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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?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Death Mark

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
Oct 312020
 

Happy Halloween!

It’s time for a special Halloween Celebrating All Things Spooky review with a look at Spirit Hunter: Death Mark.

(That link goes to the Switch version, but it’s also available for PC, PS4, and Vita.)

Death Mark puts you in the shoes of a man with amnesia who has a strange mark on his arm… a mark that he learns heralds the bearer’s upcoming death due to being cursed by a spirit. He soon joins forces with other Mark Bearers to track down and defeat the spirits that cursed them.

It is a combination of a visual novel and an adventure game, and in some way it reminds me of Ace Attorney – if Ace Attorney had battles against deadly spirits instead of trials.

In each chapter, you investigate a haunted location with a partner. You usually get to choose your partner from 2 or 3 characters, and different characters have different skills or knowledge that can come in handy. You search locations for clues and items that can help you proceed.

Occasionally you’re placed in a deadly situation where you need to use the knowledge you’ve obtained to choose the correct answers and survive.

Then there are the battles against the spirits, in which you and your partner must use items on each turn. Once again, you’ll need to have paid attention to the clues along the way to know which items to use to survive (and which to use for the best outcome, which involves putting the spirit to rest instead of destroying it).

The story is pretty interesting, and each chapter has its own dark story as you learn about the spirit. Aside from those narrative horror aspects, Death Mark also does a great job with little unsettling touches as you explore, such as having a ghost visible while you pan your flashlight over a certain area yet disappear when you look again.

Navigating between areas was a little odd at times, but overall I found Spirit Hunter: Death Mark to be an enjoyable game and a great way to end this year’s spooky season. So if you enjoy this sort of game, be sure to check out Death Mark!

(I’m not entirely done with spooky games yet for the year, though, because I have Bloodborne in progress.)

I’ll be looking forward to playing the second game in the series at some point as well. That’s it for Celebrating All Things Spooky 2020! You have the rest of today to leave comments for the contest and get my horror novellas on sale, and stay tuned for the upcoming announcement of the contest winners.

Happy Halloween!

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Never Apart

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  No Responses »
Oct 302020
 

Never Apart is a free horror game recommended to me by a friend as being Silent Hill 4 by way of PT. So of course, with a recommendation like that, I had to take a look.

It is a short horror game created for a 48-hour game jam in which the theme was “even apart, we make a great team.” In Never Apart, you are trapped in the repeating halls of an apartment building as radio broadcasts talk about a serial killer named Darren Bar.

I never played PT thanks to not having a PS4 before it was removed from the store, but Never Apart was inspired by PT and can be considered a “PT clone” based on the descriptions people give.

Meanwhile, I can see where the Silent Hill 4 comparison came from, because the basic story of the serial killer has a definite Silent Hill 4 vibe.

Now, you don’t actually do a lot in the game. It’s basically a walking sim with some jump scares and spooky moments, but it does a decent job of building up a spooky atmosphere in spite of that. It also tells an original story despite its clear inspirations, and there are some nice creepy parts. On the other hand, this is probably the shortest game we’ve looked at this year, clocking in at around 15 minutes or so to complete.

Never Apart is a very short horror game, but for a free game made in 48 hours, it’s not bad at all. I’d be interested in seeing what the developer could do with a longer game someday, whether an expansion of this concept or something entirely new.

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