Ghostly pests have invaded the Sandy Candy sweet factory, and so young Jack Slimer, Ghost Hunter extraordinare, has been hired to get rid of the ghastly ghouls! 32 levels over 4 floors must be cleared of the paranormal pests before Jack can call it a day and put his feet up back home with a nice cup-a-soup!
And so you as Jack, must jump around the platforms blasting the ghosts with your totally-not-Egon-Spengler-designed Proton blaster, and once they've all been collected, activate the totally-nothing-at-all-to-do-with-Ghostbusters type trap and proceed to the next area.
Levers must be pulled in some sections to allow access to other platforms, and occasional spinning blades or lava pools will also need to be avoided. There's also a timer ticking down that means you won't want to spend too long thinking about things....
Another fun game with nice graphics and some jolly tunes then, and another one that I recommend you give a go if you're looking for something to play this spooky season! Mananuk have done a great job with this, and you can find it here where you'll also find links to an actual physical copy for your Amstrad collection too!
Trifle, this game's purple-haired princess protagonist, has only gone and got herself lost in a spooky old haunted mansion! Luckily, all of the spooks in this particular place are all friendly and don't want to actually hurt her, but they can't stop themselves straying into her path as they are confined to their wanderings, and so this scares poor Trifle and makes her lose her bravery. One too many scares and she won't be able to proceed....
She is able to produce blocks with magical power though, and these will help her reach the keys she needs to open the many doors barring her way. she can also crack any blocks she's below with her head too, which also helps. But these fragile blocks can also be broken by the spooks, so she'll have to keep an eye on what they're up to as well!
The cute graphics and jolly music helps this Solomon's Key / Spherical style puzzle-platformer from 9958 Crew feel a bit more upbeat than most spooky games, and once you get into the swing of it you'll be breezing through a lot of the levels, which almost lulls you into a false sense of security until you come up against a slightly trickier one again! It's an enjoyable little game though and is recommended if you're looking for some puzzley fun!
Cursed Demons Of Wallachia (Los demonios de Valaquia) (ZX Spectrum) :
I'm always happy when I get to run around as Van Helsing and in this offering from Furillo Productions inspired byHammer's Draculafilms, that's exactly what we get to do! Old Abraham is determined to rid Drac's castle of all the horrible succubi and demons that roam the halls, and then escape before fang-face himself returns to discover his fiendish friends' fates!
To defeat the vampires, Van Helsing must first find wooden stakes that are littered around the place, and then take them to the coffins that hide the sleeping succubi. Cloves of garlic must also be found to help ward off the enemies, of which there are many, and these demons must also be killed by stomping on their heads as you progress over the platforms. Sometimes when you return to a spot that previously held a stake or a clove of garlic, a crucifix will appear, and this will restore one of your 15 lives.
Once you've collected 18 cloves, killed 18 vampires and defeated the 87 (yes, 87!) demons, you must find the bridge at the other side of the castle and make your escape!
The colourful graphics are great, and while there's a tune on the intro screen, there's only sound effects in the game and these are pretty basic.....although the scream noise that comes from the vampires when you dispose of them is pretty cool! There is one other tune that plays when you finally die though, and that is also accompanied by a visit from your arch nemesis!
It's a whole lot of fun, and if you find it all a bit too easy there's a harder version available in the downloads where you only get five lives! It's also available in English, Spanish and Portugese! Definitely worth checking this out though, and you can find it over at itchi.io byclicking here.....
Poor Mano is missing his sadly deceased sibling, Nano, and so decides to visit his grave during the Day of the Dead. During this festival, it is said that the gates of the underworld open, allowing friends and relatives to reconnect with their departed loved ones.
Unfortunately, when the aforementioned gates open, they also unleash hundreds of lost souls, demons and monsters into the world, and one such particular nasty decides to snatch Mano just as Nano is about to re-emerge from his soily sleep, and carry him off to hell! Now you, as Nano, will have to search 6 levels of platform madness for keys to open the doors that will lead you back to your brother!
Created by Pat Morita Team for the Gameboy Competition 2023, this is a groovy little platformer that they hope to release as a more fleshed out physical release soon! Nano uses his head to bash the enemies in a style that brought back memories of Decap Attack, although Nano keeps a better grip of his bonce than Chuck did in his game...
The game can be tricky at first as you get to grips with it, but always seems fair, and there are plenty of health pickups to keep you going against the creepily-cute enemies. The bombs they randomly drop will help you clear some of the other obstacles in your way too, so hopefully it won't be too long before Nano gets to finally reconnect with his Hermano!
I've been having fun with this, and it's well worth checking out if you either have a flash cart for use on an actual Gameboy, or if you just want to use an emulator. Either way it can be found by clicking here....
I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with their modified 'finished' version soon too, so remember to keep an eye out for that if you want a proper boxed copy!
In this short, but very, very tricky 'runner' style game by The Reaper UK , you control a girl who has lost all her friends to various enemies, including a very familiar-looking hockey masked slasher, and so she has to try and run as the screen scrolls from right to left and escape to safety!
Various baddies and traps will attempt to stop our heroine's escape, and just one hit from any of them will spell the end of her pony-tailed pixels! So you must scurry around the screen, avoiding knives, cannonballs, bats, axes, spikes....anything the masked menace who is also chasing you can find to try and hault your progress!
Created with help from the Shoot-em-up Construction Kit by Sensible Sotware, and a few others credited on the game's itch.io page, the game has a simple set-up, but a fun one, and although you'll be tearing your hair out every time you die, you'll still find yourself going back for 'one more go' at escape.
The graphics are cute and suitably spooky, and there's some nice music courtesy of Andrew 'Merman' Fisher to bop along to as well!
Grab a C64 emulator, and you can find this game by clicking here which will take you to it's itch.io page, and then you can find out if you have what it takes to successfully escape the killer's clutches before Halloween!
So what do you do when you're stuck between flights in New York, and a random cabbie offers to give you a ride to 'show you the sights?' Any sensible person would think twice before accepting, but it appears that the person we control in this game isn't very sensible....especially as moments later we have to sign away our soul to pay for said sight-seeing tour!
This 1993 game from Digital Fusion and Time Warner, is an early CD Rom title...and as such, it's a little confused with what to do with all that extra memory. It initially comes across as a cross between a game and an interactive tour, as you wander around the Empire State Building reading informational notices and watching FMV adverts.
As previously mentioned, things get a bit weird when you get back in the cab. You might have noticed the driver having red eyes pretty soon after entering the taxi, and sure enough he turns out to be a demon, and when you are missing the one dollar to pay for your trip, he offers to give you a great deal by signing away your soul. The rest of your journey sees you travelling through time in order to redeem yourself, prove you're not an asshole and get your soul back in time for getting on the next flight to wherever it is you're going.
You do this through multiple-choice questions when chatting to the residents of these past times, and just in case you forgot it was a wonderful new CD-Rom, you can also learn some interesting historical facts about the different time periods...
Unfortunately, I only got as far as Ancient Rome, due to a horrific Run The Gauntlet type puzzle that is far too bloody difficult to pass, although I do know if you can manage to beat it you can look forward to trips to the First World War and the Jurassic Era....
I did have fun with Hell Cab for the time I played it, and it is recommended as an early CD Rom oddity and for watching some early Quicktime vids, but ultimately it's a bit too tricky in places to fully recommend.
I might of course be doing something completely wrong, and there might be a far easier way to go about things, but I've a lot more games to get through in the backlog, and this falls a wee bit short in maintaining my interest enough to pursue it much longer...
I was devastated when Xbox Live Indie Games ended, and all those games of varying levels of greatness were lost to the mists of time. Where would I go to get my fix of cheaply made indie games that potentially hold the key to the next big gaming revolution, or even better, are so crap as to be amazing works of art and somehow defy all logic and manage to be fun!
And then I got an Xbox One and stumbled upon the Creators Collection section of the store, which is similarly hidden away from plain sight as the indie game section on 360 was. But will it prove to be the same type of experience, or does it hold false hope...let's have a quick look at some of their tiny selection of horror games and see!
Grinded Meat (Xbox One) :
First up, we have a game that I thought I would never see the like of again after Xbox Live Indie Games bit the dust! It's another one of those live-action, Quick Time Event games...and even better, it's directed by the very same Claudio Battiato who directed Bloody Death and Hell's House, previously covered on this very blog!
As you can see from the video above, it's very much a case of business as usual, with you essentially watching a movie and pressing button-prompts every now and again to avoid death, as a slasher attempts to thwart our Sheriff hero from solving a missing person case.
This one feels a lot shorter than even the previous games though, but for 79p/99c I suppose we shouldn't expect much more. Worth a go, if only to give Claudio some money so he can save up to make a proper movie one day!
The Unknown City - Horror Begins Now...Part 1 (Xbox One) :
It's probably better telling you to watch the video below to see how terrible this game is rather than try to describe it in text. The text-to-speech dialogue, the sloooowww intro, the animation, the text-to-speech (oh wait, I already mentioned that...oh well, it's worth mentioning twice)....
And yet I almost found myself liking it because of how bad it was! I was going to recommend it just so you could experience for yourselves the hilarity of the rubbishness of it all! And then it got me trapped in a menu that I couldnt get out of, just as I finished recording the footage. I had to quit to the dashboard to leave the game. Dunno why this happened....maybe it was due to bad weather....
This game would normally cost you £9 (or $9), but its currently on sale for £1...don't even spend that on it. If you've watched the video here you've experienced about all the entertainment available from this game. A shame really, as it's rubbishness was almost endearing.....
Okay, I've saved the best for last! This one costs absolutely nothing! It's totally free, and out of the trio of games here it has by far the best gameplay! You take on the role of the great old one, Cthulhu, as he decides to unleash his fury on the foolish mortals of earth by smooshing them into the ground with his fists!
You control our cosmic chum's arms independently with the left being controlled with the left joystick and vice versa, and likewise the two triggers smash the left or right fists into the puny humans trying to attack the elder god!
And attack they do with guns, helicopters and tanks, which makes the game feel a bit like a Lovecraftian version of old classic Rampage, only with less buildings and movement. Its all a huge load of fun for about five minutes, but it is a game that you feel you could come back to and play quite a bit when you're bored and just want to kill some time. And as mentioned before, it's totally free! Go download it now before the deep ones crawl ashore and try to mate with you......
Hmmm, so one game that's alright but woefully short, one that's utter crap and one that's actually quite groovy and playable and shiny looking! It would seem that the spirit of XBLIG lives on! I'll need to keep an eye on this Creators Collection section and see what wonders appear in future...
Things have taken a turn for the worse up at the old monastery. The local Yokai have gotten a bit restless and decided to invade the place! Spirits and demons have crept into every corner, and are causing all sorts of havoc....
Luckily, one young monk has been perfecting a specific power over the last few months. A power that will be very handy against the creepy critters, and essentially make them solve the problem themselves! Meditating in the corner of a dark cell, the young monk chanted to himself..."The confinement is only for the body, never for the spirit, EACH ENEMY IS A WEAPON."
WANDERING SPIRIT TECHNIQUE!
With this special power, Shen Li, for that is the name of the young apprentice, can leave his physical body and move into the astral plane, where he can float around in spirit form. This allows him to reach the various Yokai, and leap into their bodies! Now that the creatures are possessed by Shen Li, he can manoeuvre them around and make them run into traps, eat each other alive, etc. and solve the monastery's putrid pest problem!
And so when you start the game, you can either use a joystick or the Q, A, O, P, and SPACE keys to take control of Shen Li's spirit, and puzzle through the levels, finding the best ways to dispose of the demons. Floating into a creature will possess it, and you can leave the body again by pressing DOWN. There are spikes to impale them, boxes to be dropped on their heads and various other enviromental hazards that will finish them off. The FIRE button will only come into effect when you find an ONI, a specific type of Yokai and the only one who can shoot.
I've been enjoying this one since it came out a few days ago! I love the mechanic of possessing the baddies and making them hurt each other, and a few of the levels I've played so far have had me scratching my head for a minute or two as I try to work out which enemies to move where. If you get stuck on a particular puzzle, there's a handy restart feature which will put everything back to the start of the level when you press R...
The controls work well, but can be a bit fiddly at first. And another issue I was having was that if I stopped moving for a few seconds to think about what to do, the level would automatically reset itself, thinking I was stuck. But once I worked out that this was happening, it wasn't to difficult to keep moving so it didn't happen again.
There's a small but nice selection of Yokai to look at that give the game a nice Japanese flavour, with Karakasa umbrellas and Ogama toads among them...And another thing I'm loving is the great 128k soundtrack by Mr. Rancio! It adds to the atmosphere and had me tapping my toes as I fought off the foes...
Yokai Monk was programmed and designed by Ariel Endaraues, and can be downloaded from their itch.io page by clicking here! While the game is free, you can donate as much as you like to help fund further games and projects!
Back in 'Ye Olden Times,' it was never easy being a knight, particularly if you were really good at being one! Because being the best of the bunch would mean that you were always picked for the most dangerous missions, and would barely get a moments rest to put your feet up and enjoy a nice cup of mead....
And that's the situation we find ourselves in at the start of this game from Octocom, which was created last year for the Basic 2020 contest's Compiled Basic category.
Y'see, some ancient devil has rallied together the forces of evil and is laying waste to the kingdom where you live, which up until now was a prosperous land of peace... and so the king has decided that you, being his best knight, should be the one to go and put a stop to it, because he's too busy being all kingly and regal and stuff!
What this means in practice, is that you'll be facing nine, one-screen levels filled with beastly baddies, with the last one being where you'll meet the nasty devil who started all this mess!
To defeat the darkness, you'll need to first find two rune tablets that need to be pushed somewhere on the screen. Once pushed, these will reveal pieces of a spell, which when collected will open up the level exit...
Upon exiting the level, you'll have to then run along a corridor leading to the next screen, dodging obstacles that are trying to trip you up by jumping over them. If you manage to beat the corridor without getting hit, you'll get an extra life to help you in your quest.
Other help can be found by collecting various pickups that appear. There's five of these to be found, including one that stops your enemies in their tracks, and another that gives you extra time...
If you're still finding the game too tricky, then there's also a training mode that lets you play the levels and corridors as much as you want, so you can hopefully train up and become an even better knight! Just be aware that doing so will probably mean that you'll never get to that cup of mead and a foot-stool though....
I've been having fun with Devil's Quest. It's a nice simple game that does everything it sets out to do quite well, despite being programmed using only compiled BASIC. It can be damn tricky, but I did find myself getting better with every attempt, although sometimes the erratic movements of the enemies mean its sometimes down to pure luck if you make it past them! Also, sound is pretty minimalistic, but it does the job!
It's still well worth downloading and giving it a go...or two....or five.....as you slowly become addicted to reaching further into the game! The graphics should ooze enough atmosphere to keep you interested during your attempts too!
You can download the game, and all the other BASIC 2020 enties, by clicking the link to the site earlier in this post, although bear in mind you'll also need to find yourself a ZX Spectrum emulator for your PC if you want to play them!
As you've probably noticed, I tend to steer clear of a lot of the more well-known horror games when doing the Gruesome Games lists, preferring to draw people's attention to the more obscure hidden gems or under-appreciated titles. Having said that, I had always planned to cover everything eventually...so it's probably about time we got to one of the most influential horror games ever!!
If for some reason you've never heard of Alone In The Dark, it's perhaps more famous these days as being the original 3D 'Survival Horror' game, and heavily influencing Capcom's Resident Evil series. Originally it was intended to use real photographs of an old 1920's mansion for the backgrounds of the game, but this proved tricky for the tech available at the time, so they used hand-drawn bitmaps in their place. This 'pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D polygons on top' setup was what Shinji Mikami would discover whilst developing the first Resident Evil, changing his mind from making that game a first person adventure, and thus we have Edward Carnby and pals to thank for the tank-controlled craziness and weird-angled-camera jump scares in Capcom's classic!
Ah yes...Edward Carnby! Not your typical game hero, with his auburn hair and middle aged moustache! Picking from either him or the owner of the mansion's niece, Emily Hartwood, you set off for the mansion on the hunt for an old piano....P.I. Edward hunting it for an antiques dealer, and Emily looking for a letter hidden within it that she suspects will shed light on her uncle's sudden suicide!
After making your way to the attic and finding this piano, the doors of the mansion slam shut, locking you inside...and all manner of strange, Lovecraftian horrors start emerging from behind doors and smashing through windows to try and capture you so that some ancient evil can possess your body and wreak havoc upon the world!
To stop them, you'll need to push things around to block openings, hunt for clues, solve puzzles and use weapons you find to keep them at bay until you can find an escape from the haunted halls and creepy caves you'll find yourself running through.
Playing the game these days, it can feel a bit clunky. With its tank controls and faffy menu-driven inventory systems, you'd best be prepared for some fiddling around to get things to work...but it's still a fun adventure once you get used to its mechanics!
If you've played later survival horror games it won't take you long to get into the swing of things, but like I say, just be prepared for a slightly slower pace than you might be used to! Edward and Emily arent the fastest of movers, although there is a run function included. But that will most likely have you stumbling around missing turns and things when you really need to be moving accurately. And be sure to search everywhere for clues and things, which you sometimes might forget to do while wrestling with the menus! Take your time, and you'll be fine though...
I picked up a copy of this from GOG which is probably your best bet for a working version that'll run well on modern PCs...and it's well worth picking up, whether its just to see where it all started for 3D survival horror, or you really want another Lovecraft inspired horror nugget to wrap your tentacles around!
There are of course many sequels to Alone in the Dark, but we'll save those for another day!
In true horror movie style, American football hero Harry Johns and his girlfriend Conny have found themselves stuck on an island near some spooky old mansions. These mansions are owned by a mad scientist called Dr. Graves, who has been pottering around in the corspe filled places that he shares his name with, and conjuring up monsters with which he plans to take over the world!
It's up to Harry to wander around the island, enter these mansions and find the special weapons required to take down the six main monsters who are also lying sleeping in some of these cursed buildings. He'll need a gun to defeat the werewolf, a hammer and stake for the vampire...you get the idea! Trying to put a stop to Harry's plan are all the lesser monsters under the control of Dr. Graves. Touching any of these fiends will see you bounced around the screen, your health diminishing as you do so. Luckily Harry has somehow managed to power himself up with some sort of magical energy and can fire bolts from his hands to kill the beasties! Bizarrely, they also seem to be a bit spooked themselves, as pressing down on the joystick while in a building sees you giving the baddies a scare by waving your hands around in a spooky fashion. It's all a bit odd...
I had high hopes for this one after reading the premise and seeing the screenshots, but unfortunately the game is a mess. Trying to navigate the map screen I immediately came up against an invisible wall that stopped me going in one of the directions. Entering the first mansion I couldn't find anything but enemies, but had no idea how to leave the building again. And so I spent my time endlessly getting bounced around the screen before dying 3 times and getting a game over screen. Oh, I should say that was actually my second attempt as well, as the first time I tried to play the game self-aborted to the title screen from the map.
A real shame then, but although this game looks lovely and has pretty good presentation, I can't recommend it at all, as it is utter, utter poop!
Blair Witch is another one of those games that I really don't want to talk about too much...I just want to recommend it to you so you go and experience it for yourself! I feel the less you know about it going in, the better the experience will be...
I can tell you the basic details though. Two years after the events of the original film, a young boy has gone missing in Black Hills Forest. Ellis Lynch, the character you play, is an ex policman and military veteran who decides to put his training to good use and go help the local police force to track down the kid. With him he takes his faithful dog, Bullet, and can use his canine chum to access areas that would otherwise be inacessible. Bullet also becomes really handy when things get a bit darker or foggier at night, finding paths and ways through the forest....so you'll be wanting to keep him on your good side by occasionally playing with him or giving him treats when he does well.
As you search through the creepy forest environment you'll discover various clues and items, the most notable of which is a camera. I mean, of course....you cant have a Blair Witch game without a camera right? Needless to say this also becomes a very handy thing to have around...
Like previous Bloober Team games, this first person horror will have you jumping in fright on more than a few occasions, and it does a great job of capturing the feeling of being lost in a forest at night, before it ramps things up into the suitably weird experiences of being around the Blair Witch. But maybe I'm saying too much...
It's not a flawless game, but it's certainly suitably scary and worth a playthrough, especially at this time of year! Just be prepared to have your mind warped as you try to wander the woods.....
I stumbled upon this game in a charity shop a while back, and was amazed I'd never heard of it before. I thought I knew about most of the 360's horror-themed titles, but this one had totally escaped my attention, maybe because it was quite an early release on the system....
I'm certainly glad I picked it up though, as what I found was another hidden gem of a game, that almost feels like a 3D version of my old favourite, Zombies Ate My Neighbors! Almost.....
You play as one of four teenage characters, who are having to deal with a zombie outbreak that seems to have happened at the worst possible time for one in particular. Zack, the nerd, was about to tell Carrie, the goth, exactly how he felt about her just as his skater friend Andy turned up, swiftly followed by Jennifer the cheerleader and the zombie horde!
Starting in Zack's house, you'll need to scour the environment for weapons and pickups to use against these icky ex-humans, and you'll also other pieces of metal and materials that can be used to later to construct more powerful weapons to keep them at bay. A boss zombie appears, and once you defeat him you can escape the house to the city and a whole host of other environments as you try to stop these undead fiends from ruining your night!
It soon becomes apparent however, that its not just zombies! There are all sorts of messed up monsters to battle....Bigfoot, Zombie Dogs, Werewolves...even Evil Clowns! Each new monster is introduced by a short cut-scene, which is a nice touch, and from what I've played so far new enemies pop up very frequently which keeps things interesting!
There's a fair dose of humour involved in the game too...it doesn't take itself too seriously at all, and this is what gives it that B-movie mocking, light hearted feeling thats similar to Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The weapons also harken back to that classic, with you using all sorts of weird implements to bash in the baddies heads! It does add a few tricks of its own too though, with a selection of vehicles to control such as a boat to battle zombie pirates, or a hot-rod style buggy thing to traverse the roads...
Sadly though, the game has a few issues, chief of which is the camera. It quite often picks a weird angle to show you, and although it can be swapped between a close up view, or one that gives a slightly more top-down look to the game, it would be better if it gave you full control over it instead of it being semi-fixed. The controls can sometimes feel a bit janky too, and sometimes the gameplay does some weird things, and jumping around the levels can be frustrating.
So a gem, but a flawed one then! Interestingly, there's apparently an updated version for PS3 that fixes some of these issues called Monster Madness - Grave Danger, so I'll need to see if I can find that one! I can still recommend this one though...despite it's flaws it is the closest thing to a ZAMN sequel that I've seen, and was a very pleasant surprise! Pick it up if you can!
