#halloweengames — Public Fediverse posts

ICYMI: City Connection Releases Modern Remaster of Mamorukun ReCurse! https://popgeeks.com/city-connection-releases-modern-remaster-of-mamorukun-recurse/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #MamorukunReCurse #CityConnection #RetroGaming #IndieGames #HalloweenGames

Happy Halloween! 🎃 Let me give you this treat of my playlist of Halloween/horror-themed video games:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLETIxHfs6dO4jBxYRa62g0AN0LzkDfRk2 👻

#HappyHalloween #Halloween #TrickorTreat #Halloweengames #HalloweenVideogames #Horror #Horrorgames #HorrorVideogames #Spooky #Scary #Eerie #Ghosts

Looking for a quick fall-themed or Halloween themed game to play with your students? Check out this Picking Pumpkins game which is a holiday-themed adaptation of Wythoff's game.

The person who picks the last pumpkin wins!

https://mathequalslove.net/picking-pumpkins-game/

#mtbos #iteachmath #classroommath #mathed #mathsed #halloweenactivities #halloweengames #puzzlingclassroom

Looking for a quick fall-themed or Halloween themed game to play with your students? Check out this Picking Pumpkins game which is a holiday-themed adaptation of Wythoff's game.

The person who picks the last pumpkin wins!

https://mathequalslove.net/picking-pumpkins-game/

#mtbos #iteachmath #classroommath #mathed #mathsed #halloweenactivities #halloweengames #puzzlingclassroom

Looking for a quick fall-themed or Halloween themed game to play with your students? Check out this Picking Pumpkins game which is a holiday-themed adaptation of Wythoff's game.

The person who picks the last pumpkin wins!

https://mathequalslove.net/picking-pumpkins-game/

#mtbos #iteachmath #classroommath #mathed #mathsed #halloweenactivities #halloweengames #puzzlingclassroom

Looking for a quick fall-themed or Halloween themed game to play with your students? Check out this Picking Pumpkins game which is a holiday-themed adaptation of Wythoff's game.

The person who picks the last pumpkin wins!

https://mathequalslove.net/picking-pumpkins-game/

#mtbos #iteachmath #classroommath #mathed #mathsed #halloweenactivities #halloweengames #puzzlingclassroom

Late to post, but I made a short #GameBoy platformer for #Halloween! Make your way to the end of the stage, grab the candle holding part of your soul, then run back to the start as the witch chases you! Three levels and a boss battle.

#indiegames #halloweengames #spoopy #gamedev #retrogames
https://toad64.itch.io/pumpkin-jack

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/06 - If On a Winter's Night Four Travelers (Dead Idle Games, 2021)

This isometric point-and-click portmanteau horror game is the reason we're still running a day late on these reviews, because I was compelled to finish the entire thing. This was an excellent decision on my part. You'll get a couple of hours' gameplay out of it, if you set about things in a leisurely fashion.

Set in the late 1920s, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is one of the most elegant works of horror fiction I've encountered in the medium, touching on both the existential and the personal. If you enjoy questioning the relationship between reality and perception, you'll have fun thinking this this one through after completion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a game that's titled after a postmodernist novel (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) there's a literary feel here, but this is no book masquerading as a game.

You might be forgiven for assuming that after the first, very short, act, The Silent Room, in which we see the tragic unwinding of an illicit love affair between two men, as this part of the game is rather puzzle-light.

However, Act 2, The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterborne, sees some inventive puzzle design kick in. There's no serious moon logic, but you'll have to follow the internal consistency of a person experiencing grief and drug/withdrawal induced delusions - patterns and sequenced order are important to her. This serious subject matter that is handled well here as we follow Lady Winterbourne as she struggles with memory, loss and an unquiet mind in the wake of tragedy.

Act 3, The Nameless Ritual, is a my personal highlight of this outstanding game, concerning a doctor who seeks solace in occult ritual. With strong themes of self-annihilation, redemption and once again that fuzzy middle ground between what reality might be and what we understand it has, this one really speaks to me. The puzzles in this act also fit the sense of ritual.

The fourth act presents a resolution to the anthology's wrapping device. It's short and ends in a sufficiently satisfying manner, although it leans into somewhat conventional mythology after the third act's esotericism.

We don't often see the portmanteau structure used in the games - I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and, in a more serialised manner, Lamplight City, are the only adventuring gaming examples that immediately spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others. It's something I'd like to see more of, as the self-contained tales here never overstayed their welcome and provide the means to explore a range of engaging themes and puzzles.

The native Linux version of the game worked well on Pop!_OS 22.04. If you're playing on a higher resolution display, there are a couple of points where small objects can be hard to find amid the pixel art - hardly a surprise given the AGS engine's 320x200 resolution. These are rare, but I nonetheless wonder if I should have played this one on the Steam Deck. The game will run in ScummVM's AGS interpreter, which allows you to resize the window, if you'd prefer your pixel art a little more petite.

The art is, incidentally, excquisite, with particularly notable use of colour to reflect the characters' emotional landscapes.

I've seen some forum complaints about this, so will also note that AGS games are by nature pretty old-school in certain conventions - there are no auto-saves: invoke the menu and hit save before you quit.

If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers carries content warnings for "thematic elements such as racism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and suicide." Its art book adds warnings about "pixel-graphic depictions of corpses, horror themes and war." See my next toot for an extra CW about a couple of extra personal triggers that I encountered, which constitute light spoilers.

There are no jumpscares, but there is some pixelart gore and a general tone of sombre tragedy.

If On a Winter's Night is a fascinating jewel of a game, and well worth your time.

Get it on itchio (pay what you want, $1 or more for OST and art book): https://laurahunt.itch.io/if-on-a-winters-night-four-travelers

Get it on Steam (free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/

Steam supporter pack DLC with OST and art book 3,29€ : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628970/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers__Supporter_Pack/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #HorrorGames #PointAndClick #AdventureGames #Horror #CosmicHorror #ExistentialHorror #GameJamGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/03 - Darkest Fear trilogy (Rovio, 2005-2006)

Before the rise and fall of Angry Birds, Rovio produced a number of Java phone games, of which the shining jewel (or most tenebrous void?) was undoubtedly the Darkest Fear series.

Hybrid survival horror puzzle adventure games with a genuinely haunting atmosphere, the Darkest Fear games all use a top-down isometric perspective as you navigate the map and static or lightly animated photobashed cutscenes.

The primary puzzle mechanic ties in with narrative themes of (literal) darkness and light as you use illumination puzzles to safely traverse each area, save other inhabitants from a mysterious virus, and confront what nightmarish monstrosities may lie waiting in the dark.

There's also a bit of light sokobanning as you punt crates and rocks around to clear paths, and a handful of action sequences. Although some of these involve more dodging than you might necessarily like, they're rare and the games' difficulty curve is generally pretty casual.

The first game begins at a hospital that has been plunged into an eerie darkness. Thomas Warden is summoned to Grim Oak hospital by his wife, a doctor there. He finds the place shadow-haunted, deserted by its staff and, soon, haunted by hideous monsters. At a couple of key points, your choices and the equipment you carry make a difference to how the plot unfolds and who you can save.

Set five years after the first game, Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak gives you more monsters to evade and more light sources to take advantage of. There's greater emphasis on object puzzles, giving a light adventure game vibe to the proceedings. You finally get to leave the hospital and explore the town of Grim Oak. Graphics are more varied and the world is relatively open, giving you some choice in the order that you explore in.

The final instalment, Darkest Fear: Nightmare, introduces a second playable character who must cling to the darkness for safety as fervently Warden must keep to the light. You can switch between them to tackle puzzles suited to their unique skill-sets, and, as the overarching series narrative concludes, a total of 15 different endings can be achieved. This third entry in the series uses some particularly nice lighting effects and has generally more polished graphics.

Although the first installment was available on iOS for a while, the J2ME editions can safely be regarded as definitive. You can and should treat these as successive chapters of the same game.

Although they deal with horrific themes and bear a Mature rating, the stylised graphics leave most of the unpleasantness to your imagination.

The entire series combines a sometimes janky, yet atmospheric, plot with gratifying puzzles, solid level design, and excellent use of their target devices' limited graphical capabilities. They play nicely on modern Android devices thanks to J2ME Loader.

You can still watch the 2006 trailer for Darkest Fear 3 on the official Angry Birds channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9G2Z86XtM

Download Darkest Fear - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j48955

Download Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j50535

Download Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j38391

Play on Android/derivatives with J2ME Loader via F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ru.playsoftware.j2meloader/) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.playsoftware.j2meloader&gl=US).

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #DarkestFear #Rovio #J2ME #JavaMobileGames #SurivivalHorror #puzzle #RetroGaming #isometricart

Oh, drat

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #Spooktober #LinuxGaming #HorrorGames #Roblox #KidFriendly #RainbowFriends #grapejuice

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/19 - Demon's Tilt (2017, WizWay)

Remember Dragon's Fury (aka Devil Crush) on the Sega Mega Drive and TurboGrafx-16? If so, then you know what you're dealing with here.

Demon's Tilt is an homage to that game: a single digital pinball table with a vast number of secrets, multipliers, special zones that upgrade your ball, spawnable enemies that wander around the table, secret areas, bosses, and three distinct sections, or tiers, of the table to play on.

This is "occult pinball" (because there's lots of secrets, right?), so it wouldn't be complete without the odd pentagram (in the background of some stages of the priestess Lilith's transformation cycle), but that's about it as far the fun symbolism goes. However, there's a satisfying array of skeletons, wild animals, and miscellaneous dungeon scenery to populate the ominous tower where the table is set.

Demon's Tilt has a nudge mechanic to allow you to shove the virtual table just enough to change your ball's trajectory. It's massively important to high-level play, and I am very, very bad at getting the timing of it right. I'm rather better at cradling to catch balls and line up shots, which you'll also have to do a lot of.

Taking screenshots while you're playing pinball is incredibly hard, so I've instead made a full-table view out of some promo shots. If you're playing on a standard widescreen or ultrawide display in landscape mode, you'll never see the whole thing, but I've seen posts showing Devil's Crush running in portrait mode, and it looks incredibly fancy.

Even if you're rubbish at pinball, it's good to dip into for a quarter-hour of fun every now and then, although it's clear that, in the hands of an expert player, this game could eat hours.

The chiptuneish soundtrack and low bit-depth samples add the atmosphere, and while I'd like my occult pinball to be more, well, occult, this really does what it wants to perfectly.

Buy Demon's Tilt for 16,79€ on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/422510/DEMONS_TILT/
(Wow, that's gone up a bit since it came out of Early Access. Unless your are extremely into digital pinball, maybe best wait for a sale.)

Also available for Switch, Xbox, and PS4.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #LinuxGaming #Pinball #CasualGames #SteamDeck #ActionGames #IndieGames #Occult

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/16 - Marginalia (2017, Connor Sherlock & Cameron Kunzelman)

Set deep in the woods of the US state of New England, Marginalia is an elegant walking simulator that really does make you feel like you're lost in a forest.

At first, red lampposts mark out a forest trail, each conjuring a new, fully voiced, narrative snippet. As you start piecing together the nature of the forest and memories that you're exploring, both the glowing markers that guide you through the dark and the story of the narrator's missing boyfriend begin to take on a stranger, more otherworldly tenor with shades of cosmic horror.

There are no jump scares, and the mood is one of ominous mystery, rather than full-on terror as you explore the vast forest. The ambient soundtrack is excellent and, for me, brought to mind Cult of Luna's more synth-driven moments.

Marginalia takes just over half an hour to complete, and there are no alternate endings (unless, like me, you fall off a big cliff and end up accidentally exploring a ravine instead of the mountain peak that everything's leading to).

Either way, the story is the same. The narrative is static. Interaction and emergent gameplay elements here are all about how you explore the deep woods. I managed to get myself turned around in the darkness, a familiar experience to anyone who's taken a half-familiar road too late in the day.

Marginalia a one-shot with no saves and no restarts, bar Steam Deck's suspend. However, you'll probably want to play this one straight through without too many distractions.

I had a fun time with it on the Steam Deck while keeping someone else company, but it's much more absorbing on a big ultrawide display, or at least in a dimly lit room, all alone.

Buy it on itchio for $6: https://connor-sherlock.itch.io/marginalia (includes the fantastic OST and a Steam key, get this one!) If you bought the Bundle For Ukraine in March 2022, you already have a copy (sans Steam key).

Alternatively, buy it on Steam for 4.99€: https://store.steampowered.com/app/889280/Marginalia/

Housekeeping note: Review dates are now going to match publication date, rather than game-played date. I'm going to stop playing catch-up and put any currently-incomplete reviews on the forthcoming Haunted Games blog.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #LinuxGaming #HorrorGames #WalkingSimulators #SteamDeck #LGBTQgames #ShortGames #HauntedGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/12 - Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (Horror Soft, 1990)

Every movie and TV series got a computer game license in the early 1990s, and these were rarely good. Horror Soft's Elvira: Mistress of the Dark was a rare exception.

It has not all that much to do with 1988 horror-comedy film of the same name, but that's really not a problem. Like the film, Elvira has inherited property and has found a recipe book of spells that she can tap into.

This time, however, it's a castle in England, and instead of being up against conservative US America and a scheming warlock, Elvira is up against mediaeval witch-queen Emelda and the unquiet dead that she's brought along with her, conveniently allowing this modern-set game to have the look and feel of a fantasy RPG.

To tackle this, the Mistress of the Dark has... placed a small ad in the local paper and hired the first person to come along and answer it. That's you. You don't get a name, and you don't get to be Elvira, but you do get to interact with her.

This is one of my favourite games that I've never finished. I adore the lush atmosphere, the lovingly rendered B-movie gore, the adventure-game/flick-screen dungeon crawling RPG hybrid gameplay and interface, fantastic soundtrack, and the presence of bisexual icon Elvira.

It is proper hard, though - combat is in real time, enemies respawn, you only get limited magical reagents, and dozens of gory deaths await you.

While all this is going on, you have a series of adventure puzzles to work out, many of them by gathering information from books and conversation. It's not always immediately clear where to use specific items, however, and some are single-use and can be used in the wrong place.

Horror Soft would later rebrand as Adventure Soft and continue making seminal British adventure games, notably the Simon the Sorcerer series.

I'm strongly tempted to throw this on the Steam Deck and officially declare that Halloween 2022 will not be over until I've finished it. Wish me luck with the touch controls.

Buy it for 4.99€ on GOG - https://www.gog.com/fr/game/elvira_mistress_of_the_dark

Or with its sequel for 8.49€ - https://www.gog.com/en/game/elviras_horror_bundle

Either way, play it on more recent hardware using ScummVM: https://www.scummvm.org/
(Your preferred DosBox is also fine. Works fine in FreeDOS on vintage kit, too.)

I have entirely misplaced my extensive collection of proper screenshots, so here it is running on 3DS.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #LinuxGaming #ScummVM #3DS #DOS #DOSBox #DOSgames #AdventureGames #HorrorGames #DungeonCrawler #Elvira #RetroGaming

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/11 catchup - Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (Silicon Knights, 1996)

This melodramatic, bloody and gothic vampire action-RPG for PlayStation and Windows 95 epitomised the "games for grown-ups" zeitgeist surrounding Sony's console, and is a fantastic reminder that grimdark can (and arguably should) also be fun.

A nobleman murdered and transformed into a vengeful vampire, our antihero Kain is set with the task of restoring peace to the doomed land of Nosgoth by slaughtering the Circle of Nine demented keepers of

Its perspective, puzzles and upgradable stats, spells and abilities always feel to me like someone started by asking "what if Zelda, only metal?"

Exactly how bloody a trail of slaughter you leave behind you is up to you, and there are no significant consequences for putting entire villages to the sword.

Kain never feels overly fragile, and you can restore your health by feed on living, human foes once you get them to the brink of death.

The top-down isometric graphics are dripping with atmosphere and I'm a huge fan of games that use this perspective.

Although you can't get in much casual chat with NPCs, Nosgoth feels like a vibrant, living (...dying?) world, and combat is very satisfying.

The 3D-rendered cut scenes have not exactly aged well, but nonetheless have that hauntingly lo-fi PS1 era charm.

Although it starts by railroading you along a fixed path, the game's plot becomes more convoluted and its world more open as you progress. I'm having a lot of fun with this replay.

Once out of print, Blood Omen was hard to come by for many years, following a legal battle over rights to the game's intellectual property between Silicon Knights and publisher Crystal Dynamics, which ultimately hung to the Legacy of Kain series.

Fortunately, you can now buy it on GOG for 6.99€: https://www.gog.com/game/blood_omen_legacy_of_kain

It works nicely with both joypad and mouse on Pop!_OS Linux via Lutris using the GOG version installer at https://lutris.net/games/blood-omen-legacy-of-kain/ (lutris:blood-omen-legacy-of-kain-gog)

The series would never return to Blood Omen's gameplay or graphical style. Although the sequels retained the setting, characters and atmosphere, the first in the series remains my favourite.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #LinuxGaming #SteamDeck #ActionAdventure #Lutris #PS1 #HorrorGames #ActionAdventure #HackAndSlack #vampires #RetroGaming

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/09 - Don't Open the Doors (2016, Anton Riot)

Anton Riot's Don't Open The Doors is a delightfully squishy isometric claymation action adventure with distinctive graphics and complementary level design.

The world had been invaded by doors to strange pocket universe dungeons infested by dangerous monsters, corrupting the area around each portal and making random objects sentient, mouthy and occasional hostile. It's packed with giant pumpkins, massive mushrooms and sundry squishy insects.

You are... Some dude who will soon some into posession of a large hammer, who's been tasked with blowing the main door up to put a stop to these things incursions. But the guards who're supposed to help you just want you gone, and throw you out of the city without your megabomb.

You rapidly makes friends with Ray, who can conveniently make a new megabomb, if you can find the ingredients. But you'll have to explore the dungeons beyond the doors and undertake missions to find then and level up your skills ready to take on the final challenge.

The claymation is exquisite and the gameplay is an open homage to Bastion, which is hardly something to complain about.

The world is relatively open but a quest log helps you stick to your task list while exploring the doors for upgrades, and you can pick and choose which order you want to tackle them, if at all. Splatting foes and environmental objects with your sledgehammer is eternal satisfying, and the music is this fantastic folk meets Danny Elfman with occasional distorted guitar flourishes affair.

Don't Open the Doors is a sensory treat and an obvious labour of love, which makes it easy to overlook its flaws. The dialogue and characterisation mostly involve sarcastic insults, and the English dialogue is more than a little rough around the edges.

Although the setting is visually inspired and immediately engaging, the plot and lore, such as they are, slide off the brain, making little impression. Combat is a little uninspiring and many enemies are better avoided than taken out, although whacking stuff with a giant hammer is always a solid choice.

DOTD has its weak points, but it's fun to play, lends itself to casual gaming, and definitely has that Extremely Halloween vibe (giant pumpkin boss! giant pumpkin boss!) and holy crap, that claymation is amazing.

It runs well on both the Steam Deck and my Pop!_OS Linux desktop via SteamPlay Proton.

Buy Don't Open the Doors on Steam for 10,99€ at https://store.steampowered.com/app/533950/Dont_open_the_doors/
Watch for spooky season sales.

There's a less spooky survival/life sim sequel, Disdoored, that appears to have been abandoned in early access. You can find it at https://store.steampowered.com/app/845630/Disdoored/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #SteamDeck #ActionAdventure #Claymation #StopMotion #SteamPlay

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/05 - The Horror of Salazar House (Maldo19, 2020)

Set in post-revolutionary Chile of 1992, Ignacio "Maldo19" Maldonato's The Horror of Salazar House (formerly known as The Enigma of Salazar House) is a visually distinctive adventure game that tips its hat to the classics of Italian horror cinema, something of a recurring theme in games published under Puppet Combo's Torture Star label.

Taking the role of journalist Elisa Muñoz, you're dispatched to investigate the deserted house of author Jaime Salazar, whose entire household disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1986, the house left untouched ever since. As you wander its corridors, you'll find yourself at the centre of a cursed ritual, which you can end... or complete.

The graphics in the first person viewing window are inspired, the creator says, by the Virtual Boy. Their atmospheric use of solid block colour leans into that, but there's also something of 80s first person graphic adventures like Shadowkeep in there.

Gameplay revolves around exploring the map, locating a series of ritual sacrifices and learning how to safely negate then, all while avoiding the monsters that wander the corridors of the Salazar house.

The monsters are lovingly created, with rotoscoped animation for you to enjoy as they beset you. The house is dripping with atmosphere and personality, and it's worth the 3,29€ entry fee for this alone, but I'm also having fun working out the solution to each victim.

Although the graphics are simplistic, there is real horror, a couple of jump scares, and some dark themes here. The game carries content warnings for: "A hanged depiction, a face without skin, and the use of medical drugs and overdose."

It works very nicely on Steam Deck using touchscreen, touch pads, and controls. Native Linux and Windows builds are available. Helpfully, the deck appears to default to native Linux runtime.

Buy it on itchio: https://torturestar.itch.io/salazar-house (steam key included, better profit share, you should get this one)

Buy it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1405440/The_Horror_Of_Salazar_House/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #SteamDeck #HorrorGames #SurvivalHorror #RetroAesthetic #AdventureGames #PointAndClick

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/02

Maundun (2021, Hidden Fields)

One of my favourite games of 2021, Mundaun's hand-drawn textures and folk horror atmosphere are impeccable.

Set mostly in the 20th century, in the (real) Alpine village of Mundaun in Switzerland, the game is voiced entirely in the Romanche language, with full subtitles in numerous others.

It's the culmination of six years' work, largely by one person, Michel Ziegler.

As much adventure game as survival horror, combat - always best avoided through stealth and cunning - at first feels terrifyingly clumsy. But as you settle into the gameplay and bolster protagonist Curdin's will, challenging foes head-on becomes viable, if always a source of potential terror.

Even if you don't take to combat, these encounters don't dominate the game, and you'll spend a wealth of time exploring hidden trails, meeting vividly depicted characters, piecing together the past, making strong black coffee, and developing a genuine affection for a vintage agricultural vehicle.

The pacing is perfect, and a handful of jump scares never overstay their welcome or feel forced. But the beating heart of Mundaun's horror is the sense of suspense as the game introduces threats and then briefly alleviates you of them, never allowing you to become too comfortable.

You can pet the goats in Mundaun and I now fear haystacks.

I recommend playing with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard. I ran it on Pop!_OS Linux via SteamPlay Proton, using a PS4 DualShock 4 controller.

It costs less than €17 at full price, and you can expect anywhere from 5 to 10 hours' gameplay from it, depending on how much time you spend just hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere.

There's also some replayability for multiple outcomes, with the deciding choices mostly in the final act.

Buy on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/720350/Mundaun/

Also available for Nintendo Switch (for which a limited physical run was released by Super Rare Games), PS4, PS5 and Xbox One.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #Maundun #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #SurivivalHorror

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/01 - Zombi (Ubi Soft, 1986, 1988, 1990)

One of Ubisoft's (née Ubi-Soft) first games, Zombi, was an unlicensed adaptation of George A. Romero's 1978 film, Dawn of the Dead, going so far as to share the film's Italian title.

Originally released in 1986 on the Amstrad CPC, Zombi is a first-person, flick screen action-adventure game, and is absolutely a proto-survival horror game. Combat against zombies and a hostile gang is real-time.

Arriving on the roof of a shopping mall in a helicopter that's now out of fuel, you control Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick and Patrick (named after the dev team).

Every member of the party can and must be controlled individually to allow you to survive long enough to collect fuel and get back to the copter.

Collectible objects are marked blue in the CGA DOS version of 1988, which wisely uses a monochrome palette with coloured highlights. Controls in this version are keyboard-based, and involve using the arrow keys to navigate around an icon bar and on-screen hotspots. This can get a little tense during real-time action sequences.

Download the EN/FR DOS version from https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_jeu.php?id=1586&fic=liens - just unpack and run the COM file with DOSBox-X (or your own preferred DOSBox fork).

I actually recommend playing one of the other versions - my personal favourite is the Amiga edition, which gives you the luxury of point and click mouse controls, colour graphics, improved sound and very on-point music.

You can find it at https://www.myabandonware.com/game/zombi-12e#Amiga - this download is EN only. Unpack until you find an ADF file and play using FS-UAE.

The franchise was unexpectedly (kind of, ish) raised from the dead in the form of 2012's ZombiU for WiiU, later ported to Windows, PS4, and Xbox One under the title of Zombi.

Walkthu (EN) - https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=1851

Walkthru (FR) - https://jeux.dokokade.net/2017/01/18/soluce-retrocompatible-zombi-amstrad-et-amiga/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #RetroGaming #DOS #Amiga #October #Horror #Zombie #Zombi #SurvivalHorror #retro

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/16 - Marginalia (2017, Connor Sherlock & Cameron Kunzelman)

Set deep in the woods of the US state of New England, Marginalia is an elegant walking simulator that really does make you feel like you're lost in a forest.

At first, red lampposts mark out a forest trail, each conjuring a new, fully voiced, narrative snippet. As you start piecing together the nature of the forest and memories that you're exploring, both the glowing markers that guide you through the dark and the story of the narrator's missing boyfriend begin to take on a stranger, more otherworldly tenor with shades of cosmic horror.

There are no jump scares, and the mood is one of ominous mystery, rather than full-on terror as you explore the vast forest. The ambient soundtrack is excellent and, for me, brought to mind Cult of Luna's more synth-driven moments.

Marginalia takes just over half an hour to complete, and there are no alternate endings (unless, like me, you fall off a big cliff and end up accidentally exploring a ravine instead of the mountain peak that everything's leading to).

Either way, the story is the same. The narrative is static. Interaction and emergent gameplay elements here are all about how you explore the deep woods. I managed to get myself turned around in the darkness, a familiar experience to anyone who's taken a half-familiar road too late in the day.

Marginalia a one-shot with no saves and no restarts, bar Steam Deck's suspend. However, you'll probably want to play this one straight through without too many distractions.

I had a fun time with it on the Steam Deck while keeping someone else company, but it's much more absorbing on a big ultrawide display, or at least in a dimly lit room, all alone.

Buy it on itchio for $6: https://connor-sherlock.itch.io/marginalia (includes the fantastic OST and a Steam key, get this one!) If you bought the Bundle For Ukraine in March 2022, you already have a copy (sans Steam key).

Alternatively, buy it on Steam for 4.99€: https://store.steampowered.com/app/889280/Marginalia/

Housekeeping note: Review dates are now going to match publication date, rather than game-played date. I'm going to stop playing catch-up and put any currently-incomplete reviews on the forthcoming Haunted Games blog.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #LinuxGaming #HorrorGames #WalkingSimulators #SteamDeck #LGBTQgames #ShortGames #HauntedGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/16 - Marginalia (2017, Connor Sherlock & Cameron Kunzelman)

Set deep in the woods of the US state of New England, Marginalia is an elegant walking simulator that really does make you feel like you're lost in a forest.

At first, red lampposts mark out a forest trail, each conjuring a new, fully voiced, narrative snippet. As you start piecing together the nature of the forest and memories that you're exploring, both the glowing markers that guide you through the dark and the story of the narrator's missing boyfriend begin to take on a stranger, more otherworldly tenor with shades of cosmic horror.

There are no jump scares, and the mood is one of ominous mystery, rather than full-on terror as you explore the vast forest. The ambient soundtrack is excellent and, for me, brought to mind Cult of Luna's more synth-driven moments.

Marginalia takes just over half an hour to complete, and there are no alternate endings (unless, like me, you fall off a big cliff and end up accidentally exploring a ravine instead of the mountain peak that everything's leading to).

Either way, the story is the same. The narrative is static. Interaction and emergent gameplay elements here are all about how you explore the deep woods. I managed to get myself turned around in the darkness, a familiar experience to anyone who's taken a half-familiar road too late in the day.

Marginalia a one-shot with no saves and no restarts, bar Steam Deck's suspend. However, you'll probably want to play this one straight through without too many distractions.

I had a fun time with it on the Steam Deck while keeping someone else company, but it's much more absorbing on a big ultrawide display, or at least in a dimly lit room, all alone.

Buy it on itchio for $6: https://connor-sherlock.itch.io/marginalia (includes the fantastic OST and a Steam key, get this one!) If you bought the Bundle For Ukraine in March 2022, you already have a copy (sans Steam key).

Alternatively, buy it on Steam for 4.99€: https://store.steampowered.com/app/889280/Marginalia/

Housekeeping note: Review dates are now going to match publication date, rather than game-played date. I'm going to stop playing catch-up and put any currently-incomplete reviews on the forthcoming Haunted Games blog.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #LinuxGaming #HorrorGames #WalkingSimulators #SteamDeck #LGBTQgames #ShortGames #HauntedGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/10 - Toca Mystery House (Toca Boca, 2018)

Yes, this is a review of a mobile game/interactive experience for ages six to eight. No, I will not be taking any questions regarding my motivations in reviewing it.

Toca Mystery House, like many of Toca Boca's other kids' apps, is less a game, more a digital toy. There are no win conditions, and barely any objectives. This is a point in its favour.

The creepy, run-down mystery house is lovingly detailed with peeling wallpaper, a decaying lift, shattered test tubes and mysterious slime. As you explore the house, you'll discover different rooms, each with its own inhabitants and experiments to try.

A lab monster transforms when you mix up different potions to feed it, a thing in the fridge fridge sucks up (or ejects?) goo, and a musical ogre lets you ting their teeth. Elsewhere, the ceiling peels away to reveal strange constellations and a pair of mysteriously alien figures invite you to unfold a glowing box.

It's all very cute, engaging and nicely animated, with good use of sound, although there's not really all that much to find and do, so you/the child you were hoping to distract may not get very extended play out of it.

Despite its mysterious and mildly creepy setting, there's nothing here that'll upset your average four-year-old, but it's absorbing enough to be a satisfying fidget app for adults, too.

Toca Mystery House costs 4.49€ on the Google Play Store and is free with Play Pass. It's also on iOS for 3.99€.

Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tocaboca.tocamysteryhouse&gl=US

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1380057710

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #KidFriendly #TocaBoca #Android #iOS #Cute #NonViolentGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/04 - Spookity Hollow (TeamV)

Spookity Hollow is a Halloween spin-off of Play With Gilbert, a kid-friendly exploration/collect'em-up game in which you control a kitten.

This is more of the same, but with a new environment to investigate: the autumn-touched valley of Spookity Hollow, replete with jack'o'lanterns and costumes to collect, as well as kitten and bird friends to meet. I'm still looking for the ghosts!

It's aimed at ages four and up, so there are approximately zero scares here, but plenty of locations tucked away amid autumn landscapes, from a mansion atop a hill, to a little tomb???, to what's hidden beneath the lake.

Configurable day/night cycles and seasons add some variety (fireflies come out at night!), there's local multiplayer, and you can, of course, name and customise your cat.

Sure, the landscape and plants could be more varied, and the architecture could be spookier (and more furnished).

But look, you either want the very chill, nonviolent Halloween kitten game for very small children or not here.

This may really be one for existing fans of the main Play With Gilbert game, which has more depth and its own seasonal Halloween event, but I'm happy to have all these games in my library for Smol Owlbear, and it's fun to dip into them even as an alleged adult.

Spookity Hollow is currently discounted to 3.29€ on Steam, and it's also available on itchio, and you'll be supporting a solo indie dev who makes cute things.

Plays nicely on Pop!_OS Linux via SteamPlay Proton.

Buy on itchio: https://joure.itch.io/spookity-hollow
Buy on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739150/Spookity_Hollow/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #KidFriendly #SpookityHollow #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #CollectEmUp #Cute #NonViolentGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/06 - If On a Winter's Night Four Travelers (Dead Idle Games, 2021)

This isometric point-and-click portmanteau horror game is the reason we're still running a day late on these reviews, because I was compelled to finish the entire thing. This was an excellent decision on my part. You'll get a couple of hours' gameplay out of it, if you set about things in a leisurely fashion.

Set in the late 1920s, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is one of the most elegant works of horror fiction I've encountered in the medium, touching on both the existential and the personal. If you enjoy questioning the relationship between reality and perception, you'll have fun thinking this this one through after completion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a game that's titled after a postmodernist novel (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) there's a literary feel here, but this is no book masquerading as a game.

You might be forgiven for assuming that after the first, very short, act, The Silent Room, in which we see the tragic unwinding of an illicit love affair between two men, as this part of the game is rather puzzle-light.

However, Act 2, The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterborne, sees some inventive puzzle design kick in. There's no serious moon logic, but you'll have to follow the internal consistency of a person experiencing grief and drug/withdrawal induced delusions - patterns and sequenced order are important to her. This serious subject matter that is handled well here as we follow Lady Winterbourne as she struggles with memory, loss and an unquiet mind in the wake of tragedy.

Act 3, The Nameless Ritual, is a my personal highlight of this outstanding game, concerning a doctor who seeks solace in occult ritual. With strong themes of self-annihilation, redemption and once again that fuzzy middle ground between what reality might be and what we understand it has, this one really speaks to me. The puzzles in this act also fit the sense of ritual.

The fourth act presents a resolution to the anthology's wrapping device. It's short and ends in a sufficiently satisfying manner, although it leans into somewhat conventional mythology after the third act's esotericism.

We don't often see the portmanteau structure used in the games - I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and, in a more serialised manner, Lamplight City, are the only adventuring gaming examples that immediately spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others. It's something I'd like to see more of, as the self-contained tales here never overstayed their welcome and provide the means to explore a range of engaging themes and puzzles.

The native Linux version of the game worked well on Pop!_OS 22.04. If you're playing on a higher resolution display, there are a couple of points where small objects can be hard to find amid the pixel art - hardly a surprise given the AGS engine's 320x200 resolution. These are rare, but I nonetheless wonder if I should have played this one on the Steam Deck. The game will run in ScummVM's AGS interpreter, which allows you to resize the window, if you'd prefer your pixel art a little more petite.

The art is, incidentally, excquisite, with particularly notable use of colour to reflect the characters' emotional landscapes.

I've seen some forum complaints about this, so will also note that AGS games are by nature pretty old-school in certain conventions - there are no auto-saves: invoke the menu and hit save before you quit.

If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers carries content warnings for "thematic elements such as racism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and suicide." Its art book adds warnings about "pixel-graphic depictions of corpses, horror themes and war." See my next toot for an extra CW about a couple of extra personal triggers that I encountered, which constitute light spoilers.

There are no jumpscares, but there is some pixelart gore and a general tone of sombre tragedy.

If On a Winter's Night is a fascinating jewel of a game, and well worth your time.

Get it on itchio (pay what you want, $1 or more for OST and art book): https://laurahunt.itch.io/if-on-a-winters-night-four-travelers

Get it on Steam (free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/

Steam supporter pack DLC with OST and art book 3,29€ : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628970/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers__Supporter_Pack/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #HorrorGames #PointAndClick #AdventureGames #Horror #CosmicHorror #ExistentialHorror #GameJamGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/06 - If On a Winter's Night Four Travelers (Dead Idle Games, 2021)

This isometric point-and-click portmanteau horror game is the reason we're still running a day late on these reviews, because I was compelled to finish the entire thing. This was an excellent decision on my part. You'll get a couple of hours' gameplay out of it, if you set about things in a leisurely fashion.

Set in the late 1920s, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is one of the most elegant works of horror fiction I've encountered in the medium, touching on both the existential and the personal. If you enjoy questioning the relationship between reality and perception, you'll have fun thinking this this one through after completion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a game that's titled after a postmodernist novel (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) there's a literary feel here, but this is no book masquerading as a game.

You might be forgiven for assuming that after the first, very short, act, The Silent Room, in which we see the tragic unwinding of an illicit love affair between two men, as this part of the game is rather puzzle-light.

However, Act 2, The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterborne, sees some inventive puzzle design kick in. There's no serious moon logic, but you'll have to follow the internal consistency of a person experiencing grief and drug/withdrawal induced delusions - patterns and sequenced order are important to her. This serious subject matter that is handled well here as we follow Lady Winterbourne as she struggles with memory, loss and an unquiet mind in the wake of tragedy.

Act 3, The Nameless Ritual, is a my personal highlight of this outstanding game, concerning a doctor who seeks solace in occult ritual. With strong themes of self-annihilation, redemption and once again that fuzzy middle ground between what reality might be and what we understand it has, this one really speaks to me. The puzzles in this act also fit the sense of ritual.

The fourth act presents a resolution to the anthology's wrapping device. It's short and ends in a sufficiently satisfying manner, although it leans into somewhat conventional mythology after the third act's esotericism.

We don't often see the portmanteau structure used in the games - I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and, in a more serialised manner, Lamplight City, are the only adventuring gaming examples that immediately spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others. It's something I'd like to see more of, as the self-contained tales here never overstayed their welcome and provide the means to explore a range of engaging themes and puzzles.

The native Linux version of the game worked well on Pop!_OS 22.04. If you're playing on a higher resolution display, there are a couple of points where small objects can be hard to find amid the pixel art - hardly a surprise given the AGS engine's 320x200 resolution. These are rare, but I nonetheless wonder if I should have played this one on the Steam Deck. The game will run in ScummVM's AGS interpreter, which allows you to resize the window, if you'd prefer your pixel art a little more petite.

The art is, incidentally, excquisite, with particularly notable use of colour to reflect the characters' emotional landscapes.

I've seen some forum complaints about this, so will also note that AGS games are by nature pretty old-school in certain conventions - there are no auto-saves: invoke the menu and hit save before you quit.

If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers carries content warnings for "thematic elements such as racism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and suicide." Its art book adds warnings about "pixel-graphic depictions of corpses, horror themes and war." See my next toot for an extra CW about a couple of extra personal triggers that I encountered, which constitute light spoilers.

There are no jumpscares, but there is some pixelart gore and a general tone of sombre tragedy.

If On a Winter's Night is a fascinating jewel of a game, and well worth your time.

Get it on itchio (pay what you want, $1 or more for OST and art book): https://laurahunt.itch.io/if-on-a-winters-night-four-travelers

Get it on Steam (free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/

Steam supporter pack DLC with OST and art book 3,29€ : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628970/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers__Supporter_Pack/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #HorrorGames #PointAndClick #AdventureGames #Horror #CosmicHorror #ExistentialHorror #GameJamGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/06 - If On a Winter's Night Four Travelers (Dead Idle Games, 2021)

This isometric point-and-click portmanteau horror game is the reason we're still running a day late on these reviews, because I was compelled to finish the entire thing. This was an excellent decision on my part. You'll get a couple of hours' gameplay out of it, if you set about things in a leisurely fashion.

Set in the late 1920s, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is one of the most elegant works of horror fiction I've encountered in the medium, touching on both the existential and the personal. If you enjoy questioning the relationship between reality and perception, you'll have fun thinking this this one through after completion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a game that's titled after a postmodernist novel (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) there's a literary feel here, but this is no book masquerading as a game.

You might be forgiven for assuming that after the first, very short, act, The Silent Room, in which we see the tragic unwinding of an illicit love affair between two men, as this part of the game is rather puzzle-light.

However, Act 2, The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterborne, sees some inventive puzzle design kick in. There's no serious moon logic, but you'll have to follow the internal consistency of a person experiencing grief and drug/withdrawal induced delusions - patterns and sequenced order are important to her. This serious subject matter that is handled well here as we follow Lady Winterbourne as she struggles with memory, loss and an unquiet mind in the wake of tragedy.

Act 3, The Nameless Ritual, is a my personal highlight of this outstanding game, concerning a doctor who seeks solace in occult ritual. With strong themes of self-annihilation, redemption and once again that fuzzy middle ground between what reality might be and what we understand it has, this one really speaks to me. The puzzles in this act also fit the sense of ritual.

The fourth act presents a resolution to the anthology's wrapping device. It's short and ends in a sufficiently satisfying manner, although it leans into somewhat conventional mythology after the third act's esotericism.

We don't often see the portmanteau structure used in the games - I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and, in a more serialised manner, Lamplight City, are the only adventuring gaming examples that immediately spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others. It's something I'd like to see more of, as the self-contained tales here never overstayed their welcome and provide the means to explore a range of engaging themes and puzzles.

The native Linux version of the game worked well on Pop!_OS 22.04. If you're playing on a higher resolution display, there are a couple of points where small objects can be hard to find amid the pixel art - hardly a surprise given the AGS engine's 320x200 resolution. These are rare, but I nonetheless wonder if I should have played this one on the Steam Deck. The game will run in ScummVM's AGS interpreter, which allows you to resize the window, if you'd prefer your pixel art a little more petite.

The art is, incidentally, excquisite, with particularly notable use of colour to reflect the characters' emotional landscapes.

I've seen some forum complaints about this, so will also note that AGS games are by nature pretty old-school in certain conventions - there are no auto-saves: invoke the menu and hit save before you quit.

If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers carries content warnings for "thematic elements such as racism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and suicide." Its art book adds warnings about "pixel-graphic depictions of corpses, horror themes and war." See my next toot for an extra CW about a couple of extra personal triggers that I encountered, which constitute light spoilers.

There are no jumpscares, but there is some pixelart gore and a general tone of sombre tragedy.

If On a Winter's Night is a fascinating jewel of a game, and well worth your time.

Get it on itchio (pay what you want, $1 or more for OST and art book): https://laurahunt.itch.io/if-on-a-winters-night-four-travelers

Get it on Steam (free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/

Steam supporter pack DLC with OST and art book 3,29€ : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628970/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers__Supporter_Pack/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #HorrorGames #PointAndClick #AdventureGames #Horror #CosmicHorror #ExistentialHorror #GameJamGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/03 - Darkest Fear trilogy (Rovio, 2005-2006)

Before the rise and fall of Angry Birds, Rovio produced a number of Java phone games, of which the shining jewel (or most tenebrous void?) was undoubtedly the Darkest Fear series.

Hybrid survival horror puzzle adventure games with a genuinely haunting atmosphere, the Darkest Fear games all use a top-down isometric perspective as you navigate the map and static or lightly animated photobashed cutscenes.

The primary puzzle mechanic ties in with narrative themes of (literal) darkness and light as you use illumination puzzles to safely traverse each area, save other inhabitants from a mysterious virus, and confront what nightmarish monstrosities may lie waiting in the dark.

There's also a bit of light sokobanning as you punt crates and rocks around to clear paths, and a handful of action sequences. Although some of these involve more dodging than you might necessarily like, they're rare and the games' difficulty curve is generally pretty casual.

The first game begins at a hospital that has been plunged into an eerie darkness. Thomas Warden is summoned to Grim Oak hospital by his wife, a doctor there. He finds the place shadow-haunted, deserted by its staff and, soon, haunted by hideous monsters. At a couple of key points, your choices and the equipment you carry make a difference to how the plot unfolds and who you can save.

Set five years after the first game, Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak gives you more monsters to evade and more light sources to take advantage of. There's greater emphasis on object puzzles, giving a light adventure game vibe to the proceedings. You finally get to leave the hospital and explore the town of Grim Oak. Graphics are more varied and the world is relatively open, giving you some choice in the order that you explore in.

The final instalment, Darkest Fear: Nightmare, introduces a second playable character who must cling to the darkness for safety as fervently Warden must keep to the light. You can switch between them to tackle puzzles suited to their unique skill-sets, and, as the overarching series narrative concludes, a total of 15 different endings can be achieved. This third entry in the series uses some particularly nice lighting effects and has generally more polished graphics.

Although the first installment was available on iOS for a while, the J2ME editions can safely be regarded as definitive. You can and should treat these as successive chapters of the same game.

Although they deal with horrific themes and bear a Mature rating, the stylised graphics leave most of the unpleasantness to your imagination.

The entire series combines a sometimes janky, yet atmospheric, plot with gratifying puzzles, solid level design, and excellent use of their target devices' limited graphical capabilities. They play nicely on modern Android devices thanks to J2ME Loader.

You can still watch the 2006 trailer for Darkest Fear 3 on the official Angry Birds channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9G2Z86XtM

Download Darkest Fear - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j48955

Download Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j50535

Download Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j38391

Play on Android/derivatives with J2ME Loader via F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ru.playsoftware.j2meloader/) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.playsoftware.j2meloader&gl=US).

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #DarkestFear #Rovio #J2ME #JavaMobileGames #SurivivalHorror #puzzle #RetroGaming #isometricart

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/03 - Darkest Fear trilogy (Rovio, 2005-2006)

Before the rise and fall of Angry Birds, Rovio produced a number of Java phone games, of which the shining jewel (or most tenebrous void?) was undoubtedly the Darkest Fear series.

Hybrid survival horror puzzle adventure games with a genuinely haunting atmosphere, the Darkest Fear games all use a top-down isometric perspective as you navigate the map and static or lightly animated photobashed cutscenes.

The primary puzzle mechanic ties in with narrative themes of (literal) darkness and light as you use illumination puzzles to safely traverse each area, save other inhabitants from a mysterious virus, and confront what nightmarish monstrosities may lie waiting in the dark.

There's also a bit of light sokobanning as you punt crates and rocks around to clear paths, and a handful of action sequences. Although some of these involve more dodging than you might necessarily like, they're rare and the games' difficulty curve is generally pretty casual.

The first game begins at a hospital that has been plunged into an eerie darkness. Thomas Warden is summoned to Grim Oak hospital by his wife, a doctor there. He finds the place shadow-haunted, deserted by its staff and, soon, haunted by hideous monsters. At a couple of key points, your choices and the equipment you carry make a difference to how the plot unfolds and who you can save.

Set five years after the first game, Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak gives you more monsters to evade and more light sources to take advantage of. There's greater emphasis on object puzzles, giving a light adventure game vibe to the proceedings. You finally get to leave the hospital and explore the town of Grim Oak. Graphics are more varied and the world is relatively open, giving you some choice in the order that you explore in.

The final instalment, Darkest Fear: Nightmare, introduces a second playable character who must cling to the darkness for safety as fervently Warden must keep to the light. You can switch between them to tackle puzzles suited to their unique skill-sets, and, as the overarching series narrative concludes, a total of 15 different endings can be achieved. This third entry in the series uses some particularly nice lighting effects and has generally more polished graphics.

Although the first installment was available on iOS for a while, the J2ME editions can safely be regarded as definitive. You can and should treat these as successive chapters of the same game.

Although they deal with horrific themes and bear a Mature rating, the stylised graphics leave most of the unpleasantness to your imagination.

The entire series combines a sometimes janky, yet atmospheric, plot with gratifying puzzles, solid level design, and excellent use of their target devices' limited graphical capabilities. They play nicely on modern Android devices thanks to J2ME Loader.

You can still watch the 2006 trailer for Darkest Fear 3 on the official Angry Birds channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9G2Z86XtM

Download Darkest Fear - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j48955

Download Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j50535

Download Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j38391

Play on Android/derivatives with J2ME Loader via F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ru.playsoftware.j2meloader/) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.playsoftware.j2meloader&gl=US).

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #DarkestFear #Rovio #J2ME #JavaMobileGames #SurivivalHorror #puzzle #RetroGaming #isometricart

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/03 - Darkest Fear trilogy (Rovio, 2005-2006)

Before the rise and fall of Angry Birds, Rovio produced a number of Java phone games, of which the shining jewel (or most tenebrous void?) was undoubtedly the Darkest Fear series.

Hybrid survival horror puzzle adventure games with a genuinely haunting atmosphere, the Darkest Fear games all use a top-down isometric perspective as you navigate the map and static or lightly animated photobashed cutscenes.

The primary puzzle mechanic ties in with narrative themes of (literal) darkness and light as you use illumination puzzles to safely traverse each area, save other inhabitants from a mysterious virus, and confront what nightmarish monstrosities may lie waiting in the dark.

There's also a bit of light sokobanning as you punt crates and rocks around to clear paths, and a handful of action sequences. Although some of these involve more dodging than you might necessarily like, they're rare and the games' difficulty curve is generally pretty casual.

The first game begins at a hospital that has been plunged into an eerie darkness. Thomas Warden is summoned to Grim Oak hospital by his wife, a doctor there. He finds the place shadow-haunted, deserted by its staff and, soon, haunted by hideous monsters. At a couple of key points, your choices and the equipment you carry make a difference to how the plot unfolds and who you can save.

Set five years after the first game, Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak gives you more monsters to evade and more light sources to take advantage of. There's greater emphasis on object puzzles, giving a light adventure game vibe to the proceedings. You finally get to leave the hospital and explore the town of Grim Oak. Graphics are more varied and the world is relatively open, giving you some choice in the order that you explore in.

The final instalment, Darkest Fear: Nightmare, introduces a second playable character who must cling to the darkness for safety as fervently Warden must keep to the light. You can switch between them to tackle puzzles suited to their unique skill-sets, and, as the overarching series narrative concludes, a total of 15 different endings can be achieved. This third entry in the series uses some particularly nice lighting effects and has generally more polished graphics.

Although the first installment was available on iOS for a while, the J2ME editions can safely be regarded as definitive. You can and should treat these as successive chapters of the same game.

Although they deal with horrific themes and bear a Mature rating, the stylised graphics leave most of the unpleasantness to your imagination.

The entire series combines a sometimes janky, yet atmospheric, plot with gratifying puzzles, solid level design, and excellent use of their target devices' limited graphical capabilities. They play nicely on modern Android devices thanks to J2ME Loader.

You can still watch the 2006 trailer for Darkest Fear 3 on the official Angry Birds channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9G2Z86XtM

Download Darkest Fear - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j48955

Download Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j50535

Download Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j38391

Play on Android/derivatives with J2ME Loader via F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ru.playsoftware.j2meloader/) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.playsoftware.j2meloader&gl=US).

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #DarkestFear #Rovio #J2ME #JavaMobileGames #SurivivalHorror #puzzle #RetroGaming #isometricart

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/02

Maundun (2021, Hidden Fields)

One of my favourite games of 2021, Mundaun's hand-drawn textures and folk horror atmosphere are impeccable.

Set mostly in the 20th century, in the (real) Alpine village of Mundaun in Switzerland, the game is voiced entirely in the Romanche language, with full subtitles in numerous others.

It's the culmination of six years' work, largely by one person, Michel Ziegler.

As much adventure game as survival horror, combat - always best avoided through stealth and cunning - at first feels terrifyingly clumsy. But as you settle into the gameplay and bolster protagonist Curdin's will, challenging foes head-on becomes viable, if always a source of potential terror.

Even if you don't take to combat, these encounters don't dominate the game, and you'll spend a wealth of time exploring hidden trails, meeting vividly depicted characters, piecing together the past, making strong black coffee, and developing a genuine affection for a vintage agricultural vehicle.

The pacing is perfect, and a handful of jump scares never overstay their welcome or feel forced. But the beating heart of Mundaun's horror is the sense of suspense as the game introduces threats and then briefly alleviates you of them, never allowing you to become too comfortable.

You can pet the goats in Mundaun and I now fear haystacks.

I recommend playing with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard. I ran it on Pop!_OS Linux via SteamPlay Proton, using a PS4 DualShock 4 controller.

It costs less than €17 at full price, and you can expect anywhere from 5 to 10 hours' gameplay from it, depending on how much time you spend just hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere.

There's also some replayability for multiple outcomes, with the deciding choices mostly in the final act.

Buy on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/720350/Mundaun/

Also available for Nintendo Switch (for which a limited physical run was released by Super Rare Games), PS4, PS5 and Xbox One.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #Maundun #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #SurivivalHorror

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/02

Maundun (2021, Hidden Fields)

One of my favourite games of 2021, Mundaun's hand-drawn textures and folk horror atmosphere are impeccable.

Set mostly in the 20th century, in the (real) Alpine village of Mundaun in Switzerland, the game is voiced entirely in the Romanche language, with full subtitles in numerous others.

It's the culmination of six years' work, largely by one person, Michel Ziegler.

As much adventure game as survival horror, combat - always best avoided through stealth and cunning - at first feels terrifyingly clumsy. But as you settle into the gameplay and bolster protagonist Curdin's will, challenging foes head-on becomes viable, if always a source of potential terror.

Even if you don't take to combat, these encounters don't dominate the game, and you'll spend a wealth of time exploring hidden trails, meeting vividly depicted characters, piecing together the past, making strong black coffee, and developing a genuine affection for a vintage agricultural vehicle.

The pacing is perfect, and a handful of jump scares never overstay their welcome or feel forced. But the beating heart of Mundaun's horror is the sense of suspense as the game introduces threats and then briefly alleviates you of them, never allowing you to become too comfortable.

You can pet the goats in Mundaun and I now fear haystacks.

I recommend playing with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard. I ran it on Pop!_OS Linux via SteamPlay Proton, using a PS4 DualShock 4 controller.

It costs less than €17 at full price, and you can expect anywhere from 5 to 10 hours' gameplay from it, depending on how much time you spend just hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere.

There's also some replayability for multiple outcomes, with the deciding choices mostly in the final act.

Buy on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/720350/Mundaun/

Also available for Nintendo Switch (for which a limited physical run was released by Super Rare Games), PS4, PS5 and Xbox One.

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #Maundun #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #SurivivalHorror