Blumhouse has been a mainstay in the horror genre since 2009’s Paranormal Activity, helping in the production of numerous iconic franchises throughout the years. Last year, they entered the video game world, founding a publishing company that would focus on lower budget horror projects.
At Summer Games Fest this year, they revealed a lineup of six titles under the new banner, including their debut release Fear the Spotlight from developer Cozy Game Pals. The game was actually released originally in 2023, but Blumhouse picked it up and gave them funding to polish the game and add some extra content.
I didn’t get a chance to check it out in its initial release, but after playing the final product it’s easy to see how they caught Blumhouse’s eye.
Fear the Spotlight offers something different in the retro survival horror genre by aiming itself at a young adult audience. Instead of focusing on combat and resource management, it presents a series of tense stealth sequences and clever puzzles that slowly tell its story as you traverse the environment. There’s no fixed camera angles either, giving you full control of your view, like a more modern third person game. Jump scares and terror are replaced with a spooky atmosphere and a ghostly story of a grounded and relatable tragedy. It’s a perfect gateway horror game that feels both classic and modern, which is something that I don’t feel like I see often in the retro horror space.
The story starts out simple enough before spiraling into something more surreal. You play as Vivian, who is sneaking into Sunnyside High School after hours with her friend Amy so they can perform a seance in the library. Of course, the seance goes wrong, and Amy disappears into a twisting, nightmarish version of the school. As you explore trying to find your friend, you slowly learn the secrets of a horrible incident that scarred the school in the 90s. It’s a tale that involves bullying, crushes, and stalking, making it feel timelessly relevant to the high school experience. The two stories, Vivian exploring the school and the tragedy in the past, both feel compelling and emotionally resonant, with good dialog and sharp characters.
Not only is it refreshing to have a horror story that focuses on young adult protagonists, a high school also makes for a great setting for spooky happenings. Things get more and more surreal as the story goes on, but even when it’s twisting into something more nightmarish you can still recognize the classic landmarks of a high school. Seeing a TV on a cart or an overhead projector in a classroom brought me back, and the locations smartly tied into the lore notes that you find in them. You’ll learn about a swimming accident near the pool, or see the remnants of an assembly about bullying in the gymnasium, making the setting feel lived in and real. Fear the Spotlight successfully links the stories of the past and present through smart use of this location, while also using it as a way to connect to the audience’s shared experiences of that era of our lives.
The eeriness of the location is brought to life with a great looking low-poly retro style. The darkened hallways benefit from having that chunky model look, and it helps place you in that 90s mindset for the flashback story. The lighting in particular shines with this visual style, making the nebulous things you see in the dark that much more spooky before you cut into the darkness with your flashlight. There’s good audio design as well, keeping you on edge as you hear things in the distance, while also giving the enemies a signature sound that you’ll grow to fear.
Progression through the school is gated by a series of clever puzzles that are an excellent combination of real-world and dream logic. Aside from collecting items and using them to correctly solve the puzzles, you’ll mostly be interacting with them in a first person view where you need to grab and manipulate specific elements. Even the opening seance has great interactions, forcing you to slowly move your cursor from candle to candle to light them, then click and hold the planchette still during the proceedings. It’s a great physical element that elevates the game feel and makes it stand out from other games in the genre. One particularly great puzzle has you trying to restore a fuse box where you’ll need to insert fuses and physically turn knobs to get the power to the correct levels. None of the puzzles were overly difficult, but were just enough to make me feel clever when I solved them. This is generally one of my favorite aspects of this subgenre, and the tactile nature elevated this aspect of Fear the Spotlight.
Since you play as teenagers, there isn’t traditional combat in the game, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have to be dealing with enemies. Sometimes you’ll just see figures in the darkness around you that don’t approach you, but every once in a while you’ll run into a person with a spotlight for a head that tries to hunt you down. You’ll have to rely on your stealth skills to find hiding spots to stay out of the light as it scans the room trying to track you down. If you get caught, you’ll need to take a puff from your inhaler to recover, a clever twist on traditional healing mechanics that makes it still feel dangerous without getting bloody. Occasionally the stealth sections can involve a bit too much waiting around for the spotlight to move, but it works well most of the time, particularly when they find interesting ways to remix the ideas in the final confrontation at the end of the game.
The main scenario of the game is great, a well-paced story that lasts about two to three hours, but this release comes with an additional story that sheds more light on the characters and world of the game. It stands on its own while still being additive to the main story, set in a very dense level that’s self-contained and takes a little over an hour to go through. The puzzles still have that great Silent Hill-like surrealism, and there are thematically appropriate twists to the gameplay from the main game. Overall, it’s some of my favorite content in the game, and I’m so glad they were given the chance to expand their story into something more well-rounded and complex.
Blumhouse is clearly off to a great start in the video game world with Fear the Spotlight. It’s a heartfelt story that’s chock full of clever, tactile puzzles and spooky sequences. It never gets too scary, but that’s not a bad thing, as it feels like a great way to introduce someone to the genre while still being satisfying to a genre veteran. Not only does this game show me to have faith in Blumhouse Games, but it also fills me with hope for what else the Cozy Game Pals have up their sleeve, because it’s clear they have a great respect and knowledge of the genre.
Code provided by publisher. Fear the Spotlight arrives October 22 for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.
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