Rearview Mirror early access launch now behind us on PC

Visual novel-styled “claustrophobic thriller” set inside a car available now for download on Steam

You can learn a lot by eavesdropping, however unintentionally, but sometimes you may hear things you don’t want to know. It’ll be up to players to decide what to do with the uncomfortable, potentially compromising information acquired from backseat passengers in Cubus games’ newly released narrative Adventure, Rearview Mirror.

Salvatore Marino got caught up with the mob in his youth and was eventually imprisoned for his refusal to rat out his colleagues. Having now served his time but destroying his family in the process, Salvatore is middle-aged and intent on living the rest of his life on the straight and narrow in the hopes of restoring his broken relationships with his wife and daughter. Easier said than done, however, as “nobody wants to hire an ex-con” except for his former criminal associates. Initially reluctant, Salvatore relents when they convince him that he only needs to “drive the car, pick people up, take them from one place to the next.” The problem is that his passengers turn out to be “involved in dirty business” and a “mysterious woman will try to tempt him to convert his road trip into a descent into the underworld.” To settle the matter, you must make important decisions on Salvatore’s behalf about what to do with his second chance to turn his life around.

Not unlike 2019’s Night Call, Rearview Mirror is a stylish hand-drawn visual novel set almost entirely inside a car, offering plenty of dialogue and key player choices to drive the story forward. Here, however, there’s no resource management to pay for your ride, instead placing the focus entirely on your interactions with those you’re transporting through the “mean streets of a corrupt, hostile and dangerous world.” Described as a “claustrophobic thriller with a hint of horror,” the game tasks you with choosing how the protagonist should conduct himself, wrestling with the potential consequences of each. Should he continue to pursue the long and narrow path of redemption, or should he give into temptation, in the process becoming complicit in acts of “political corruption, robbery, violence, threats, prostitution, sexual abuse, murder” and more? Is it even possible to put a life of bad decisions behind you forever, and if so, what will it cost to truly escape?

There are weighty questions that will need serious soul-searching to answer, and you can start contemplating right away as the first three of twelve planned episodes of Rearview Mirror are available now on Steam for Windows and Mac via early access, with complete version expected by the end of March.