Blumhouse Productions is arguably the largest identify in Hollywood horror at present. The studio’s ubiquitous emblem seems earlier than what seems like each different theatrically-released horror film. It is clear the corporate has made the style its focus, and I like that. It means there’s all the time extra to sit up for, at the same time as outcomes certainly fluctuate. With Worry The Highlight, Blumhouse marks its debut in video video games, which equally excites me. Its video games may even certainly fluctuate in high quality, however this indie ghost story is a memorable debut, each for the burgeoning writer and the pair of builders who constructed it collectively.
Worry The Highlight stars Amy and Vivian, two high-school mates sneaking round faculty after-hours as quickly as the sport begins. Amy is dressed like a Sizzling Subject child, whereas Vivian seems bookish. It offers the pair the air of an odd couple, however exploring their friendship whereas issues go bump within the hallways helps introduce the story as they uncover a shady faculty historical past over the course of the sport’s preliminary three-to-four-hour marketing campaign.
Worry The Highlight makes use of a PS1-style aesthetic combined with fashionable touches like an over-the-shoulder perspective. In lots of moments, the sport additionally switches to point-and-click mechanics, principally every time the sport’s puzzles are being toyed with. It is each these puzzles and the sport’s scares that give Worry The Highlight its gateway-horror vibe, and I take pleasure in it for that even when I am now not within the audience. Although I like when video games are particularly terrifying, I additionally really feel like youthful or less-experienced horror followers deserve entertaining scares they’ll abdomen. Not each sport must be Outlast or Amnesia on the spooky scale.
Worry The Highlight is not very scary to me, however it could work nicely as an introduction to the style for the best participant. That is intentional on behalf of the 2 individuals who made the sport collectively, so it isn’t that Worry The Highlight falls in need of its objective. It units out to be a horror sport for teenagers most of all, and the high-school setting and characters work nicely to serve that viewers.
With no fight mechanics to talk of, that is extra of an adventure-horror sport than survival-horror. That is a subgenre that I’ve discovered through the years to be extraordinarily troublesome to drag off, as a horror sport with out a lot in the way in which of enemies or game-over screens can really feel prefer it lacks stakes–and thus scares, too. However Worry The Highlight works in a number of enemy interactions that play out in a hide-and-seek method. You may’t battle the monster on the coronary heart of this darkish story, so you will sneak beneath classroom desks, library carts, and lunch tables, avoiding its gaze as finest you may whereas typically fixing puzzles proper beneath its nose–figurative nostril, that’s.
Puzzles are a significant a part of the brief story and abide by traditional survival-horror tropes. Nothing is linear once you’re transferring via its world. Collapsed hallways are circumvented with instruments obtained via multi-step processes involving studying notes that present clues and tracing the steps of those that have been there earlier than you. You may discover bizarre locking mechanisms in doorways that require crests, or unusual dolls that have to be smashed in an order teased out by way of an odd poem close by.
For followers of traditional Resident Evil and Silent Hill video games, the puzzles in Worry The Concentration is going to really feel acquainted, although they’ve one high quality that separates them from these style forerunners: They’re all far more contained. Somewhat than discover, say, a big mansion or a foggy city, the place a puzzle merchandise you discover is definitely wanted many meters and maybe hours from then and there, the puzzles in Worry The Highlight are inclined to contain only some places considerably close to one another, like after they ask you to maneuver between two hallways and 4 lecture rooms whole. Simply because the scares are toned down for a horror-beginner viewers, the puzzles will not halt your progress for lengthy. In a way, they tutorialize the normal design ideas of horror-game puzzles.
My greatest problem with Worry The Highlight is its story. For a reasonably brief sport, it is making an attempt to do rather a lot directly, opening with what looks as if a bullying theme earlier than diverting down a really completely different path. All of the whereas, the sport is making an attempt to inform a extra private story between Vivian and Amy, too, however these items really feel like a stitched-together afterthought. It by no means will get the display screen time it ought to as a result of the sport spends most of its time obfuscating the reality behind its central ghost story. It presents a reality to the women’ relationship it intends to discover, however then by no means actually does that, making their endpoint collectively really feel unearned and glossed over.
This component is considerably improved upon within the sport’s epilogue. At about 2-3 hours, it is extra like a second marketing campaign that additional explores the occasions the women’ expertise throughout their in a single day keep at college. This marketing campaign is best designed, because it’s set in a single, creepy home with puzzles which can be a bit extra sophisticated, as if it builds on what the primary marketing campaign taught you even in case you’re a newbie to the style. It is also scarier due to a brand new enemy who’s tougher to keep away from, and all of it comes along with a extra sturdy, cohesive story than the first marketing campaign. It is solely unlocked once you beat the primary sport, so you will by no means see it first, however that makes it a stronger outro for Cozy Recreation Friends, the tiny studio making its debut with Worry The Highlight.
This marketing campaign occurs to be the majority of the work that the crew did within the final 12 months, after Worry The Highlight was pulled from Steam so the crew may improve it, presumably as a part of the publishing cope with Blumhouse. It winds up being a smart selection, as this second act is the sport’s higher, extra memorable one and even retroactively improves the primary marketing campaign in some methods. Collectively, they inform a extra full and compelling story, at the same time as this second marketing campaign does many of the heavy lifting.
Although I do not usually love a retro aesthetic, I’ve discovered I am far more into it in horror games–maybe that is my nostalgia talking–and Worry The Highlight stands out nicely on this manner. That is partly as a result of it isn’t completely devoted to the PS1 look it adopts. With tons extra voice appearing than true unique PlayStation video games and the over-the-shoulder presentation, it feels extra like a demake of a contemporary sport than one thing authentically capturing the period its sharply polygonal characters indicate. The varsity seems nice on this type, and it is clear the crew has performed and loved Silent Hill, as a few of its places look rusty and hollowed-out just like the Otherworld realm frequented in Konami’s trailblazing sequence.
Worry The Highlight is much from the scariest sport you could possibly play this Halloween season, however what could also be learn as a detriment for some is as a substitute its highest quality for others. With classically designed however extra contained puzzles and combat-free monster encounters, it is a sport that makes use of style touchstones in manners meant to onboard new and/or youthful gamers. Mechanically, it is easy, and the story does not come collectively till you’ve got unlocked and completed the second marketing campaign, however its mixture of outdated and new horror-game design components makes it a creepy and intelligent introduction to what’s my favourite style, and what might show to be yours, too.