Title: Looking Up I See Only a Ceiling
Developer: Silver978
Publisher: Flynn’s Arcade
Release Date: February 29 2024
Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch

Introduction

Looking Up I See Only a Ceiling is a psychological horror visual novel adventure that originally came out on Steam.

Synopsis

Live in the shoes of a female student as she roams around through areas of her living space and perhaps her own mind as it fades in and out of the overlapping settings.

Analysis

You take control of a somewhat stressed female student through her house and interact with various items and locations. By doing so you change the course of the story based on decisions you make and the things in which you may or may not interact with. Dig deeper to see where the story takes you.

The gameplay 

Upon entering your establishment, you see areas and items in which you can interact with. Like most point and click visual novels there is plenty of reading involved to get some backstory to the character, her situation, and what may be going through her mind. The further you explore the odder occurrences befall you. This brings about a shift within the story to establish what is reality, and what may be a hallucination, a dream, or perhaps paranormal. How you approach certain scenarios brings about different outcomes. 

Basic tasks like exploring your room, traversing the bathroom, or making some food in the kitchen bring about the story and create a foundation to the story. You will slowly start to see and feel things within the game. A strange person starts to make an appearance as well as a dark entity that starts to plague the main character. How will this play out?

As you progress you will walk through your familiar corridors, but it becomes dark and full of books. You encounter the strange person whom you have seen lurking from afar. As he talks to you the already strange world becomes darker and unstable. Could this person be a physical representation of the main characters conscious?

As you encounter these oddities and your surroundings shift in and out of reality, you can only look up to reach the surface. What happens then?

Final Score:

Looking Up I See Only a Ceiling: This game is a very short and obscure title that mashes reality with one person’s thoughts within their mind and blends them into a psychological head trip.

Exploring and finding back story as well as useful items to explore further brings a bit more substance to this visual novel, which lends to a stronger push on the players end to discover what may be happening.

I enjoyed the short bursts of this game which will keep most players engaged and finish at least one playthrough. I feel if it was too long that some people may be more hesitant to complete. I do think that more backstory to what was going on would have benefited the player, but I can also see this leave the story open for interpretation.

When depression hits us, we feel we are drowning, and we look up for an escape route or hope. I believe the game title could refer to looking for that hope or that escape hatch so that we do not drown ourselves in that depression. When you find that hatch you can move forward from that fog and see above it. This of course is all speculation and I want to see your take on it when you play this game.

Sometimes the darkest moments in our lives do not come from the setting of the sun, forces of nature, or other people, but from our own thoughts festering within our own head that becomes a prison that we must fight to survive in. We search for hope and when we find it, we light the beacon to bring others closer to hope. Be a light in the darkness my friends.

Shane Kelley is a Senior writer for Boss Rush Network, as well as a writer for Another Zelda Podcast. His favorite game is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You can find him on Twitter to talk video games, Marvel, and axe throwing.

Sources: Taken by Author