Loretta is a sun-bleached, small-town noir where a housewife turns crime author of her own life — intimate, poisonous, and quietly devastating.
Why It Matters
Loretta swaps supernatural thrills for human rot. Set in 1940s rural America, it places you inside a failing marriage, a foreclosed farmhouse, and a woman squeezed by poverty and expectation.
What begins as weary domestic drama tilts into conspiracy and crime, with you deciding how far Loretta slides — resentment to betrayal, fraud to murder. The real draw is inhabiting her interior monologue: prickly, persuasive, sometimes unreliable.
Dialogue, painterly panels, and sparse sound design braid into a suffocating mood piece that asks not “who did it” but “how did we get here — and how much of this did you choose?” If you like the moral pressure-cooker of slow-burn noirs and character-first thrillers, Loretta hits with grim precision.
Core Experience
Domestic noir as gameplay
You navigate conversations, inspect keepsakes, and stitch timelines through choice-driven scenes. There’s no stat grind; tension comes from what you say and what you let slide. Each pause or needle-prick line can tilt a relationship — or a body — over the edge.
Unreliable intimacy
Loretta’s voice frames events with wounded pride and razor sarcasm. The game lets you amplify or soften her narrative, letting guilt, ambition, or survival colour the same facts, which reframes your sense of “truth” scene by scene.
Pulp painted in dust and nicotine
Art direction channels paperback covers: sun-faded palettes, stark silhouettes, wet reds against farmhouse browns. Panel cuts, freeze-frames, and close-ups create a film-still cadence, making small gestures feel lethal.
Sound that tightens the noose
Sparse music, creaking floors, and a radio’s thin varnish of civility build a constant hum of dread. When the score swells, it’s surgical — like breath held too long. Headphones deepen the slow suffocation.
Choices with teeth, not branches for show
Options steer tone (meek, manipulative, vengeful) and action (conceal, confront, escalate). Outcomes arrive both immediately (a slap of consequence) and later as narrative shading — who trusts you, which lies calcify, how the ending curdles.
Pacing and length
Loretta runs like a tight novella: dense enough to feel complete, concise enough to invite a second pass. Replays aren’t about collecting endings so much as reinterpreting motive and culpability.
Ideal For
- Players who savour character-driven thrillers and moral ambiguity
- Fans of narrative choices that bruise more than they boast
- Anyone who prefers tension over jump scares and psychology over puzzles
Platforms
- PC (Steam, GOG)
- Steam Deck (plays comfortably: text-first, light input)
- Consoles/mobile: check official listings for current availability
Price
Loretta has a modest base price with frequent seasonal discounts. It is not broadly included in major subscription libraries (such as Game Pass or PlayStation Plus) at last check, so watch storefront promos for sales.
IBBOB Score (1–10)
8.8 / 10