Between These Two does not exactly ease you in gently.
You wake up inside a house, head downstairs, and then a storm rolls in. Nothing too strange there.
Except the storm appears to be happening inside the house too. A graphical glitch or an intended consequence of the strange things to come? Only the developer, Mihai Calarasanu, will know the answer to that one.
Then there is a giant eye outside.
Naturally, because horror game protagonists are notoriously gifted when it comes to self-preservation, you go and investigate it. A strange being appears, says some words, everything cuts to black, and suddenly you are waking up inside a dungeon with absolutely no idea how you got there, who the hell you are, or what any of this has to do with the house you were standing in a few moments earlier.
Confused?
Good.
So was I.
And unfortunately, Between These Two spends its opening stretch doing very little to clear any of that up.
The opening nearly lost me
Once you escape your cell, you grab a torch and head along a corridor before encountering something that is very clearly not interested in becoming friends.
It touches you.
You die.
Back you go.
Only now, when you turn around, the corridor has changed.
That is where the game starts showing some of its better ideas. Rooms shift, routes change, and the world feels like it is actively messing with you rather than simply waiting to be explored.
Before long, I ended up in a large room filled with lava and realised that Between These Two is probably better described as a puzzle adventure wearing horror clothing than a horror game built around puzzles.
And that is not necessarily a criticism.
There are eerie creatures, strange worlds and plenty of atmosphere, but the bulk of your time is spent trying to work out how the hell to get from wherever you currently are to wherever the game wants you to go next.
The bigger problem was that some of those early challenges had me fighting the controls as much as the puzzles.
Jumping became the real monster
I hated jumping in this game.
There. Said it.
Maybe there is some perfect rhythm to it that my hands simply refused to discover, but I repeatedly found myself either coming up short or sailing far beyond where I actually wanted to land.
I could seemingly approach the same jump in the same way several times and end up with different results.
Which becomes particularly irritating when the punishment is death.
It got to the point where seeing another platforming section did not fill me with dread because of the atmosphere.
I just thought, “Oh for fuck’s sake, not another jump”.
Then came the traps.
Spinning blades. Swinging axes. The usual ancient-dungeon workplace hazards.
Except I would sometimes be looking directly at the trap, convinced I was safely clear of it, only to take damage anyway.
Those hitboxes did not always feel particularly trustworthy, and when a game is asking you to time movements around deadly objects, you really need to believe what you are seeing on screen.
At this point, I actually stopped playing.
Sometimes walking away is the best thing you can do
I was ready to write Between These Two off.
The beginning had been confusing, the jumping was doing my head in, and getting clobbered by traps I thought I had avoided was slowly draining whatever patience I had left.
But that would not have been particularly fair.
I do not have to like every game I play. That is kind of the whole point of reviewing things honestly. But if I am going to criticise something, I at least want to feel like I have properly given it a chance.
So I came back.
And I am glad I did.
Because oddly enough, the further I got into Between These Two, the more I started enjoying myself.
Once it settles down, there is a decent puzzle game hiding underneath
Between These Two gradually starts opening up once you make it through those rougher opening sections.
You begin unlocking new ways to interact with the world, including some very basic combat that is used far more for keeping yourself alive than turning you into some monster-slaying machine.
That was a good decision.
Between These Two works better when you feel vulnerable, and throwing an arsenal at you would have completely changed the tone. Being given just enough to defend yourself keeps the focus on exploration and puzzles rather than suddenly transforming everything into an action game halfway through.
And the puzzles are ultimately what kept me interested.
There are plenty of them scattered throughout the journey, with clues often hidden somewhere nearby if you take the time to actually look around rather than charging forwards.
Some are straightforward.
Others take a bit more thought.
And occasionally you get that lovely puzzle-game moment where something finally clicks and you wonder how you somehow missed the answer sitting in front of you for the past ten minutes.
That is the sort of thing I enjoy.
Autosaves prevent frustration becoming fury
Thankfully, Between These Two also understands that repeatedly killing you and then sending you back half an hour would be a brilliant way to make people uninstall it.
The autosave system is fairly generous.
Die to an enemy?
Fail a trap?
Misjudge another bloody jump?
You are normally brought back close enough that repeating things does not become too painful.
That sounds like a small thing, but with some of the frustrations I had with movement and hit detection, it probably saved the game for me more than once.
Having to replay lengthy puzzle sequences every time I got clipped by something would have turned irritation into outright hatred very quickly.
The story eventually gives you something to grab onto
The narrative improves as you progress too. Although I still wanted more explanation around that opening.
Who exactly are we?
What was happening in the house?
What triggered all this?
Why is there a giant eye outside like this is a perfectly reasonable Tuesday afternoon?
Some of those early questions remain deliberately murky, and while mystery is obviously part of what Between These Two is going for, there is a difference between intrigue and simply leaving the player confused.
A little more grounding at the beginning would have helped enormously.
Once you get deeper into things, though, the world starts giving you more to work with. You uncover more about what is happening around you, the environments become more interesting, and the game starts feeling less like a random collection of hostile rooms and more like an actual journey.
That change made a huge difference for me.
It really is a game of two parts
That is the weird thing about Between These Two.
If I had reviewed it based purely on my first session, this would probably be heading straight towards Keep it covered.
I was not having fun.
The controls frustrated me.
The story had given me almost nothing to latch onto.
And the thought of another badly judged jump was enough to make me consider doing something productive with my evening instead.
But by the end?
I was enjoying it.
Not loving every second, certainly, but enjoying the puzzles, appreciating how the game gradually expands its mechanics, and becoming much more interested in seeing where everything was heading.
It rewards patience.
The problem is that it demands quite a lot of it before showing you why that patience was worthwhile.
Final thoughts on Between These Two
Between These Two is one of the harder games to slap one of our labels onto because my feelings changed so much while playing it.
The opening is rough.
Really rough in places.
The lack of explanation makes the story difficult to invest in early on, the jumping can be frustrating, and some questionable hit detection made certain trap sections feel harder than they needed to be.
I very nearly gave up.
But I did not.
And once I pushed beyond that first stretch, things improved significantly. The puzzles became more interesting, the world started opening up, new mechanics gave the gameplay more variety, and I finally began enjoying the strange little journey I had been dropped into.
So this one comes with a fairly large caveat.
If you are someone who gives a game half an hour to grab you before moving on, Between These Two probably will not survive the test.
If you are willing to persevere through its shaky opening, however, there is a decent atmospheric puzzle adventure waiting on the other side.
It spends its opening feeling a bit rough with the lights on.
But stick around long enough, and Between These Two just about becomes worth exposing yourself to.
Between These Two is developed and published by Mihai Calarasanu, and was released for PC via Steam on July 17th, 2026. If you want to check out more of our game reviews, then click right here.
