Fatherhood | PC Demo Review
I was late to the game playing Inside, but I loved my time with it. I loved the stealth aspect of some sections, the puzzle-esque solutions to some of the obstacles, and finally the wild ending.
We were offered the chance to review Fatherhood, and the Inside-esque playstyle immediately grabbed my attention. Then I read that it was a very personal account of a war experience, which raised the stakes. I really wanted to try it out!
Survival Through a Father’s Eyes
In a city currently being torn apart by war, you play a father who must survive while guiding your blindfolded daughter through the terrors around you. Machine gun fire is constant, often in the background, occasionally nearby, sometimes directed at you or other townsfolk who are trying to simply survive and escape to safety.
It is tragic, tense, and horrifyingly sad. Sometimes, the terrorist bad-guys show up and start mowing down civilians with machine guns. Some of those civilians are children. Fatherhood does not take it easy on us.
Simple Actions, Impossible Choices
The game is controlled using a keyboard with standard WASD movement. Some other keys are used to crouch, hug your daughter, and interact with the environment. Opening doors, picking up planks of wood to create a makeshift bridge, and sprinting are other actions that are required to make it through the demo.
In the demo, the puzzles are pretty simple. The way forward might be blocked by a locked door, so I search for a key. I could not get myself and my daughter over a wall, so I had to leave her somewhere while I trekked forward and found a way around so that I could retrieve her and keep moving forward together.
Those decisions, while simple in the game, are heart-wrenchingly difficult if you allow yourself to be immersed in the atmosphere of Fatherhood. Your daughter is pleading that you don’t leave her alone, gunfire continues to rattle in the background, and to top it off, we had just finished sneaking through a minefield. I stepped on a mine a couple of times, it’s horrible. I’ll talk more about that later. Could I leave my daughter alone if we were in the middle of a warzone? I suppose if I felt we were momentarily safe enough and we needed to find a way forward, I would. The realism of the game raised my heart rate.
An Unforgiving Soundscape
Graphically, Fatherhood is very reminiscent of Inside. Nondescript characters other than male, male with beard, or child are about as specific as we get. Crisp backgrounds in shades of desert-brown strongly imply a Middle Eastern landscape. While it’s nothing special, the graphics support the environment that the developers were hoping for. It is successful; I found zero fault in the graphics themselves.
One aspect that I didn’t like was in, for lack of a better term, a side-quest. A dad was trying to dig his child out from the rubble and needed a shovel. This was during the time when I left my daughter alone to find a new path for us. I didn’t want to endanger my own daughter, so I chose not to search for a shovel. But, talking with that character triggered a timer for this side-quest. When that timer was about to run out, the screen went a shade of red that made it very difficult to play for several long seconds. Let’s say, for a moment, that I was trying to finish this side-quest. I would have had a VERY difficult time finishing it due to this shading which made the screen nearly unviewable.
Play this game with headphones on. The sound design shook me. As I type these words, I have goosebumps on my arms. The constant gunfire is unnerving. That minefield scene that I mentioned earlier? It is tense enough in general, without sound. When you step on the mine, the explosion is so sharp and intense that it made me jump in my seat. I failed that sequence more than once. Every explosion made me jump exactly the same. I actually had to walk away from the game to calm down to make it through that scene. The sound is that good.
Final Thoughts – Fatherhood Demo
I will play this game when it comes out. The developers wanted others to have this experience. In my sheltered life, I feel like I should experience it. The demo is still sticking with me, so I am a little nervous about the game as a whole. A multi-hour excursion into the terror of war and the stress of trying to keep a child alive is something I don’t anticipate being able to get through in one sitting. But, I am going to finish it one way or another.
I’ll be frank, Fatherhood likely isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Some might not appreciate being emotionally impacted or triggered in the ways that this game does. The stakes are high (perhaps too high?). Its representation of the realities of war and terrorism will linger with me for a long time, even in demo form. The full version will be one of my most anticipated games of 2026.
To hear me talk more about Fatherhood, be sure to listen to the January 7th, 2026 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 28:39 time stamp.
This review is based on an advance demo copy of Fatherhood provided by Persis Play for coverage purposes. As of this writing, the demo is only available on that platform.
