Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Celebrating All Things Spooky 2024 Begins!

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, My Stories, Video games, Writing  21 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , ,
Oct 022024
 

Can you believe another October is upon us again?

As we head into fall, it’s time to kick off Halloween season with a month-long celebration of spookiness! That includes not only horror, but anything else that feels suitable for the season.

During this celebration, we’ll have sales, contests, and more, so stick around.

It’s time for Celebrating All Things Spooky 2024 to begin!

Reviews and Content

Our romance and mystery events this year had to be shortened, but my plan is to stick with regular reviews for Celebrating All Things Spooky – with one day a week reserved for other topics in case something crazy happens (I mean, Capcom could still announce a new Ace Attorney game).

There’s a whole bunch of horror, spooky, and otherwise Halloween-adjacent games I’m looking forward to playing and discussing this October, and I’m hoping for a mix of both scary games and lighter ones.

Sales and Promo

A special promotion is coming soon! From October 4 – October 10, ebook copies of my zombie comedy novella The Zombie Mishap will be on sale for $0.99 at Amazon. Join the misadventures of two unlucky scientists who accidentally create a zombie and set out to stop it before anyone finds out!

I don’t know yet if there will be sales on The Book at Dernier and It Came Back this year or not. However, I’m hoping to get at least Dernier up at other retailers as well, so stay tuned.

And don’t forget that I also worked on the horror visual novel Not It, available now on Steam as Not It: Spookiest Edition!

Contest and Prizes

Now let’s get into the contest details. For the month of October, you can earn points simply by leaving comments or replies on any Celebrating All Things Spooky post. At the end of the month, the top three participants with the most points will each get to choose a prize!

Rules:

  • No purchase is necessary.
  • Only comments made between October 2, 2024 at 12:00 PM ET and October 31, 2024 at 11:59 PM ET will be counted.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on any Celebrating All Things Spooky blog post = 1 point. This includes comments on past years’ posts and replies to other comments.
  • 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 top 3 point earners will win prizes.
  • 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 the person with the third most points will pick third.
  • In the event of a tie, tied winners will be contacted at the same time. A tie for third place will allow for more than 3 winners. If tied winners choose the same prize, duplicate prizes will be possible.
  • The winner will be contacted by November 2, 2024.

Prizes:

  • Not It: Spookiest Edition (gift sent through Steam)
  • Silent Hill 4: The Room (gift sent through GOG)
  • Alan Wake (gift sent through Steam)
  • Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (gift sent through Steam)
  • 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.

All right, let’s get started! Are there any spooky games you’re planning to play this October?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Project Kat

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  7 Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 302023
 

Project Kat, which now has the full title of Project Kat – Paper Lily Prologue, is a short game about a girl preparing to perform a ritual in the school at night.

There are puzzles to solve along the way, as well as various options for how to interact with your classmates.

Puzzles have multiple solutions, so going with a method that feels less obvious could lead to a different outcome. Even something as simple as how much you talk to the other characters can have an effect.

Because of this, even though Project Kat seems simple on the surface, it’s more complex than you might think. I played through it assuming there might be 1 or 2 alternate endings based on choices I’d noticed along the way, only to look online and learn there are ten possible endings.

(I didn’t go back through to try to get them all, however.)

Project Kat is also surprisingly creepy. Despite the simple graphics and presentation, it uses what it has to great effect, with several unsettling moments.

As the full title suggests, it is a standalone prologue to an upcoming game called Paper Lily. Paper Lily – Chapter 1 is currently available in an early state, with additions to come in an update, and the game will potentially have 5 total chapters. After playing Project Kat, I’m interested in seeing what they can do in a longer game, although I’ll probably wait for the full release before playing.

Project Kat – Paper Lily Prologue is a short, spooky game worth checking out – especially for Halloween!

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 272023
 

One game that’s been in my backlog for a while now that I finally decided to try this October is Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest.

It’s based on the Werewolf: The Apocalypse tabletop setting, which I’m unfamiliar with, so I went into it not knowing what to expect.

You play as Maia, a young woman who keeps having strange, ominous dreams about the ancient Białowieża Forest. Seeking answers about her family and these dreams, she travels to the forest to see what she can learn.

It is largely presented through text, with illustrations in the background to provide somewhat of a visual novel experience, although I’d be more inclined to call it interactive fiction. Numerous dialogue choices lead you down different paths, affect your relationship with the other characters, and influence the story in other ways.

Depending on how you answer certain questions at the start, you end up with various stats that open up new dialogue options and may provide different ways to approach situations. You also have 3 stats to keep an eye on, health, willpower, and rage. These can be spent to make certain choices and replenished through others.

There are a lot of characters, possibly too many for the few hours a single playthrough will take. I had trouble keeping track of the cast, let alone feeling like I’d made a bond with anyone.

Now, I mentioned at the start that I wasn’t familiar with this setting going into it. If I was, I might not have been as surprised when it turned out to be an environmentalist story about trying to save the forest and the clashes between different groups with different opinions about what should be done.

Plus werewolves. Partway through the story, the werewolf aspect comes into play, although by that point you’re so deep into the game that it feels more like it should be setting up a larger narrative.

Despite a single playthrough being fairly short, there are several paths to take. Since you can’t manually save, however, you have to start over to try different options. Because of that, I decided not to replay it. I was happy enough with my outcome, even if some of my choices didn’t work out the way I’d hoped.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest has some neat ideas, although it wasn’t quite what I expected. The werewolf aspect takes a backseat to the environmentalism, and it feels shorter than it should be. The premise feels like it should set up a creepy, atmospheric story, but it didn’t quite work for me. However, since it’s part of a larger universe, maybe it appeals more to fans already invested in its lore.

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