Fear The Spotlight begins like many good horror tales. A couple of friends–nerdy goody-goody Vivian and her goth pal Amy–sneak into faculty after-hours to carry out a séance. The faculty has a creepy historical past, in any case, due to a fireplace just a few years earlier that claimed the lives of a number of college students. It’s kind of morbid and disrespectful to attempt to contact the spirits of a bunch of children within the faculty library, however hey, youngsters are morbid and disrespectful.
I performed a brief demo of Fear The Spotlight at Summer time Game Fest 2024’s Play Days occasion, and at first, that was the factor that caught with me most–at least, at first. Sneaking by the halls of the college and listening to conversations between protagonist Vivian and Amy, the entire thing felt fairly pure and life like. Goth child befriends nerd and the pair get into hassle together–I am certain lots of people have that actual backstory of their lives someplace.
Fear The Spotlight matches a Nineteen Nineties teen horror story with a Nineteen Nineties survival-horror aesthetic. The recreation calls up the look of early 3D video games on the unique PlayStation, most notably Silent Hill. The blocky, low-resolution visuals work nicely with the darkish highschool setting, giving the entire recreation an odd unreality that is good for a ghost story.
The recreation, the product of the two-person, husband-and-wife workforce Cozy Game Buddies, launched in a earlier kind again in 2023. It has since been picked up for publishing by Blumhouse Video games, the online game arm of film manufacturing studio Blumhouse, and is re-releasing in Fall 2024 with extra story content material. However regardless of having been round for 9 or so months, Fear The Spotlight is not a recreation I had clocked earlier than Summer time Game Fest, and after attempting it for a couple of minutes, I used to be disenchanted I hadn’t heard of it earlier than.
The demo began with Vivian and Amy making their means by the halls and heading towards the library. Alongside the way in which was a fast stealth section, during which the women ducked underneath a desk to keep away from the scanning eye of a surveillance digital camera. That might be the highlight from the title, with staying within the shadows to keep away from being seen being a significant gameplay factor.
Once we get to the library, we see the opposite main gameplay factor: first-person puzzle-solving. Vivian units off to retrieve a spirit board (in any other case often known as a Ouija board), which is stored in a glass show case within the library. To get it open, Vivian wants a key from the library’s workplace; to get into the workplace, she wants a keycard. Every time she interacts with a type of components, the sport cuts from a third-person perspective to first-person. You information a cursor round a static model of the glass case to seek out the elements you possibly can transfer or work together with. Touching the show’s lock, for instance, brings up Vivian’s stock to decide on an merchandise to make use of with it, like a key.
These interactive moments additionally offer you alternatives to study extra concerning the world round you. Like in Resident Evil or Silent Hill, hitting the activation button on any of the opposite objects within the case brings up just a little little bit of textual content about them, giving a few of Vivian’s inner monologue about no matter she’s seeing or studying. A few of these moments are fairly insightful, giving a greater sense of Vivian and Amy’s relationship. Fear The Spotlight appears to sport a excessive diploma of consideration to element in offering little tidbits that improve your understanding of the story. As an example, when Vivian retrieves the keycard from the knowledge desk, we uncover simply how huge a nerd Vivian actually is–it’s her personal keycard, as a result of she’s one of many library’s high pupil volunteers.
Vivian brings the spirit board to a desk the place Amy is ready, the place there’s one other little bit of first-person interactivity. When Amy passes you a e-book of matches, you pull a pair out of your stock and lightweight the candles to start out the séance. Inserting your cursor over the planchette and holding a button down simulates the way in which you’d work together with the spirit board in actual life, however as Amy begins to ask questions, it begins to maneuver across the board erratically. A darkish determine seems behind Amy and the candles exit, plunging the room into pitch darkness.
From right here, Fear The Spotlight takes a drastic flip, even for such a brief demo. I relight the candles slowly and painfully, dragging every one from the match field individually. When the sunshine is lastly restored, it reveals that Amy is gone. Vivian grabs a candle to mild the way in which, and you can begin to stroll by the library seeking your misplaced good friend.
Even within the darkness, it quickly turns into clear that the library has modified. First, it is the trail again the way in which you got here, with bookshelves turned over to dam the way in which. Then, it begins to appear just like the library itself has shifted to develop into bigger and extra winding. The area itself feels too huge. That is one other level when the old-school PlayStation graphics amplify the weirdness of Fear the Spotlight. Checking down one pathway or one other, you usually see–or suppose you see–a determine within the darkness. Different occasions, you are undoubtedly chasing Amy by the stacks, however she by some means disappears within the unnatural area. Though there are lots of creepy issues occurring, in response to the press supplies shared for the sport, the spooks you may get from Fear The Spotlight are atmospheric–no leap scares to fret about right here, if these aren’t your factor.
As Vivian calls to Amy and continues the search, a distant space of crimson mild seems and a silhouette inside it, however as we get shut it vanishes, and all of the sudden, fireplace spreads by the library.
At this level, Fear The Spotlight is off the rails. We hurry by the library fleeing the fireplace, however the room has totally twisted, bookshelves and tables giving method to totally different partitions. Pink curtains hold forward, recalling the extradimensional Pink Room of the TV present Twin Peaks. As Vivian flees, the wall forward cracks open, tearing by the memorial plaque for the scholars killed within the fireplace, making a pathway. Vivian flees into the crack and the digital camera hangs again, specializing in the scholars’ photos–the faces have shifted from smiling college students to screaming demons.
It is there that Fear The Spotlight’s demo ends, giving simply sufficient of a way of Fear The Spotlight to be actually attractive. Whereas it isn’t sporting the form of depth the survival-horror video games it is channeling had been recognized for, the uncanny feeling created by the sport’s graphical fashion and artwork course pair completely with the spooky story the characters discover themselves in. The demo wasn’t fairly sufficient to get a full deal with on all the things Fear The Spotlight has to supply, but it surely did depart me desirous to see extra.
Fear The Spotlight is ready for its re-release with a further one to 2 hours of recent content material, in response to its Steam page, in 2024. It is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Nintendo Change, Xbox Collection X|S, and Xbox 360.
Do not miss the remainder of GameSpot’s Summer time Game Fest protection.