First Look: Blumhouse Games’ debut scared us, despite looking like a PS1 game

One of the most surprising moments of Summer Game Fest this year was the appearance of Blumhouse Games on Geoff Keighley‘s stage. While we know the horror label was getting into games, we weren’t aware of the extent; six game announcements later, we’re still reeling.

The first of those games, Fear The Spotlight, had a presence at the ensuing Summer Game Fest Play Days event. We sat down with the PS1-era spookfest for a brief hands-on demo, and if this is what Blumhouse has planned for its first outing, horror aficionados are in good hands.

The demo follows the bookish Vivian and rebel Amy, two high school students who are sneaking into their school in order to “borrow” a Ouija board and talk to spirits. Sunnyside High has a reputation, it seems, and Amy wants to get to the bottom of it, while Vivian is apprehensive about the whole thing. We play as Vivian, and we sheepishly control her as she follows Amy deeper into the school.

First and foremost, the retro PS1-era graphics do wonders in creating a mood for the entire demo. The halls of this school after hours are dark and dreary, and the pixelated filter over the screen only enhances the spookiness. The weight of walking through these halls and eventually getting to the library in the silent dark is peak atmosphere, and it’s making us nervous without anything actually happening.

As we turn a corner, a camera with a flashlight is seen monitoring the hallway. Amy tells us to duck under a nearby desk, and we get our first taste of danger. As we slowly make our way past the camera – watching the path of its flashlight the whole way – Vivian’s breath is heavy and audible through the headset. Her anxiety is palpable, and in turn it’s raising ours as we finally get around this brief obstacle.

Finally, we reach the library, and Amy asks Vivian to get the seance board out of the display case. This involves a brief puzzle where Vivian must find her keycard – she volunteers at the library, of course – to get into the office, retrieve the key to the display case, and then open the case and procure the board.

“First and foremost, the retro PS1-era graphics do wonders in creating a mood for the entire demo. The halls of this school after hours are dark and dreary, and the pixelated filter over the screen only enhances the spookiness.”

That sounds, as written, incredibly boring, but it’s anything but; walking through the darkness of the library alone, while hearing creaks and other noises in all directions, makes the hairs of our neck stand up, even though we’re never in any danger. No enemies attack, no monsters appear, nothing of the sort, and yet our heart is pounding as we walk from room to room in this library worried that something might jump out of the shadows and grab us.

Back with Amy, the seance board is placed on the table, four candles are lit, and the ceremony begins. There’s little interaction here, all we need to do is move the cursor over the indicator on the board, but eventually things go haywire, we see a dark figure behind Amy, and the candles go out, returning the room to the pitch black. As Vivian stirs, we’re tasked with re-lighting the candles, one by one, just to up the tension even more, and when we do… Amy is gone. Uh-oh.

We make our way back to the main room, past a maze of fallen bookshelves and ungodly noises, before finding Amy standing by the door. As we approach her, the door flies open, an ominous red light emerges, and Amy rises into the air before being sucked inside. Meanwhile, the library is filling with fire, and we must escape before we’re killed.

This last sequence somehow creates a completely different sense of tension, as we must now escape a burning library where one wrong turn could spell death. The path is fairly obvious to navigate, admittedly, but that doesn’t make getting through it less than an ordeal. Eventually, we reach what looks like a dead end, but then the wall opens up – you know, as walls tend to do – and we pass through for the end of the demo. Whew.

Fear The Spotlight managed to scare us, as it uses its PS1-era visuals and sound design in masterful ways. Every step of Vivian’s walk through the school is riddled with doubt, as we never can tell when the second show is going to drop and all hell will break loose. When it finally does, it’s a race to the finish that gets the heart pumping.

We have a ton of questions about this game – Where did Amy go? What’s with the fire? Who was that shadow man? – but luckily we won’t have to wait long; Fear The Spotlight is scheduled to launch later this year on consoles and PC.