Operation Backlog Completion 2026

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: ,
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!

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Spirit Hunter: NG

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 122022
 

Two years ago, our Celebrating All Things Spooky celebration concluded with a look at Death Mark, the first entry in the Spirit Hunter series.

Today, it’s finally time to talk about the sequel, Spirit Hunter: NG.

NG largely stands on its own. It occasionally references Death Mark, but you’d be just fine playing it first.

Like its predecessor, it blends visual novel and adventure game elements. Death Mark had a strangely Ace Attorney-esque feeling to it for me, but NG does not. While it’s still split into chapters focusing on investigations into different spirits, it felt more to me like one continuous story.

Part of this comes from how partners are handled. Instead of always introducing new characters with each case, your partner characters feel more like they’re part of the overarching story. You’re able to switch which partner you’re investigating with and often need to do so in order to proceed. The game even alerts you if you’ve reached a dead end with your current partner.

The only thing I disliked about this is that the dialogue doesn’t change if the current partner has been with you for the whole investigation or if you switched; they’ll talk as if they were there the whole time. Since you can switch fairly freely, though, trying to account for every situation would probably be too complicated.

Confrontations with the spirits have also changed. Instead of using items in a battle with the ghost, you’re put into a critical situation where you must pick the right answer from a list or use the correct item to interact with the ghost or the environment.

On one hand, this new confrontation system makes the solutions a bit easier to figure out, but on the other hand, a wrong choice results in a game over. It lets you retry from the start of the confrontation, though, so you never lose too much progress.

In general, NG felt more straightforward than Death Mark. You still need to investigate for clues and solve occasional puzzles, but the emphasis is more on the story.

Fortunately, the story is very good. It’s a dark, creepy story that progresses nicely as you investigate each spirit. There were some pretty twisted moments, although only a couple of the new spirit stories were as dark as those in Death Mark. On a similar note, NG is not very scary. When the game begins, you set the level of scares, which basically means whether or not random spirits will appear in the environment while you’re investigating. Even on “Scary Mode,” though, these aren’t too frequent. Only a handful of moments in NG actually made me jump. But even though I found it more creepy than scary, I enjoyed the story a lot.

I pursued the good ending, but I made multiple saves in case I want to replay for the other endings someday. Spirit Hunter: NG is a great game, and I’m even more excited now for the third Spirit Hunter game (aka Shibito Magire), confusingly titled Death Mark II for the west.

Aksys announced an All Aksys Online Event for October 20 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, so maybe we’ll get a Death Mark II release date there!

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Towayami

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 072022
 

Today’s review is Towayami, a horror adventure game with a unique twist.

Towayami is set in a small town engulfed in a deep, impenetrable darkness.

It’s been cut off from the rest of the world, and no one is coming to help.

You play a character trying to find a way out and perhaps learn the truth about what caused this darkness.

Since the darkness is so all-consuming, no one can see anything. Fire and lamps do nothing at all.

As a result, you play with a black screen.

I’m not exaggerating.

An official and accurate screenshot

The upper corner lets you know where you are, and your cursor changes when your hover over something you can interact with. Right-click lets you examine things, while left-click lets you interact. It’s important to examine everything first, since some spots are dangerous.

In this way, you need to slowly examine each black screen to find items and use them to explore.

There are occasional sound cues, as well, which I would have liked to see more of, but most of the game is handled through careful clicking.

This was a very strange game to play. I went from feeling completely disoriented at the start to having a mental image of how places were laid out, enough to backtrack without too much difficulty. At the same time, I found it somewhat frustrating – it felt like pixel-hunting, albeit without actually being able to see the pixels.

My playthrough took me about two hours. From the ending screen, I learned I had missed some things along the way, but I don’t think I’ll go back for them. Nevertheless, Towayami has to be one of the most unique horror games I’ve played.

If you’re interested in horror games, stick around for more reviews and discussions throughout October, and don’t forget to check the introductory post to learn about this year’s contest and the prizes you can win!

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