promoted this little gem and that I got to experience it for myself.
Ib is a short horror themed adventure about a little girl who finds herself in a strange world where paintings come to life. And as it often happens with these RPG Maker based titles, it avoids the combat completely, instead focusing on avoiding enemies and traps and solving problems and puzzles. There are no special mechanics like stealth here, nor are the puzzles usually hard, so the game focuses mostly on just delivering a good story driven experience with lots of small and huge variations depending on how you play. Nicely enough, despite having quite a few different endings, the game isn’t really focused on this aspect as well and as far as “unlocks” go, you only need to get a few of them, with the rest of endings only existing to provide an interesting reaction to your choices through the game and occasionally learn some little additional thing about the characters.
Despite being a horror story and having some genuinely creepy ideas, the overall atmosphere of the game is more reminiscent of a darker folk tale or something one might expect from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Which works really well and completely avoids the typical for these games issue of going for the gore or overdone tropes. Most of the puzzles in the game, I’d even say all of the ones in the main playthrough, are really fun too. While the extended playthrough, that is available upon replays, has some weaker moments, it’s still really fun. The visuals and the music are also really nice and the simplicity of style works really well for the game.
I really enjoyed playing the game and my only real complaint is that due to the engine choice and overall style, the game runs in a rather small resolution by today’s standards and can become less comfortable to run in the future as resolutions increase. But it’s a rather minor thing and I could easily recommend anyone who likes horror themed adventure games to check Ib remake from 2022 out.