Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Silver Falls Episode Prelude

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 062021
 

I first heard about the Silver Fall series when Silver Falls – 3 Down Stars was announced for the 3DS.

It looked fairly ambitious, and there weren’t a lot of 3DS games still being made. However, it was exclusive to the New Nintendo 3DS, so me and my original 3DS were out of luck.

So I was intrigued when I learned a new entry in the series was being made for the Switch, called Silver Falls Episode Prelude. I ended up winning it in a contest, so I decided to play it this October.

You play a deliveryman making a late-night delivery to a house that seems eerily abandoned, with notes that suggest something sinister has occurred. Episode Prelude is short, with its story mode taking under an hour to complete. Unfortunately, it’s also a little tedious.

The start of the game has the puzzle-solving elements of survival horror that I love. The house is locked and no one is answering, so you need to find a way inside by finding items to help you access other items, and so on.

However, this part of the game takes place in a wide open space with no threat, so it comes down to scouring the environment (first in the dark, then mercifully with a flashlight) for anything you can interact with. There is eventually a threat, although not as much of one as I expected for the number of items I was picking up.

The storyline in Episode Prelude is unclear, maybe because it’s a prelude. Aside from the ill-fated delivery, you spend some time talking to your boss, who is depressed about a vaguely-referenced incident, and later on you’re searching for him after a sudden transition.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I’d played the previous Silver Falls games, these characters and events might mean more to me.

What Silver Falls does do well is its atmosphere. Reading the notes in the first area to get a glimpse of the sinister events that unfolded there was one of the most interesting parts of the game, and there was a great moment later on where I looked up to see eerie green lights in the sky.

There’s also a battle mode, unlocked after you complete the story, which lets you fight waves of enemies. That might be a greater draw for some players.

Overall, Silver Falls Episode Prelude just wasn’t for me. It has some nice ideas, but it mainly just left me wondering if I’d enjoy the original game more.

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Devotion

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  7 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 042021
 

What better way to begin this year’s Celebrating All Things Spooky reviews than with a horror game I’ve been dying to play?

Devotion is a first-person psychological horror game from Red Candle Games, who previously developed a horror game called Detention. I loved Detention, so I was eagerly awaiting the launch of Devotion in 2019.

When it came out, I decided to wait until closer to October to buy it. That was a mistake.

Devotion was pulled from Steam after images were discovered making jokes about the president of China, and it looked like it was never coming back. (You can read about the incident here.) Last year, I woke up one day to the exciting news that Devotion was being re-released on GOG, only for GOG to backtrack within hours due to “many messages from gamers.”

(Because GOG has never sold controversial games, right?)

But this year, at last, Red Candle Games began selling Devotion on their own website, and I immediately bought a copy to play this October.

Now that we’ve gone through the history of Devotion, let’s talk about the game itself. Devotion takes place in an apartment complex in Taiwan. In fact, most of it takes place in a single apartment, with the main character visiting and revisiting the same location seen at different points in time.

(Ironically, given the controversy, its story is not nearly as political as Detention’s. It’s really a personal tale.)

Devotion makes great use of the trick where you enter an area and the environment behind you changes when you turn around or leave the room, and the early parts in particular have a dread-filled atmosphere and some well-placed jump scares.

As you get further into the game, it becomes more focused on the personal horror and tragedy surrounding the main character and his family. It’s less horror in terms of scaring the player, and more the horror of the story itself and what happened to the characters.

Early on, it is fairly linear, but the middle of the game opens up more with puzzles for you to solve by visiting the apartment at different points in time and taking items from one to another as you learn more about the family’s lives. I felt like the ending’s impact could have been stronger, but it was a good, disturbing journey to reach it.

I enjoyed Detention more overall, especially for its exploration and puzzles, but I appreciated Devotion and its haunting tale. I look forward to playing whatever Red Candle Games makes next.

Celebrating All Things Spooky 2021

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, My Games, My Stories, Video games, Writing  6 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , ,
Oct 012021
 

Happy October!

You know what that means, another month of spooky games in honor of Halloween, with 2021’s Celebrating All Things Spooky celebration! I’ve also got a few special promotions and announcements lined up this year.

Sales and Promotions

Once again, my horror novellas The Book at Dernier and It Came Back will be on sale for $0.99 for the entire month of October.

Not only that, but my comedy/horror novella The Zombie Mishap will be FREE this weekend to kick off the spooky season! You’ll have from October 2 at 3:00 AM ET to October 3 at 2:59 PM ET to pick up The Zombie Mishap for free.

Announcements

You might recall that I wrote the script for a short horror visual novel called Not It, which is available for free from itch.io.

Not It has been revamped with new backgrounds, CGs, voice acting, and more as Not It: Spookiest Edition! It will be available to purchase from Steam on October 12.

Contest

And now let’s discuss this year’s Celebrating All Things Spooky contest! The rules are slightly different than they were last year, so be sure to read them carefully.

This year, the available prizes are:

  • Not It: Spookiest Edition (gift sent through Steam)
  • Alien: Isolation (gift sent through Steam)
  • Silent Hill 4: The Room (gift sent through GOG)
  • Dead Age (Steam code)
  • Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location (Steam code)
  • Lakeview Cabin Collection (Steam code)
  • eBook copy of The Book at Dernier
  • eBook copy of It Came Back
  • $15 sent through PayPal
  • You pick a game for me to review!

If you choose the review option, your chosen game must be something I either own or is easily obtainable, which you can discuss with me beforehand. It must be a single game, not a collection (although the chosen game can be part of a collection). I will start playing it in November.

Rules:

  • No purchase is necessary.
  • Only comments made between October 1, 2021 at 12:01 AM ET and October 31, 2021 at 11:59 PM ET will be counted.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on a Celebrating All Things Spooky blog post = 1 point.
  • You must use an email address or website URL (or include another way of contacting you) in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
  • The person with the most points will get their first pick of the prizes. The person with the second most points will pick second, and so on, until all prizes have been given out.
  • The winner will be contacted by November 2, 2021.

You have between now and Halloween to leave comments, earn points, and win a fantastic prize! The month will be filled with spooky game reviews and content as usual. I hope you’ll participate!

Meanwhile, I’ve been debating about changing the name of the event in the future to better indicate its focus on dark, spooky, creepy, and/or Halloween-themed video games… but to what?

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