The Coma: Recut

The Coma: Recut is interesting in concept, but flawed in its execution. Mixing survival horror with stealth and visual novel elements provides a unique side-scrolling experience. While the anime art style and slow pace might detract from the horror, along with the main mechanic becoming repetitive instead of scary, there is still enough narrative content to get invested in the twisted tale of Sehwa High.

Time slows down in every hallway, but the overall experience is fairly short and can be completed in a handful of gameplay sessions. The main story doesn't overstay its welcome, but its conclusion, including the “true ending”, leaves something to be desired. Don't let that sour you, though. The Coma: Recut is a fairly solid experience and is a fun edition for a survival-horror fan's collection.

Ultimately, The Coma: Recut’s biggest problem might be that it is a bit too simple in design and maybe having a few other gameplay elements would have pushed it a level higher. But in the end, I never expected to like it as much as I did and I thoroughly enjoyed my five or so hour playthrough. With a sequel teased, I’m eagerly awaiting what is to come because they have a base already there to make something truly wonderful.

With some minor tweaks, The Coma: Recut could have been a masterpiece, but, as it stands, it's just a fun horror title for those that can overlook its flaws.

A lovely 2D horror adventure that falters in a few aspects but is still worth playing.

The Coma: Uncut is a good game with some jump scares and a creepy atmosphere, and I like it overall, but having to be exactly centered over any given icon to activate the action really puts a damper on the experience.

The Coma doesn't outstay its welcome, and tells its story over five or so hours. Sadly it's just not frightening enough.

You know – Back when we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do, we had this little thing on YouTube called ‘Reviews Done Quick’ – At its best it was a 60-90 second take on a video game aimed at helping people know what they needed to know without wasting their time. At its worst – It was selfish excuse to not write 18 paragraphs describing our reactions and impressions to a video game 🙂 The jokes on us, it took way longer to edit those videos than writing 18 paragraphs lol. But due to my lack of time this holiday season, I thought you know what really need the “RDQ” treatment? Our ACTUAL written reviews. So with that intro, please let me provide to you my “Review Done Quick” attempt using one of my favorite indie releases on Nintendo Switch – The Coma Recut.

Despite a reasonably strong sense of style in the art and audio departments The Coma: Recut simply doesn’t do enough over its few hours of play time to clearly make it worth your time. There will, no doubt, be people who find that it delivers that little dose of adrenaline they need, and that the characters and story are just interesting enough to redeem the generally mundane exploration, but for me it mostly it bordered on being tedious. If you can become invested quickly in the characters and limited story it may keep your attention but otherwise Recut simply fails to inspire.

Overall, I found The Coma: Recut to be an interesting but flawed game. The concept is fantastic but I think the gameplay is a little too on the unpolished side, odd considering this is supposed to be a polished remaster. The fantastic premise of being stalked in a malevolent high school is slightly squandered by unbalanced gameplay elements and the quick unveiling of how random and how too frequent the killer’s appearance is. It can become a chore to play at times and they really should have focused much more on building the tension of when the killer could appear, rather than them constantly turning up. I don’t claim to be any kind of game developer, but I think Devespresso Games should take this feedback and produce a more balanced and polished sequel that could actually be something a little special. As it is, The Coma: Recut is just too rough around the edges to recommend. It does have it’s good points, but it also has far too many flaws for it’s own good.