Things Too Ugly immediately hooked me in last year when I saw a trailer for it; the creepy vibe, the promise of a mystery, and some retro-looking tech fit my personal tastes perfectly. Now I’ve played it, I’m happy to report it was just as enjoyable as I’d hoped, and comes highly recommended indeed.
We play as a new Risk Assessment Data Processor for TEREBRO INC. The company hires us to sort through a series of case documents and protect their reputation. The only guiding voice we have is the Supervisor, who tells us over the radio that the information we give him fills in the blanks on the report he has on his end. Other than that, no information (even real names) can be shared. It reminds me of the relationship with the radio in Firewatch; a voice on the end of a line that we have no choice but to trust, but should we?
It’s an effective set up, and after speaking with the Supervisor once, we’re left to our own devices. The first task is to sign in to work, with this pitched as a great tutorial of sorts to give us an idea of what we’ll be doing for the next few hours.

On the desk in front of us in a calendar with various notes on it, some information cards around the edges, and a handful of interactable things further back such as a GPS unit, case files, and a coffee mug. Some of these will be important later, others not so much. Logging in requires us to find three information points; User ID, Passcode, and Shift Code. And so we must pick up items, rotate them, and piece together information gathered in order to find these answers. Everything we need is in front of us, and paying close attention to the clues we have is the only way forward.
Once logged in, the cases follow the same pattern, albeit with two sets of entry data. Again, the clues and answers are all in the information packs we receive for each case, and they are very smartly crafted to tease us towards an answer rather than just spelling things out. One answer might be hidden in a photograph, while others require a little bit of logic to follow, and others still a bit of outside the box thinking. We do at least get a clue as to what we’re looking for at the top of the entry screen, though again finding the answer isn’t always straightforward.

Over about 90 minutes, I had a blast scouring clues and figuring out the inputs. Some of the answers can be brute forced with a bit of guesswork, but most of the time I found myself almost reaching for a notepad to jot stuff down so I didn’t forget. Once puzzle in case three had me fully stumped (I did have to ask Jeeves for a bit of help) but the rest felt perfectly balanced in terms of difficulty.
Two things to note though. Firstly, if you have a keyboard to use on Xbox, I’d highly recommend it. The answers we find have to be manually typed in to the fields and while the onscreen keyboard comes up regardless, I personally found it much easier to use a proper keyboard to type them up. This also means spelling is important, and the words we enter must be the exact answer. We have as many tries at a guess as we like though, so can always re-enter a word should the need arise.
Secondly, Things Too Ugly warns us at the start that this is a game that is intended for playing in one sitting. Indeed, the game cannot be saved and the one time I relied on quick resume it sent me back to the start. As I mentioned, I beat it in about 90 minutes but the official blurb reckons it could take several hours so be prepared to finish it once you start it.
Conclusion
All in all, Things Too Ugly is a short, fun detective mystery, with a well written story and brilliantly designed puzzles.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.