The Indie Informer

Fear The Spotlight set out to terrorize me immediately.

With no guide with me on the couch, I plunged into the headphones without distractions. The sounds were unsettling. I couldn’t tell you why, as nothing was discernibly creepy. No screaming. No howling. It’s just subtle but all-encompassing white noise. Only seconds into the demo, and I already knew this team was ready to bring the real deal.

I’ll leave a slightly horrified Jill sitting on a Summer Game Fest Play Days couch with terror ricocheting in her ears and jump ahead to a much more joyful conversation for a moment. In-person events offer so much, and part of that is the chance to speak with other journalists. So, it was my absolute pleasure to run into Digital Trends’ Giovanni Colantonio, who let me in on an interesting backstory for Blumhouse Games’ first title.

You can read the full story here, but, essentially, he learned the devs had actually already released this game last year. However, Blumhouse approached them and offered the resources to realize even more of their dreams. The Cozy Game Pals pulled the game and, as the co-founders later confirmed to me, transformed the experience. The game originally would have taken one to three hours to beat, and the current version almost doubles that.

That intriguing tidbit in mind, I’ll reluctantly turn back to my quivering hands-on experience. At first, I seem to be overreacting. There’s a storm — I can hear that clearly. But the hallway I (a goody two shoes) and my close friend Amy (a lock-picking goth girly) march down looks both empty and completely mundane. Nonetheless, the sounds of our footfalls start to get swallowed by the beating of my heart as we – full of teenage defiance – sneak past our deserted school’s security camera.

All falls quiet again — except the rain falling outside — in the library as the demo does its job of teaching me the basic mechanics and survival horror-staple of puzzle solving, key collecting, and inventory searching. Also pulling from gaming history, the graphics and camerawork are obvious callbacks the first PlayStation console.

The goal of this adventure turns out to be a spirit board, which I’m able to pilfer after searching through the front desk for a key card. It gets me in the office, which gives me access to a physical key that unlocks the school’s unaccountable supernatural display.

As it turns out, my friend Amy is wise in the ways of the occult, so I follow her lead. Candles lit, board set up, and chants chanted, I wait. Nothing happens. We look quizzically at each other across the table. Perhaps it didn’t work? Perhaps we will just go home, taking only the story of our rebellious break-in away with us.

All hope of that safe future flies out the window as the small wooden planchette holding the magnifying glass swerves wildly around the board. My friend screams, the lights go out, and I’m alone.

I’m not ashamed to tell you that my first instinct was to say, “Sorry, not sorry. My friend’s dead to me now, and I’m getting out of here right now. No looking back. No regrets.” If I were the protagonist, I would not have thought twice about slamming through the halls, down the road, and not stopping until I was behind the front door of my house. But the game wasn’t kind enough to give me that option.

The now darkened room became a labyrinth of fallen bookcases leading me further and further in. A glimmer of hope in the dark shines as I see Amy’s outline, but it turns to a jump scare as her body wrenches into another dimension, and the room erupts into fire. I take solace at my own reaction by remembering that, a few days later, the horror-loving member of The Indie Council, Mike Towndrow, also noticeably jolted at this point.

Of course, it’s now I remember that, before things got bad, the characters had mentioned off-hand a fire at the school. I foolishly paid little mind to this at the time. But with flames licking up the walls, I realize I might soon join those souls lost in the blaze.

The fire spreads quickly blocking possible safety at every turn. It’s right on my heels. It’s growing larger and faster by the second. It’s almost engulfed me. At the last minute, a wall splits down the middle, leaving me a space to escape. The camera stays behind to focus on the now ripped apart memorial of the students who died in the school fire. All the children’s photos now stare out from ghoulish eyes.

I don’t think I found safety. I don’t think there’s any safety to find in Fear The Spotlight.