October 2022 - Page 2 of 5 - Samantha Lienhard

Celebrating All Things Spooky: The Lost Night

Oct 242022

We cover all sorts of games during October that vaguely fall under the umbrella of “spooky,” but some games are perfectly suited for Halloween.

The Lost Night is an example, a short RPG that made me think I should have saved it for Halloween itself.

The basic idea is that you’re trying to find your way out of a spooky, Halloween-themed town filled with ghosts.

When a ghost attacks you, you fight in shoot ’em up style combat, dodging their projectiles while you shoot down miniature copies of the ghost to deal damage. Each type of ghost has its own movement pattern, which you’ll want to learn.

Combat rewards you with candy, which you can spend at vending machines scattered across the map to heal yourself and buy permanent stat upgrades. The ghosts get stronger as the game progresses, so those upgrades are definitely worthwhile.

Many obstacles block your path, and you’ll need to complete small tasks to proceed. For example, one NPC has lost a book, and will stand in your way until you find the book and it return it. In this way, it has you running back and forth across the map to unlock new areas.

Unfortunately, it starts to feel tedious after a while. Between the maze-like design of the town and the increasing difficulty of battles, I was tired by the time I reached the end even though it only takes a couple of hours to beat.

The Lost Night is cute, and I love its ideas. It also has a wonderful Halloween atmosphere that’s perfect for this time of year. It’s just a little too tedious for me to give it a wholehearted recommendation.

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Silent Hill News Extravaganza

Celebrating All Things Spooky, Video games 5 Responses » Tagged with: silent hill, survival horror

Oct 212022

What could be more fitting for Celebrating All Things Spooky than the revival of Silent Hill?

I was nervous going into the Silent Hill Transmission broadcast Wednesday evening, but now I’m cautiously optimistic.

Despite my skepticism about the numerous Silent Hill rumors that had been floating around, Konami really did announce multiple Silent Hill projects, the first of which had been widely rumored for a while: a Silent Hill 2 remake.

Silent Hill 2 remake

Silent Hill 2 will be remade by Bloober Team for PS5 and PC.

I’ve played most of Bloober Team’s horror games, and while they haven’t reached the heights of Silent Hill, it’s felt to me like they’ve been dying to make a Silent Hill game for a while now. Between that and the reports that they’re working closely with the original creators, I think the Silent Hill 2 remake has the potential to be amazing.

The trailer looks beautiful, except for James’s face.

I don’t know what it is. Something about his face just looks off to me. He doesn’t look like what I’d imagine James Sunderland in modern graphics would look like. Everything else looks great, so maybe I’ll get used to his face after a while.

Confirmed changes are an over-the-shoulder camera and a rebuilt combat system.

Personally, I’m hoping they keep the story completely intact without any changes and that the gameplay changes retain the atmosphere of the original.

A Silent Hill 2 remake would have been exciting enough on its own, but that was only the first of the projects announced.

Silent Hill: Townfall

The next game announced was Silent Hill: Townfall, developed by No Code and published by Annapurna Interactive. No Code developed Stories Untold and Observation (not to be confused with Bloober Team’s horror game Observer), both of which I enjoyed. I found some aspects of Observation to be tedious, but the way the story unfolded in Stories Untold has me intrigued to see what No Code might do with Silent Hill.

It’s hard to get a good read on what Townfall will be like, but fans have found the secret message “Whatever heart this town had has now stopped” hidden in the trailer.

From my experience with No Code’s previous games, I’d guess Townfall will be more of a narrative-focused game than survival horror, but we’ll see.

Now, Konami actually had even more announcements than those we’ll discuss here. They announced a new movie, new merchandise, and “a new interactive streaming series where the entire community shapes the canon of Silent Hill” called Silent Hill: Ascension, which sounds… interesting, but not like the sort of thing I’d enjoy.

So let’s jump ahead to the last big announcement, which closed out the showcase.

Silent Hill f

They ended by announcing Silent Hill f, a brand new Silent Hill game that some sites are describing as a spin-off but sounded to me like the next mainline title.

The trailer is creepy, but one thing stood out to me more than anything else: Ryukishi07 is the writer.

If you remember my review of the first chapter of Higurashi last year, you’ll know why I’m excited. Ryukishi07 is most famous for Higurashi and Umineko. Seeing his name attached to a major project like Silent Hill was a shock, but a welcome one.

We know very little about Silent Hill f right now, just that it’s set in 1960s Japan. I don’t know how a Silent Hill game set in a different country than the town of Silent Hill will work. I don’t know how, if at all, this will tie in with the rest of the series.

(I saw a couple theories that the flowers in the trailer could be tied to White Claudia and Aglaophotis, which would be an extremely cool way to tie them together.)

I’m also not sure what to make of it being developed by NeoBards, whose biggest claim to fame right now is having developed Resident Evil: Resistance and Resident Evil Re:Verse, but at least I have confidence that the story and atmosphere will be top-notch.

The designs are also being handled by Kera, who worked on NG, so that’s another positive.

So while I have a lot of questions about Silent Hill f, I’m definitely intrigued by it and much more optimistic than I was going into the broadcast.

How do you feel about the recent deluge of Silent Hill announcements? Has Silent Hill truly been revived?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: 5 Spooky Games You Can Beat in 15 Minutes or Less

Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games 10 Responses » Tagged with: adventure game, survival horror

Oct 192022

Instead of talking about a single game today, I want to take a look at five short ones.

And by short, I mean short.

Each game on this list can be finished in 15 minutes or less.

So let’s take a look at five bite-sized spooky games you can play in between longer titles!

Grime House

The sole traditional survival horror game on this list is Grime House, a horror game that appears to have been designed in Paint.

You have a top-down view and walk over items to use or interact with them, and you find a gun that lets you engage enemies in simple combat. Although the house you’re trapped in is small, it makes the most of its few environments to set up a classic survival horror gameplay loop of exploring and backtracking to gradually unlock more rooms.

The movement controls occasionally gave me trouble, but overall I had a lot of fun with this one.

10mg: Sealed Estate

Apparently there’s a whole collection of games out there called 10mg, or 10 minute games. One of these titles is a horror game called Sealed Estate. You become trapped inside a mysterious estate, being hunted by an unknown monster, and must find a way out.

The controls are very simple. You can walk and sometimes click things, and you eventually get a flashlight.

It feels more like a puzzle game than anything else, as you need to use your flashlight to get past obstacles (mainly creepy eyes), while scattered notes tell the story. Near the end, the mouse controls stopped working properly for me, which made it frustrating, but overall it was a decent atmospheric experience.

Prison of the Magi: Chapter 0

The next game I played was Prison of the Magi: Chapter 0. This one is a first-person adventure game with cosmic horror themes.

It makes good use of lighting, with a very pretty (although grayscale) visual style. There isn’t much to do in this chapter, though. You collect items, but I couldn’t find any way to do anything with them. Maybe they’re intended to be used in the full game.

Unfortunately, a good portion takes place in a maze. It was annoying, particularly since I managed to reset my progress a couple of times. I’m not sure how the save system works, since it seemed to me hitting the save button never showed any effect, but sometimes it saved and sometimes it didn’t.

According to the demo page for the full game, Prison of the Magi will be an open world horror game, so I don’t think this is one I’ll play.

Vampire Night Shift

On the lighter side of spookiness is Vampire Night Shift, a short game about a vampire working at a convenience store.

It’s designed to look like a Game Boy game, and you can even download a copy to play on a Game Boy emulator.

You walk around, talk to people, and complete simple tasks during your shift, like stocking shelves or helping customers. It’s a cute game. That’s the main appeal here. It’s just cute.

There Are Ghosts In These Stalls

Finally, I checked out a horror game shorter than any other on this list: There Are Ghosts In These Stalls, written for a two-minute horror game jam.

It took me slightly longer, closer to five minutes, but this is a tiny one nevertheless. You are in a haunted bathroom, and your goal is to focus on symbols in order to mark them on the inside of the stall.

Despite its extremely short length and simple premise, it has an unsettling atmosphere that made its ending so much more effective. It’s only a few minutes long, but it got me good in the end.

Conclusion

So if you’re looking for something shorter to play this Halloween season, these are a few you might want to keep in mind. I especially recommend Grime House and There Are Ghosts In These Stalls.

Meanwhile, we do not have Ace Attorney news to take an emergency break for (much to my disappointment), but we should end today with actual legitimate Silent Hill news thanks to a Silent Hill broadcast tonight. I am filled with fear.

And don’t forget that you can win a prize at the end of October just by leaving comments all month long, as explained in the Celebrating All Things Spooky contest rules here!

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