The devs found clever little ways to make gameplay out of retail work, like cleaning the trash and shelving tapes, and the interactions with customers were all spot on. The opening chapter, where you’re working a shift at the video store, was the strongest part of the game for me. And much like other Torture Star games, you can expect buckets full of gore and crude humor throughout. Throughout the two and a half hour runtime, you’ll work your way through five chapters, solving puzzles and escaping from the slasher known as Slaw. The action plays out from a first person perspective, starting with you covering a closing shift at Videos 2 Go and ending with a cat and mouse game against a psychotic killer. Like the other games from Torture Star Video, Puppet Combo’s publishing label, Rewind or Die is a grimy mix of PSX and VHS visual style, creating the video game version of a low budget slasher movie.

This is the feeling that Rewind or Die, the latest game published by Torture Star Video and developed by Comp-3 Interactive, is attempting to capture, even if it only tries for the first third of the game. You feel strangely exposed when someone comes knocking on your door after hours, still feeling obligated to respond to them but without the protections of the social norms of an active public space. There’s something about the liminal time where the store is no longer open, but you’ve still got stuff to do before you leave. Weird customers, understaffing, and repetitive work were all par for the course, but the worst part was the eerie feeling that would sometimes creep over you as you were closing. While it was fun to be around movies and movie fans all day, it did have all the pitfalls of any public facing customer service job.

When I was in high school, one of my first jobs was working at a big chain video store.

Nfl rewind review