Road Redemption is a unique game, in that it's a motorcycle racing game, but also a fighting game.

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There is some lore, presented with a single screen of text. According to the Steam store page, this takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, ruled by a brutal dictator. Biker gangs rule over segments of the country. You're part of the Jackal gang and basically racing against other biker gangs through their territory, pursuing an assassin for the bounty.

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Every once in a while, some other Jackals will show up to help you (see first screenshot with the peace symbol over a Jackal's head), but you're on your own for most of the races.

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This is a game of stamina. There are 17 total races across 3 gangs' territories, and your status carries over to each one. Any loss of health, nitro, and if you've unlocked it, your jump boost, all carry over to the next race and require you to replenish them during races.

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You either pick up resources on the road, or kill other gang members to collect resources. Or you can also gain a small bit of nitro every time you have a "close call" with an oncoming car. Just steer so you nearly miss oncoming traffic and you'll be rewarded with some nitro. Which is needed to catch up to the racers in the lead; you'll never gain on them otherwise.

There are two main types of races: 1.) a straight race to the finish, either finishing in 3rd place or better, or just survive to the finish line by a certain time limit; or 2.) enemy takedown, which requires you to eliminate a certain number of enemies before the finish line. Sometimes the cops show up alongside the gangs to fight everyone, sometimes the cops are the takedown enemy.

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Cars are especially hard to take down. Explosives are pretty much the only way I've found to stop them. During takedown races, they'll also plow through oncoming traffic, denying you that needed nitro boost to gain on them. It can be very difficult if you're stuck behind a car with no nitro left.

The last race in each territory is a takedown enemy race against the gang's leader. They're pretty tough and you need to kill them before you reach the end of the race.

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There is one random event that may take place called "Hallucinogenic Chemical Zone," which will have cars and trucks randomly spawn in the sky and fall onto the track, creating hazards to navigate around. None of these vehicles have their parking brake on, so if they land on their wheels, they'll slowly roll across the road, making it harder to determine the best path around them. You never know which direction they'll start rolling until it's almost too late to change direction.

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After each race, you spend the money you earned taking out enemies or meeting the objective to upgrade your current stats or replenish health or nitro.

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Whether you win or lose each race, you'll automatically continue on to the next race. But your health bar will shrink if you lose the objective.

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The races continue until you die. Then you get to spend all the XP you've earned on permanent upgrades, which will make it easier the next time you play. You likely won't beat the game in your first playthrough. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even beat the first territory until I'd upgraded my permanent stats quite a bit. I've replayed the campaign race many times over and I've finally made it all the way to the assassin, but I still haven't beat him. Gotta keep upgrading my character!

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Before each game, you get to select your bike and character. Both come with various stats and weapons, so pick what works best for your play style. You can unlock more bikes and characters as you accomplish certain criteria throughout the game.

I like to play with Admiral Uganda (a Captain America knockoff) because he has 35% resource gains from regular kills, 140% resource gains from shield kills, and 115% max nitro. He also doesn't use guns, which is fine with me. I'm terrible at aiming a gun while also steering my bike, so I mostly fight with close-range weapons that only require a button press to use.

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There are other joke characters like Santa Claus, who's a pacifist and can't kill anyone except for bosses; Helloween Rider, a Ghost Rider knockoff; PC Master Racer (see screenshot above); or Theranos, a blonde woman with Thanos' golden gauntlet. Plus a ton more to unlock.

My personal play style is to just kick other bikes. It sends them flying off to one side, and if you time it right, you can kick them into obstacles or off bridges and kill them instantly. Much easier than hacking at them with a sword or beating them with a lead pipe, etc.

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Most races are on roads cross-country through mountains, snowy terrain, or post-apocalyptic cities. But the most interesting races (in my opinion) take place across building rooftops. You spend the entire race speeding from rooftop to rooftop, and it's easy to knock people off to their doom. Or fall to yours, if you're not careful. These levels are where the jump boost comes in really handy, keeping you airborne longer if you don't time a jump between buildings well.

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Then there's the extra rare rooftop race through a hallucinogenic chemical zone! Don't get hit by falling cars while soaring across rooftops!

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I've mostly described the campaign mode for this game, but there is also a 4-player split-screen mode where you can play together or against each other, or you can play online with other gamers.

There's a DLC you can buy on Steam called "name a character" that lets you put a custom name into the game itself. You'll notice that every time you take someone out, it shows their name across the bottom of the screen, then scratches it out in red. Supposedly, these are all names added by other players over time. So the next time you play, keep an eye out for cobysev...

I normally don't like games that force me to replay them over and over, grinding just to level my stats enough to continue the plot (I'm looking at you, Hades). But the gameplay is so enjoyable in this one, I can't help but play it over and over. I don't even care if I don't finish; the racing and fighting is so much fun! Every time I play this game, I end up doing nothing else for the rest of the day.

October is over, and that means I'm back to playing all variety of games, not just horror or Halloween-themed games. But I did miss one day in my daily October marathon, and I said I'd try to make up for it.

So... consider this game to be a happy medium. The Invincible isn't exactly horror - more sci-fi mystery/thriller than anything - but it is kind of a personal fear of mine: being stranded alone on an alien planet with amnesia, limited oxygen, and no certain escape. I definitely shared in the anxiety and fear that the protagonist suffered at times on her journey.

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The Invincible is a blend between a walking simulator and a visual novel. You spend most of the game walking from one point to the next and performing some basic tasks along the way, while also communicating back and forth with your ship's commander. It's not a particularly strenuous form of gameplay.

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There are dialogue choices, but for the most part, the game plays out the same regardless of your choices. Although certain choices can open up deeper philosophical discussions into the theme of the plot. Also, investigating the areas around you might help you learn more about the planet itself, which provides a richer story experience than just trying to get to the end of the game as quick as possible.

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Also, as the game progresses, your story path is documented in comic form, which you can pause and read at any time.

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This game is actually based on a Polish novel of the same name, published in 1963 by Stanisław Lem. Although I would recommend not reading the summary of that book, as its main plot gives away most of the mystery in this game's story.

The Invincible opens up with Yasna waking up on a rocky desert planet, with no memory of where she is or how she got there. Her radio is broken, her locator beacon is missing, and she's all alone. The only thing going for her is that she seems uninjured, and her space suit and oxygen tank are still intact.

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She checks her notes and discovers she's there with her team of researchers. Using her logs and hand-drawn maps, she triangulates her approximate position, then sets out to find their main camp.

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Along the way, bits of her memory start coming back to her. She remembers her research ship's commander, Novik, who is known for making rash decisions. Previously, his insistence on making an unscheduled stop for a valuable mineral cost him a broken leg and severe pain.

Now, the team was finally on their way home when Novik awoke them early from cryogenic sleep. He made the decision to stop at yet another planet, Regis III, because he has intel that it's potentially valuable to the Alliance, and he wants to find out what is so valuable that it would draw them there.

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The book followed characters from the Alliance aboard their massive ship, The Invincible. This game, however, follows a small research team of the Interplanetary Commonwealth, an opposing faction. So it's important to Novik that they do their research quick, then get off-planet before the Alliance arrives in their deadly ship.

Yasna reaches her team's base camp, only to find one of the members in a stupor, babbling unintelligibly. His vitals are all normal, but he's unresponsive and helpless. Yasna takes his radio and is finally able to speak with Novik, who is aboard their spaceship orbiting the planet.

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Novik has been unable to reach the team for a while now. He's grateful to speak with Yasna and instructs her to find the rest of the team. She catches up on their research notes and sets out to round up the team.

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The team was investigating a strange metallic structure sticking out of the ground. It proved impossible to unearth, and scans with their metal detectors showed it stretching underground like tangled metal roots. One of the research team, Dr. Gorsky, ventured off in search of the end of this metal root structure, so Yasna pursues his trail.

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She bumps into a damaged probe and, with the help of Novik, is able to boot it up. Using the probe, Novik is able to remotely control it and assist Yasna more directly on the ground. You get the opportunity to pick its name, if you like.

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Pursuing her team, Yasna explores complex metallic structures, finds herself lost in underground caverns, and even has run-ins with the Alliance!

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Finding all of her team members and getting off-planet proves to be a challenge, with setback after setback. It's up to you whether she'll find the courage to proceed, or succumb to hopelessness and depression.

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This was a fantastic story that explored deeper philosophical topics on life and biology, evolution and invasion, and of course, the will to survive. It's an easy-going game, where the most dramatic twists and turns come more from the dialogue than the action. If you want a simple sci-fi game that lets you ponder life's greater mysteries instead of shooting aliens, this may be for you.

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Plus, you get to drive around in a little rover! How cute is this thing?

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Happy Halloween! I had planned to play one of my favorite games this month, Alan Wake, but @MyNameIsAtticus@lemmy.world, the other screenshot poster here, already made several posts about that game recently. So in order to generate new content, I'm posting a tangentially-related game, and another absolute favorite of mine, Control.

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This game is loosely based on the SCP Foundation, a fictional secretive organization that contains anomalous or supernatural items and entities away from the eyes of the public. They Secure, Contain, and Protect (SCP).

Their wiki linked above is a creative writing project, where anyone can sign up and submit their own creative writings on supposed anomalies that the SCP has encountered in the world. And they have a Creative Commons ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA) for all work posted to the wiki, so anyone is able to use it for their own creative projects. As such, a lot of SCP-related video games have been popping up lately. If you search on Steam alone, there are about 75 games with SCP in the title, and that's not counting derivative works like Control.

Control starts out simple enough. You play a 28-yr old woman by the name of Jesse Faden. She's been looking for the Federal Bureau of Control for 17 years, ever since they kidnapped her brother, Dylan, in their childhood. The shady secret government organization has eluded her all this time, but Jesse just happens to find them in New York City and enters to an empty lobby.

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The place seems deserted, except for an odd janitor with a heavily-Scandinavian accent, named Ahti. He asks Jesse if she's here for the job interview, because he's in need of an assistant. He points Jesse toward the Director's office.

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The first thing you might notice is that you're trapped in the building now. When you turn around, you realize that the hallway you came down just dead-ends, as if there was never a hallway there in the first place. Also, some of the offices and meeting rooms in the hallway don't seem to have any doors leading into them, just windows. Welcome to "The Oldest House," the office building which is an ever-shifting anomaly in itself.

You enter the Director's office and find the Director dead on the floor; an apparent suicide. Jesse is compelled to pick up the handgun lying next to him, where she suddenly finds herself pressing it to her own temple. You hear distorted voices who refer to themselves as "The Board," and they test whether you're capable of wielding it.

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Jesse is transported to the "astral plane," a bright white space with disjointed black and gold marbled cubes to walk on. A giant inverted pyramid looms ever-present in the background.

You fight some faceless humanoid enemies, learning to harness a limited psychic ability to attack them. When you find the gun in the astral plane, you learn how to take down the faceless enemies with it. You have a limited clip of ammo, but it regenerates infinitely, without the need to manually reload or resupply.

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When you've completed the training, Jesse is appointed the new Director by The Board. All of a sudden, you're in charge of the Federal Bureau of Control! Portraits can be found already updated with professional photos or paintings of Jesse all around the building.

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You also start to find official documentation scattered around the offices concerning various Objects of Power (OoP), including your own service weapon. Just like SCP documentation on their wiki.

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Almost immediately, Jesse finds herself exposed to an invasive hissing noise that feels like it's trying to invade her soul (See first screenshot). She's able to withstand it, but it takes over other Control agents and forces them to attack her. Fighting your way to the Central Executive room, you find a marked circle under an inverted pyramid and realize you can use your psychic energy to dispel the "Hiss" from the area and restore the distorted space to its normal state.

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Survivors call out from a nearby shelter and Jesse gives them the all-clear. The assistant to the Head of Research, Emily Pope, comes out and immediately recognizes Jesse as the new Director. She's stoked that Jesse's able to withstand the Hiss without specialized equipment and she's excited to perform some experiments to test Jesse's abilities.

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Pope quickly becomes your go-to for any information you need about this strange place. She explains that the building has come under attack by a deadly and invasive anomaly that Jesse helped dub the "Hiss," and since Jesse is the only one who seems able to resist and fight back, she's needed to help clear sections of the building and rescue other survivors.

Jesse is also desperate to find her brother, but Pope doesn't have access to that level of information. She suggests Jesse rescue the rest of the former Director's team scattered throughout the building and they should be able to fill her in on what happened to Dylan.

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From there, the game is spent running back and forth across the various floors of the building, rescuing people, fighting the Hiss and liberating areas, and learning more about Control and what they do. You can find various sources of media scattered throughout, including documents, tape recordings, and video recordings.

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Not to mention, some more OoPs that bind to Jesse and enhance her abilities. You can telekinetically lift and throw objects, rapidly dash through the air to evade enemies or reach far-away platforms, construct a shield out of psychic energy and physical objects, and even fly! Keep progressing through the game to find these OoPs and bind them, then enhance their powers through missions and side quests. Eventually, you'll be practically invincible!

Amongst the video recordings, there's a cheaply made kid's puppet show called the "Threshold Kids" that has episodes randomly distributed all over the building. It goes over various anomalies and supernatural situations, as if it was meant to explain complex topics for young children. It seems simple enough at first, but there's something creepy and off about it, and it gets very dark and existential in later episodes. I love the world-building it brings to the game!

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I mentioned Alan Wake was tangentially-related to this game. That's because the development studio of both franchises, Remedy Entertainment, included documentation you can find in Control that explains Alan Wake as an Altered World Event (AWE), with Alan's typewriter being a suspected OoP! And if you play Control's AWE expansion after the main campaign, it sets up Alan Wake II.

I love SCP-related content, and the Federal Bureau of Control is a whole SCP-like organization, with rich and detailed lore dealing with supernatural and otherworldly objects and powers. And then adding lore to tie two separate game franchises together in the same universe? I absolutely love it! This has been one of my all-time favorite games since it released and I'm really excited to play Control 2 whenever it finally comes out.

By the way, the Alan Wake Franchise bundle is 80% off on Steam, so you can play the first game and its spinoff game for only $5, then save a few bucks off Control by buying the Alan Wake/Control Franchise bundle. Or wait for a better deal; Control was only $8 for a couple weeks last month, so keep an eye out for their next sale and get it super cheap.

My one gripe is that Alan Wake II was published by Epic Games, which means it will probably never come to Steam. I'm adamantly against using Epic Games, as they have very anti-competitive practices with the gaming community. So unless someone else gets PC publishing rights, I may never get to play Alan Wake II. (Note: I don't own any current-gen consoles, so playing it on console is out) The rest of the franchise is published by 505 Games or Remedy Entertainment themselves, including the upcoming Control 2, so I can enjoy everything else in the meantime.

I had another game I planned to play last night, but then the first Red Dead Redemption finally released on Steam yesterday, including its Undead Nightmare story mode, and I found myself up all night enjoying the zombie western horror fest! Finally! It only took them 14 years to port it to the PC.

I'm going to be talking exclusively about Undead Nightmare today. I'll go over Red Dead Redemption another time, but this extra content is basically its own game, with a story that veers off from the main game's campaign. Treat it like an alternate universe to the main game.

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Undead Nightmare takes place after the main campaign of Red Dead Redemption, but before the epilogue. Honestly, you could say it's an alternate ending to the game that replaces the epilogue with a dark twist.

John Marston, the protagonist of the main game, sends his boy to bed and is settling in to bed with his wife when Uncle shows up, bloodied, deranged, and violent. John knocks him out, then goes to get his shotgun. But Uncle isn't down for long, and he chases John's wife out of the house, getting a solid bite on her throat before John returns and guns him down.

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John's son comes running to his mother's aid, only to be bitten by her! They both rapidly turn into the undead, and John hog-ties them to keep them from hurting anyone else. He leaves them tied up in the bedroom, then promises to return once he's found a doctor.

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John goes to the nearest town to find it overrun with the undead. He helps the few remaining citizens liberate the town, then asks random survivors what's going on.

One girl mentions that her mother came back long after being dead and buried, and ate her dad's face off! She recommends burning coffins at the local cemetery to keep the dead from rising again. And also suggests she had an evil uncle who was buried there.

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Considering her contempt for him and the loving message scrawled on his tombstone, it hints at the dark kind of relationship they may have had. Also, she mentions all the horribly abusive things that her own father does, but dismisses them because "he's a good man!" So her uncle must've been a truly terrible person.

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From here, you're going from town to town, helping people survive undead attacks, following rumors about what might be causing it, and trying to find an end to the nightmare so you can cure your wife and kid.

In the original campaign, there was an easter egg where you could go way up north into the mountains and find a family of Sasquatch hiding in the forest. In Undead Nightmare, you get a quest to hunt them down.

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After killing several of them, you find one crying against a tree. He can speak! He begs you to end his life because "some maniac" has killed all of his friends and family and he's the last of his kind left. It's up to you whether or not to end his life.

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There are several other mythical creatures to be found roaming the lands, like chupacabra, black horned goats with red eyes, unicorns, and even the Four Horses of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not to be found.

You can wrangle and tame the first three horses, then the horse Death will appear in the wilderness to be tamed. Death is automatically awarded to you when you complete the whole storyline too. My favorite is War, because it's the only one with a fiery mane. The other three just look like regular horses with creepy eyes.

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My original horse was just a normal horse... until I encountered an undead bear, which knocked me over and killed my horse. The next time I called for my mount, this undead horse showed up! Turns out there are some tame undead; although the undead horses have a bad habit of ignoring commands and doing their own thing sometimes.

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There are many theories as to what's causing the undead to walk again. Some have some merit and warrant investigation, but others are completely outrageous.

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Still others are so wrapped up arguing over what to do in this new chaotic world that they don't pay attention to their surroundings...

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The most interesting theory I heard was that this was just a thing that happens every couple hundred years. A sort of cleansing ritual or something.

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I bought Red Dead Redemption ages ago, specifically for this Undead Nightmare content. But I didn't want to jump into a story-rich game without knowing all the characters and lore, so I rushed through the campaign as quick as I could.

I later regretted it, as I felt like the campaign was much better than this zombie storyline. Sure, you get a quick tour of all the characters from the campaign and see how they're handling the "zombie apocalypse." Hint: most aren't handling it well. But the undead story just feels like it was tacked on last-minute, with very few story missions and a lot of side quests to keep you running back and forth across the land.

Don't get me wrong, Undead Nightmare is a lot of fun to play if you want to run around and shoot zombies in a "spaghetti western" setting. But I much prefer Red Dead Redemption.

I went into Call of Cthulhu blind, not knowing anything except that it's somehow connected to the Cthulhu mythos. Not only was it another period piece supernatural detective story like yesterday's game, Kona, but it also stars a private investigator who was a former veteran. This time, though, it takes place in 1924 and our protagonist is a veteran of the first World War. You play Edward Pierce, a down-on-his-luck P.I. who is struggling with insomnia, alcoholism and PTSD from his service in the war.

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The game opens with Pierce lying in an underground cavern, panicking as he realizes he's soaked in the blood and guts of mutilated marine animals. He escapes, only to witness faceless cult members attacking a faceless intruder on their ceremony. Then they come for him...

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He awakens on the couch of his office. Just a nightmare. A client comes to his door, the father of a famous painter, Sarah Hawkins. He wants Pierce to investigate the mysterious death of his daughter and her husband and son. Supposedly, they all burned to death in a house fire, but the police blamed it on Sarah. They said she went mad and killed them all. Her father doesn't believe it and asks Pierce to uncover the truth.

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Pierce travels to Sarah's former home, an island off the coast of Boston called Darkwater, which has been mostly forgotten by the mainland. It's home to a small town of fishermen, as well as the wealthy Sarah Hawkins and her family. While trying to investigate Sarah's old warehouse, Pierce runs into the local muscle, a woman named Cat. She doesn't take kindly to him snooping on her territory.

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Did I mention this game has dialogue choices? Depending on how you handle situations (and in what direction you level your character's stats), you can change the course of action in the game.

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In this instance, I got my ass kicked by Cat. But, as you may remember from my former posts, I like to play the altruist in my games. I got the option to sneak into the warehouse again, but I was also given a chance to talk with Cat directly instead, and I was polite and honest enough with her that she decided to help me out instead of kicking my ass again. She actually escorted me to the warehouse this time!

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In the warehouse, you switch into detective mode, which allows you to scan for clues and piece together the crime scene. Kind of like the visions in Kona, except instead of glowing, moving silhouettes in a dark space, they're transparent, unmoving silhouettes in a frosty space.

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The local police burst in and kick Pierce out, but through dialogue choices, I got them to not only give me more valuable information, but also give me a lift to the decrepit Hawkins mansion on the island. Which did NOT burn down. Hmm...

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Exploring the mansion, Pierce eventually finds an underground passage and ends up falling into a cavern full of mutilated marine animals... the same one from the nightmare at the beginning of the game! Panicking, Pierce attempts to escape, only to experience the same cult scenario play out similar to his nightmare earlier. While running for his life, he's knocked unconscious by falling debris.

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From this point, the line between fantasy and reality starts blending. Pierce wakes in an insane asylum, breaks out, and then has to confront the indescribable horrors that he's witnessed. Finding allies to his experiences is difficult though, as most end up insane or dead. Or some people he witnessed being murdered will instead show up healthy with no memory of being harmed. Edward Pierce finds his grip on reality slipping and he needs to solve the case quick, before he falls into complete madness...

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There's a lot of lore throughout the story, and despite my lengthy explanation of the plot, there are tons of details that were omitted, to avoid spoilers. Plus, your choices can lead to slightly different outcomes. There are actually four different endings to this game, depending on interactions and how intact Pierce's sanity is by the end.

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Like a lot of horror games right now, Call of Cthulhu is currently 80% off on Steam, so take advantage of the seasonal deals if you like this kind of thing. Apparently, this game is the latest original story in a (non-related) series of "Call of Cthulhu" video games, which are independently licensed works based on an old tabletop RPG of the same name, which itself is loosely based on the H.P. Lovecraft short, "The Call of Cthulhu." So my initial impression, that it's "somehow connected to the Cthulhu mythos," is a pretty good summary of this game.

Kona is a supernatural detective story, taking place in Northern Quebec in October 1970. You play as Carl Faubert, a private investigator from Montreal and a veteran from the Korean War. He's hired by the wealthy industrialist, William Hamilton, to come to Atamipek Lake and investigate a simple vandalism issue. Most of Carl's thoughts are spoken aloud by a narrator as you play through this game.

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As soon as you arrive, a car desperately trying to get out of town swerves out of control and sends you careening into the ditch. When you wake up a few hours later, a blizzard has set in and you find yourself freezing to death.

You immediately set out to warm and heal yourself so you can repair your truck and get back on the road. The other driver took out a bridge, trapping you in the town. The driver is nowhere to be found, so all you can do is continue on to your prearranged meeting with your client.

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You eventually get up the road to the general store, where you were supposed to meet your employer... only to find him dead! Your detective instincts kick in and you start exploring the store for clues.

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You find an unusual chunk of glowing ice behind the general store, almost as if an iceberg came out of the ground (see first screenshot). There are wolf tracks leading away from it, but when you take a picture of it, you discover hidden moose tracks alongside it too.

Following the various trails of glowing ice and hidden moose tracks, you will occasionally find completely frozen people - encased in ice from head to toe! Walking up to them will start a vision, showing you what they were up to before they were frozen.

The screen started pulsing uncomfortably with a heavy heartbeat sound every time I got close to them, so I avoided them at first, thinking I would freeze or die or something. It wasn't until I accidentally wandered too close and started a vision that I realized I was missing out on story-advancing clues.

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As you uncover more clues, you scribble in more details on your map of Atamipek Lake, giving you more places to explore.

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You also discover that Atamipek Lake is mostly a ghost town, with everyone either frozen, having fled, or are dead. There is one living person I came across early on; a surly old French man who's defending himself from the "hybrid wolf/moose creature" in the woods that's freezing everyone. He has some folklore books on his table about Wendigos and what creates one, which I suspect is either a clue as to what's happening, or possibly a red herring.

Either way, the old man gives you a proper winter coat if you go find him a bottle of Caribou (a sort of bootleg alcohol one of the residents was making in their cabin).

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I've only played 3-1/2 hours of this game so far (and most of it was spent wandering in the woods or rummaging through abandoned houses), but it's been quite enjoyable. You learn about each of the townsfolk and their motives against William Hamilton. Being a rich guy who swooped in and took over the town, he's not very well liked, so there are plenty of motives for the people to kill him.

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I also like that there's a driving aspect to this game. You can walk around in the cold, but you need to occasionally warm yourself and drink/eat to keep your brain power up. And when the cold is affecting you, you can't move fast. So being able to climb into a truck and quickly drive cross-country to the nearest house is convenient. And I do love driving in games.

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All of the text in this game is in French, with an automatic English translation popping up over it. I'm not sure if this was originally a French game and/or made by a French developer, or if they were just trying to be authentic to Northern Quebec, a French-speaking region of Canada. But I do enjoy the authenticity of seeing everything in French. The narrator speaks in English, and the old man you run into speaks French, but with English captions.

There's apparently a sequel to this game that released in October last year - Kona II: Brume. It follows Carl again as he explores the same region, trying to explore the reality-altering "brume" (French for mist or haze) that covers the region and isolates it from the rest of the world. Sounds almost like a tribute to Silent Hill.

And both games are on sale on Steam right now. 80% off for this game; 70% off for the sequel. If this sounds like your kind of game, it's only a few bucks right now, so now's the time to check it out.

Cry of Fear was originally a Half-Life mod that evolved into its own independent horror game. And being that it's a Half-Life mod, the game is free to play on Steam!

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I knew this was a Half-Life mod immediately, because it always gave me a "Half-Life Launcher" error and crashed when I tried to load it in 4K resolution. Also, the pause screen was the old classic settings menu from the original Half-Life game.

I apologize that the subtitle in the first screenshot is so tiny. This game wasn't originally designed for 4K resolution. I normally run my display scale at 200% so text is easy to read, even at 4K. But this game tried to launch at 4K, blown up to 200% display size, so I could only see a quarter of the screen. Bringing it back down to 100% meant text, and my interface as a whole, was going to be really tiny throughout the game. Good thing I have a 48" monitor; I could still see my interface and read subtitles while playing.

Just a note: These screenshots are automatically squished and blurred a bit to fit here, but if you click to view them separately, you can see the full high-def 4K resolution. (On desktop, right-click and select "Open Image in New Tab." In an app, depending on what app you're using, you may just be able to click on them.)

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Cry of Fear takes place in a Scandinavian town. You play a young boy named Simon who stops to help an old man lying on the ground... before a car drives right at you!

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After some flashes of some creepy-looking doctor and a padded room, you wake up in a bedroom (with a Half-Life 2 poster on the wall!). You have blurred vision and are carrying a camera in your hands. You leave into a dark room and snap photos on designated spots to find your way out.

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After you escape, you find yourself in a back alley in a town, with text messages on your phone to guide you. As you navigate the town, you run into numerous bleeding ghouls who attempt to stab you to death.

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You also find creepy murder rooms and child-zombie-things that attempt to kill you too. The more you wander through the streets, the more Simon descends into madness...

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Cry of Fear has multiple endings and over 20 unlockables, including an extra campaign after you beat single-player. You can also play co-op with up to four people. And of course, this is a horror game, so there are plenty of surprise enemies and jump scares. I actually scared my wife in another room when the first jump scare popped up. I was so surprised, I apparently let out a loud curse that spooked her too!

The graphics may be outdated (and my game crashed several times just trying to get it to load on my 4K monitor), but the spooky atmosphere is there. I actually got a lot of requests to check this game out. It's not exactly my thing; I prefer a more defined storyline instead of flashes of horror scenes and aimlessly wandering around, trying to figure out where to go next or what to do. But if you like dark atmosphere, supernatural horrors, and haunting music, this is the game for you. Don't forget to play it after dark and turn out all the lights first!

That farmer dude is super creepy!

Happy's Humble Burger Farm is a game about working in a fast food restaurant, with all the standard horrors that come with a job like that. The game opens with a couple surgeons chatting as they install a "Reality Fabrication chip" into your brain.

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You're then walked through the steps of cooking and assembling a burger, then bagging it and delivering it to customers. With the added warning that making a mistake will summon Happy, the mascot cow, who will pursue you until you feed her a burger with a rotten patty. She only moves if you're not looking at her, so keep your eyes on her while making her burger...

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You then wake up in your bedroom, with the goal of getting to work for your first night shift (you only work night shifts). The game defaults to a "VHS filter" over your screen, making everything a little fuzzy and staticky, but you can change it to some other filter in the settings, or turn it off completely. I personally preferred to play it clear, without the blurry imagery.

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You'll be working the night shift at Happy's Humble Burger Farm, alongside the manager Toe. But Toe's brain has been turned to mush from all the experiments done to him, so he only mumbles incomprehensibly while standing over the grill. Like in real life, you need to do all the work yourself because your manager is completely useless.

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As you explore and find more cassette tapes with audio logs, you learn that all employees of this restaurant have basically been test subjects for some sort of experiment. But all of them either went missing or insane. Toe is still hanging by a thread, but he's a shell of a human being at this point. And you appear to be the latest subject, who still (somewhat) retains their sanity.

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Remember this farmer dude? All the various restaurant mascots have large plaster statues scattered around the dining area of the restaurant and will throw out a few catch phrases if you click on them. The farmer, though, speaks with a horrifying deep demon voice and only speaks of death, murder, homicide, etc.

Also, he's the only mascot who moves. When you're not looking, he'll move back and forth around his corner of the restaurant. It's unnerving when he's facing the door, then you walk past and look back and he's suddenly right next to you, staring into your soul. (See first screenshot)

Then there's the weird fry guys. I have no idea what these guys' deal is, but occasionally, the music will turn creepy and then one of these guys will just spawn randomly and scuttle across the restaurant floors for a minute.

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As the game advances, more of the town between your apartment and the restaurant will open up for you to explore. There's this interesting "Steal & Sell" shop, which I guess implies you can steal things from your work to sell them for a profit here.

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Then there's a coffee shop with a live band playing in the front window. Drinking coffee before a shift will speed up your burger-making process, so make sure to load up on that java!

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Finally, there's this Happy's Humble Burger Farm warehouse under construction that opens up after a truck crashes through the fence. Be careful exploring within, though, because there's a massive pig inside that attacks you if you disturb him. He throws something green at you (snot bombs?) while these creepy mannequin-like people stumble toward you and explode.

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I'm not sure what to do here, but there's a burger station to one side, so I wonder if I can satiate him by feeding him burgers. It's a little hard to assemble burgers while constantly under attack, though. I was trapped in this building and struggled to make any progress, so that's where I left off for the night.

You might notice that I don't have any screenshots of Happy herself. That's because I used to work in a couple fast food restaurants as a teenager, and also spent 20 years in the military where attention to detail was paramount to keeping people alive. So I didn't make a single mistake making burgers, even with all the custom orders people requested, and Happy never made an appearance during my gameplay. Although that giant pig kind of cut my gameplay short.

When the game starts, there's a loading screen where someone logs into a computer with a username and password. When you get a game over, it shows a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). So maybe part of the experiment is that this is all a simulation? You're not actually at a restaurant? I dunno; I'll have to play through the whole game to figure out what's actually going on.

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And now for something completely different... The Complex is actually an interactive film! Sort of a "choose your own adventure" kind of story. You play as Dr. Amy Tenent (played by Michelle Mylett, of Letterkenny fame) as she deals with a medical science crisis.

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The game opens with Amy saving lives in the war-torn fictional South-East Asian nation of Kindar. Which feels like a stand-in for North Korea. They even refer to the leader of the dictator regime as the Supreme Leader.

Immediately, you're given a choice, and choices matter in this game. You also have a limited time to make your choice. (Although you can turn off the timer in the options if you struggle to make quick decisions.)

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Fast-forward 5 years and Amy is now working for a large organization, developing nanocells that will help heal and repair people. But one of the company's interns collapses on a public transit, having a bad reaction to the under-developed nanocells.

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Amy is rushed to an underground complex, where she will attempt to save the young intern's life, while also extracting the nanocells from her blood.

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But the complex suddenly goes into lockdown, and some mysterious terrorists attempt to break in. Amy needs to figure out what's actually going on and survive the threat from outside - and from within...

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Like I said, choices matter in this game. There are 9 different endings and 196 different scenes to discover. And there isn't a way to save your progress and go back to a previous decision. If you make a bad call, you're locked in to the repercussions of that choice until the end of the game. Just like real life.

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I played through this game twice. The first playthrough, I almost made it to the end and got a lot of people killed along the way. I did my best to be kind to everyone - if you remember my previous post, I mentioned that I don't like to be cruel in video games. I try to play as altruistic as I can. But apparently, that didn't work too well in this game. I had to be the "tough bitch" sometimes and make some harsh decisions instead of people-pleasing all the time. They gave me a final assessment of "neurotic." Damn, okay.

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My second playthrough, I made a slightly different choice early on in the game... and died almost immediately. At least I got an achievement for getting over 50% relationship status with everyone I'd met... which is called the "People Pleaser" achievement. That hurts. 😖

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I actually got this game in a bundle with other interactive film games, although I can't remember the names of the others. I'll need to dig through my Steam library and track down some more of these kind of games. I really enjoyed it.

For me personally, video games are basically interactive stories. I want to have an entertaining tale to follow, where I get to influence the way the main character completes the story.

This kind of game is exactly that, except super heavy on the film side of it with minimal interactions. It was fun to sit through once, but on concurrent playthroughs, I found myself spamming the skip button to get to the choices quicker. And some (lengthy) cutscenes were unskippable because they went over important story details. I would love to find all the endings to this game, but I don't think I have the patience to sit through it many more times. Not when I have many more video games that need my attention. 😉

Officially, this game is called Duck Season, but when they ported it to Steam, they added "PC" to its Steam title the version on Steam without "PC" in its name is VR only. They're both just called Duck Season in the game itself.

Old guys like me know the game this is parodying - Duck Hunt, for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The "Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt" cartridge was the first video game I ever owned and I had the original gray gun controller for it. I spent a lot of time shooting ducks in that game back in my youth!

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There are a few differences between this game and the original one. Firstly, this one is a high-def simulation of a kid playing the original Duck Hunt. Secondly, instead of an actual dog, it's a guy in a dog costume. And finally... this is a horror game!

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Strangely enough, I beat the entire game and was surprised that there were no horror elements. Besides a couple slightly weird scenes, nothing out of the ordinary happened. I beat the game, then the kid I was playing as moved on to "Final Fiesta II," a parody of Final Fantasy II. It was the best ending! I even got tons of food, like I was having a sleepover party with friends! Definitely brought back some nostalgic memories of my childhood in the '80s-'90s.

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Then the kid's mother mentioned that she would've shot the dog if she was playing, and it hit me - I actively avoid being cruel in video games! That's why nothing bad happened; I wasn't mean to the dog. Oops.

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My next playthrough, I accidentally (read: automatically) dialed 911 when I picked up the phone, and I dropped the receiver instead of hanging up, which led to the "Best Men" ending. I was mean to the dog this time, but instead of whatever horrors he would've brought to my house, I instead watched a live news coverage of a police helicopter pursuing him through the neighborhood! I guess I need to play through it again and avoid doing anything logical this time if I want my horror ending...

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Interestingly, the game opens like a stage production, with backdrops to tell the story leading into the game. Which is an odd way to introduce a nostalgic video game simulator.

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Also, the game itself takes you into the TV, where you're essentially on-stage performing. There are props and boundaries to the stage, and if you turn around, you can see yourself sitting in front of the TV!

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I enjoyed the nostalgic toy commercials. Especially with all the blocks that the toys crash through. Very much like old '80s/'90s commercials. Personally, I always wanted those blocks so I could crash my own toys through them! They made it look very appealing for young me.

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Here's an amusing bit of trivia: The hunter guy in the shotgun tutorial video is Sam Gorski - someone I went to high school with! He and his buddy, Niko Pueringer (the guy in white who yells at his mini dude in the game's Bootloose VHS tape) are the creators of Corridor Digital, and I knew them both when we were teenagers.

I wasn't super close with them; they were a few grades below me and we had intersecting friend circles. But I've been following their CG film career on YouTube for the last 2 decades and I was surprised to see their familiar faces in this game.

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Digging into the production details of Duck Season PC, I discovered that the writer/director, Brandon Laatsch, is the younger brother of an old friend of mine from high school!

And he's not credited, but I'm 99% positive the guy in the "There's No 'I' in Iowa" VHS tape is my high school homecoming king. Small world.

I was hoping to keep up daily Halloween-themed posts through all of October, but I had way too much on my plate yesterday and didn't get a moment to myself until almost midnight. Who knew retired life could be so busy? Oh well; at least I never promised to do daily posts. Maybe I'll make a double post sometime to make up for it, or review an extra horror game on November 1st.

Today's horror-themed video game is Alien: Isolation. This takes place in the Alien movie franchise (specifically after the first film), and actually follows Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda, as she tries to track down what happened to her mother aboard the Nostromo.

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As you may remember from the original 1979 film (Spoilers ahead; click to reveal)

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Ellen Ripley's crew responded to an emergency beacon and found an abandoned ship on a small planet. During their exploration, they ran across alien facehugger eggs and accidentally bred an alien, which escaped aboard their ship and managed to kill the whole crew except for Ripley. She managed to barely escape in a small vessel after blowing up their mining ship, the Nostromo.

This game takes place 15 years later. Amanda Ripley, now an adult and working for Weyland-Yutani (her mother's company), heard about a remote trading station called Sevastopol that had recovered the flight recorder from the Nostromo. She was invited along with the recovery team, only to find that the station was under duress and not responding.

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Amanda is split up from her team while trying to board, finds the trading station mostly empty except for a few panicked people running and looting for their lives, and eventually discovers what's happening... an alien is loose and hunting people.

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Worse yet, the androids running the trading station have locked everyone out of the communications hub and are refusing to contact the outside world. When you try to break in to contact your team on the orbiting ship, the androids mark you as a threat and turn violent. Nothing worse than hearing kind words from an android while being strangled to death...

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This game is mostly stealth, sneaking around and avoiding aliens. But it definitely falls under the horror category and has its jump scare moments. The aliens patrol certain regions of the ship and you have to find your way around them using various tools, such as smoke bombs, noisemakers, flash bangs, and EMP mines. All of which you have to craft yourself using items you find scattered around the various floors of the trading station.

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Plus, it's everyone for themselves, so you have to be careful about the people you run into. Some will help you; others will attack you. Use your best judgment when approaching others. And don't forget to use your motion tracker to see how close the aliens are to you. They like to hide in the vents and surprise you. But they can also hear the ping of the motion tracker, so use it sparingly if they're close by...

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Alien: Isolation faithfully reproduces the original film in video game format, with the same theme music from the film, as well as high-quality reproductions of the film sets. The original film was a beautiful sci-fi spectacle, with incredible details on board the Nostromo. You get to see that same level of quality applied not only to your own ship (the same type as the Nostromo), but to the trading station as a whole. No corners were cut in the music and graphics department. Check out these familiar scenes reproduced from the film:

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Note: these screenshots are all from my 4K gameplay with maxed out graphics settings. They may look a little blurry here, but click on them and you'll see the full 4K detail. It's absolutely gorgeous level of work that went into replicating everything in game. There are hardly any copy/paste levels; it's an insane amount of work to create a world that feels like you're actually living in it. I keep pausing just to admire the details of everything, even just random hallways!

This game is a masterpiece in graphic design, and the soundtrack pulled right from the 1979 classic film helps to pull you into this world even more. I really enjoyed this game and I can't recommend it enough!

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a comedic survival game, where you are stuck on a collection of small islands. You need to gather up fragments of an artifact and bring it back to a circle of runestones to create an escape portal.

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You are being hunted by British robot gentlemen, though. So you need to be aware of your surroundings and keep quiet. Stealth is the key to survival in this game.

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You will lose vitality over time and need to replenish it with food and/or drink. You can hunt game and cook it for fresh meat, or you can scavenge the abandoned villages for resources. Most options in the houses are dubious at best, though, and you need to decide just how important your survival is.

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The robots are pretty intelligent, and they only get better as you raise the difficulty. They're actively hunting you, so they will continue to pursue you forever. Your only hope of survival is to avoid them and, if caught, lose them or destroy them. If you are caught and killed, you will get a nice little screen showing off your survival stats for that game.

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The five islands are randomly generated, so you never play the same map twice. You can pick between five biomes for each island: castle, industrial, rural, mountainous, and fenland. So you get a variety of terrain to run, hide and scavenge on.

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The game is officially called Sir, You Are Being Hunted. But if you're not a sir, there is an option on the main screen to switch to Madam, You Are Being Hunted. The disembodied voice of Walter, your butler, will refer to you by your chosen pronoun throughout the gameplay.

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This is a silly, extremely British survival game, and it's loads of fun to play, even for someone like me who hates survival games. Happy hunting!

Dagon is originally a short story by the creator of the eldritch horror genre, H.P. Lovecraft. This version is a free game on Steam that converts his short story into a visual novel. A narrator reads through the tale while you experience the visuals and landscapes described in the story. You can look around you (and it supports VR too!) but you can't walk and explore. You're stuck in place and only move on as you advance the story.

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Throughout the game, you can find hidden bits of trivia, which dive deeper into topics surrounding H.P. Lovecraft's life, the story itself, or other bits of background lore to help you understand the time period in which this story was written.

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H.P. Lovecraft himself was terrified of the ocean and all aquatic life, ever since he was two years old; although he has no idea what event may have instilled that fear within him. However, he took that fear and translated it into a new genre of unknowable and incomprehensible horror that defied the rules for standard storytelling of the time. As someone who is also afraid of any body of water in which I can't see the bottom, I totally get it.

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Dagon is a tale about a sailor who escapes from enemy capture on the high seas by slipping out in a small rowboat in the night. But when he awakes the next morning, he is no longer on the ocean, as a muddy land mass has risen above the ocean level, stranding him along with all sorts of hidden creatures from the deep.

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He sees a peak in the distance and spends the next day and night journeying toward it, only to discover on the other side, a giant monolith illuminated in the moonlight, engraved with pictograms of horrifying creatures. But then a creature stirs from deep within a pool at its base...

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As a narrative short story, this game will only take you maybe 30 mins or less to play through. But it's fun to search through each area for trivia to collect. There are 20 bits of trivia to find scattered throughout the core game.

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The base game is free on Steam, but there are two separate short story DLCs you can buy for a few bucks each. The first is The Little Glass Bottle, a short story H.P. Lovecraft wrote when he was seven years old! It's a cute tale about treasure hunting in the ocean that has no horror elements in it.

The second story is The Railway Horror, which was a nightmare H.P. Lovecraft experienced and wrote about to a friend of his. Both stories have eight bits of trivia each, giving you further background into Lovecraft's life and works.

Bendy and the Ink Machine is a game about an animation studio that tried to bring their classic cartoon characters to life... with horrifying consequences.

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You play a man named Henry who was invited back to the old animation studio he used to work at, by Joey Drew, the head of Joey Drew Studios (which is also this game's developer).

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When you arrive, you find the place empty(?), but you also find a giant ink machine that you've never seen before. Through cassette recordings, you learn how to power it up and... before you know it, there's an ink demon running amok through the halls!

You try to run for the exit, but find yourself falling deep into the bowels of the studio. From there, you're solving puzzles and fighting off ink monsters, while also hiding from Bendy himself as he awkwardly staggers around the floors randomly.

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You also run into Sammy Lawrence, the former studio's music director, who accidentally ingested some of the ink and partially turned into an ink monster himself. He offers you up as a sacrifice for Bendy, hoping to be rewarded with his humanity.

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At one point, you get a choice to head toward either The Demon or The Angel. I chose the angel and found myself at the mercy of a disfigured and insane Alice Angel from the Bendy cartoon series. I'm not sure what's on the demon side; perhaps I should replay it and try that route.

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Eventually, you receive a sort of handmade black light that lets you see hidden messages on the walls that guide you. Once you beat the game, it will let you start the game with the black light. I'm excited to play this game over and see what messages I can find in the various rooms and hallways.

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I first played this game when it was releasing in 5 separate chapters and I was hooked! Unfortunately, I never beat it. The instructions weren't clear back in the early versions of the game and I found myself wandering aimlessly around several floors, not sure what I needed to do. I don't think I ever finished chapter 3.

Then I picked it up again last night and ended up beating the whole thing in a single sitting. It was much clearer with the full version of the game, and I powered through the whole thing in about 5 hours.

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There is a spin-off called Boris and the Dark Survival, which is a top-down survival game where you play as Boris the Wolf. You collect supplies while trying to avoid Bendy as he roams around. According to its Steam page, the game will soon be renamed to Bendy: Lone Wolf, add a bunch of improvements and add-ons to the game, and increase its price. It's only $3 right now, so might as well snatch it up before it gets more expensive!

Then there was a sequel to the main game called Bendy and the Dark Revival. You play as Audrey, an animator who found herself trapped in the dark studio at the mercy of Bendy and his ink monsters.

There is also a free Steam game that came out this year called Bendy: Secrets of the Machine, which doesn't really give a description and its trailer is just a tease without explaining anything. I need to play that and see what it's all about.

Finally, there's a upcoming game called Bendy: The Cage, which takes place during Bendy and the Dark Revival. It sounds like it will follow our original protagonist, Henry, during that game.

This Zombie Army franchise is actually a spin-off of the Sniper Elite video game franchise, which portrayed fictional Allied missions carried out by the series' main hero, Karl Fairburne, during World War II.

The Zombie Army story takes place in a separate alternate history where Hitler, upon losing WWII, decided to enact "Plan Z" and resurrect all of the Wehrmacht's soldiers as zombies.

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The first two Zombie Army games were compacted into a trilogy release with the third game. This trilogy had Hitler raising his undead army, being killed off, and then resurrected as a sentient zombie leader before being tossed in hell.

This fourth and latest game has millions of zombies running rampant across Europe. It's discovered that Zombie Hitler is still leading the hordes from hell and is now amassing a new zombie army with which to invade Earth.

You play as the hero from the Sniper Elite games, Karl Fairburne. Or, if you prefer, you can play as various other characters from the franchise (and even some from the Left 4 Dead franchise). I personally prefer to play as Jun, an original Chinese character for this game. Each character has different stats, so it's not just choosing a skin for your character; you have to be mindful of their abilities too.

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Like the Sniper Elite games, one of the core mechanics of this game is to snipe zombies from afar. Thankfully, these are the clumsy, shambling, slow zombies, so you have time to line up shots, even in a short and narrow area. If you get a perfect aim on a vital organ, it rewards you with a slow-motion cutscene of your bullet firing, zipping across the map, and an x-ray view of the enemy's skeleton shattered or vital organs exploded by your bullet. With rotting zombies, though, there's not much difference between the x-ray view and their normal appearance.

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These are supernatural zombies, raised with occult magic, so they don't stay dead. If you don't get a headshot on them, don't be surprised if their body suddenly glows with occult magic and comes back to life. A good way to ensure they don't get back up is to stomp on their corpse until it disintegrates in a gory mess. It'll sometimes release ammo and other beneficial items too!

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I love the attention to detail in this game. All across the map, you can find zombie rats and crows with glowing red eyes. They leave you alone, but it's still super creepy how they just linger in the shadows, silently watching you. It's truly a world-building detail, which makes me think about how The Black Plague was spread through rats. I wonder if these rats would turn people into zombies if they got bit...

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There are also other signs of the occult in the background, like a zombie hand running around each level that you can snipe for bonus points. Or these creepy china dolls that pop up in various places. Sometimes they're just dolls, sitting there unmoving in dark corners. Other times, they talk or move slightly. And sometimes you have mere seconds to shoot them before they just straight-up vanish into thin air after taunting you. Creepy dolls, man...

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You can also find these random zombie heads that are technically alive, but unable to do anything. This one in particular, you could turn on the stove and cook it until it melts into the soup. I like the sign someone wrote on the wall behind the stove. Very important detail to remember!

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I find it interesting that this game takes place in mid-1940s Europe, but the music in the game is reminiscent of '80s horror flicks, including posters for each mission that look like worn B-movie horror films from that generation. Also, when you pick up equipment and ammo during a mission, it makes a sound like an old-fashioned mechanical pinball machine from the '80s.

It's like they kept the WWII setting from the Sniper Elite games, but wanted an '80s horror vibe for this game. Classic horror films from the '80s have been pretty popular in the past decade; I feel like Stranger Things helped to bring back that nostalgia for us millennials who grew up in the '80s and '90s, so they were probably trying to cash in on that nostalgia trip while it's hot.

Don't let the colorful kiddie-friendly graphics fool you; Pumpkin Jack is a game about literal hell on Earth. It takes place in a world where everything was so happy and peaceful, the devil himself got bored and decided to shake things up a bit by releasing monsters across the world.

Humans didn't like having their peaceful lives interrupted like that, so they hired a wizard to protect them against the invading hordes of demons. In response, the devil summoned an infamous trickster known as Jack to take out the wizard. He granted Jack a jack-o-lantern body and offered to free his soul if Jack did this one task for him.

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You play as Jack, roaming the lands and fighting various monsters who prevent you from tracking down the wizard. You recruit a crow, who helps you with ranged fighting while you engage in close-quarters combat.

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Some places require you to explore and solve a simple puzzle in a place your body can't reach. In those situations, Jack will detach his head and let it crawl around on vine-like tentacles.

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Despite releasing in 2020, this game feels like a classic Xbox 360 game from 20 years ago. From the graphic style to the gameplay, this feels like something you'd find in a bargain bin at the game store. It's entertaining, silly, and filled with mechanics that feel like they were designed for a controller.

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Not to mention, each level is essentially a single path through various obstacles and enemies. If you do explore, it's only slightly to one side or another, looking for collectibles. If you find crow skull collectibles, you can exchange them for skins for Jack at a vendor who randomly pops up in each of the levels.

You can also find gramophones. I believe the only purpose of collecting them is to get an achievement, but Jack does a little dance number every time you find one, which is mildly amusing.

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The game itself is relatively short. There are 6 main levels, but various checkpoints and stages throughout each one. So it should only take you a few hours to beat the whole game. Plus, there are 20 crow skulls and one gramophone per level, so 120 skulls and 6 gramophones in total. Honestly, that's the most early-2000s game vibe I get from this - searching for pointless hidden collectibles that aren't remotely connected to the story.

It's not a bad game, but as old-fashioned as the gameplay is, I definitely wouldn't pay more than $20 max for it. And hey! It's 88% off on Steam until October 20th, so you can get it for only $3.59 right now. Not a bad Halloween deal.

Vampire Survivors is a top-down survival game where you essentially just try to stay alive as long as possible while endless waves of monsters come at you from all sides.

Your weapons and abilities are all automatic; you just need to worry about moving around the map and staying alive. Some of your abilities only fire in the direction you're facing, while others target the nearest enemy, and still others just randomly fire off and hit anything in their path.

Extra strong enemies will drop treasure chests when they die, which will give you gold and a random ability to enhance your character.

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As you gain XP and level up from killing monsters, you'll get an option to pick your next ability. Choose wisely; you're given three random abilities and you can only choose one. Make sure you pick something that will help you survive long enough to level up again.

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You fight until you're eventually overwhelmed. Then you pick a new character (or the same character if you like) and start over again. The more gold you earn, the more core stats you can boost from the main menu, which will give you a starting advantage in your next playthrough.

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There's a timer on the top of the screen that shows how long you're surviving. If you start to do really well, you'll unlock more levels to play. And honestly... that's pretty much it. It's just a fun game to see how long you can overcome insane odds against hordes of monsters. Pretty simple, yet rather addicting. A great way to pass the time.

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The Fabled Woods is a short narrative "walking simulator" that explores the lives of several strangers in the woods and how they're connected. While enjoying picturesque scenery and a short jaunt down a forested path, you're treated to the short tales of Larry, Sara, and Todd.

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Larry suspects there's someone watching him in the woods, while Sara is investigating a crime scene in the woods.

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As you listen to their individual stories, you'll get an option to "remember," which will turn everything dark red except for a glowing-red blood path pointing you toward an object. Taking hold of the object will take you to this dark floating path in a red sky, where you'll hear darker and more intimate details behind each person's life.

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Todd's story will tie all the others together, explaining how each person is connected to each other. It's a pretty short game. While taking my time and exploring the beautiful imagery of the forest, it took me about an hour to complete. Most people say they're done in about 40 mins.

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There were complaints on Steam that this game was way overpriced for its short and simple gameplay. The developers responded by permanently reducing the price. And it just so happens that it's currently 90% off right now, so if this sounds even remotely intriguing, you can get it for less than a buck until October 27th.

I always buy my Steam games on sale (which is how I could afford to buy over 3,500 of them over the years!) so I like to point out good deals if I find them. The story was mildly interesting at best, so it's definitely worth a buck. I probably wouldn't pay more than that, personally.

Little Nightmares is a wordless, side-scrolling game about a tiny girl in a yellow raincoat named Six, stowed away on a massive ship called The Maw. She journeys from room to room across the ship, trying to escape.

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She finds herself surrounded by giant, terrifying, warped versions of adults, who will stop at nothing to capture her. Like this blind guy with stubby legs and horrifyingly long and stretchy spider-like arms. When we meet him, he's packaging up living children in paper and twine like they were hocks of meat. He's very sensitive to sounds; don't let him hear you walking on the creaky floorboards!

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Or this chef who is preparing a grisly feast for the grotesque guests aboard the ship.

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Six herself is crippled with hunger several times throughout the game. To the point where she starts considering some awful food choices...

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Fortunately, she's able to find sustenance around the ship. Next to a cafeteria of sorts, a small child drops a piece of bread for her to eat. She also runs into these little gnome-like creatures scurrying around the ship. After eventually befriending one of them, he offers her food when he sees her struggling.

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Little Nightmares is a side-scrolling stealth/puzzle game. You're trying to silently find your way across this massive ship without being caught by the giant adults, but you occasionally find yourself stuck and need to find a lever to turn or pull, or a button to press, or a key to unlock a door. They're simple puzzles, but the atmosphere is dark and spooky, making any hesitation in the open a frightening ordeal. Not to mention, the creepy details in the background, like how this bed has straps across it to hold someone down:

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The scariest part of the game for me is when you're trying to walk across the dining tables of all the grotesque guests who are shoveling food into their fat faces as fast as they can. If you're not quick enough, you'll get snatched up and crammed into one of their maws. It's such an anxiety-ridden scene, I almost didn't take any screenshots. I was too focused on trying to stay alive!

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Not to mention, the creepy subtle music throughout this game. I especially like Six's Theme Part I and Hunger II (for those of you who bought the soundtrack). That haunting child's hum set to a spooky background theme makes for some terrifying mood-setting music.

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This game has a sequel, Little Nightmares II, which I believe might be a prequel story. You play as a tiny boy named Mono, who discovers a fading Six and attempts to save her, while also searching for a signal tower that's corrupting everyone through horrifying broadcasts. I daresay it's even more terrifying than the first game, with a horrifyingly dark end to its story.

Also, a new game, Little Nightmares III, has been announced for release next year. It follows two new children, Low and Alone, trying to find their way out of Nowhere. I'm excited to see what that game will be like! And I hope Six shows up at some point. I'm fascinated with her story and hope we get some more expanded lore on her.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an incredible game dealing with psychosis and mental trauma. It's about a Celtic girl named Senua who is journeying to the Viking Hel to bargain with Hela for the life of her lost love. She literally carries his head in a cloth tied to her belt.

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Throughout her journey, Senua is plagued by visions and voices, some helpful and some harmful. A narrator of sorts guides her, while a bunch of chatty voices in the background express her fears, desires, anxieties, etc.

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Senua finds herself fighting monsters who spawn from thin air, intent on stopping her from her goals. Each time she dies, rot spreads from her limbs. If it spreads to her head, it's game over.

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Along the journey, you can find runestones that will explain some ancient Viking mythology and help you understand Senua's intents. You don't need to track them down to beat the game, but it's a welcome world-building tool for us modern-day folks who may not know anything about ancient Viking mythology, geography, and traditions.

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This game is beautifully designed and gorgeous to look at. The way cinematic cutscenes blend right into gameplay is amazing! I highly recommend playing with surround sound headphones because the voices in Senua's head whisper from all different angles and distances from her. It's incredibly immersive and gives you a sense of what it's like to deal with psychosis.

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I debated whether I should include this in my Halloween gaming marathon because I wouldn't necessarily consider it a horror game. But exploring the mental trauma of a young girl who lost her love and has to battle invisible demons while trying to come to terms with that loss... it's a haunting tale. Definitely on par with some modern day horror plots.

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There's a sequel that just released this year called Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, which further explores Senua's struggles as she attempts to save both herself and others. I own it, but it's been so long since I played through Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice that I need to replay the original before I check out the sequel.