Goosebumps the Game Review

“Reader beware, you’re in for a scare!” A review of the Goosebumps game aiming to bring R.L Stine’s classic horror books to consoles.

---

R.L Stine is renowned for his Goosebumps books, the popular tag line “Reader beware, you’re in for a scare!” Laced the front of every book and would put a grin on any 9 year old face before they divulged into the horrors that lie within the pages. So surely a Goosebumps game would give the same nostalgia, the same frights that kept our noses in the books?

Goosebumps the game is currently listed on the PSN store for £11.99 (£10.79 for PS plus members) and is rated at age 7, wholly appropriate considering the target audience for the books I suppose but a bit of a missed opportunity in ways as a higher age rated game would have allowed for a lot more scares especially since original lovers of the book would now be in their 20-30’s but I’ll get to that later.

UI Interface / Style

First and foremost it is important to note that this is a point and click game, something which is not detailed in the store description. Players can choose to look at various items in the room or their inventory to get more information, and interact by picking them up, eating or drinking things or opening doors. Items can be taken from the inventory and used in the area to solve a puzzle and in some situations can be combined with other items you’ve picked up. The game doesn’t look too shabby in terms of its art style, in fact it is somewhat reminiscent of the art on the front of the Goosebumps books and runs at 720p.

The user interface is separated into three sections; the main windows shows the area you are currently in and is where all your interaction with the environment takes place. To the right is your inventory, essentially a stretched out rucksack Mary Poppins would be proud of that can’t be dismissed and appears to be worn over your right eye and finally below that is a parchment box where all the speech and information scrolls across when you interact with various objects. To interact with things you simply point your ‘Spooky’ cursor over it and press the short cut buttons to look at or interact with the item, or alternatively hit the action button to open a menu of options that you can select from.

Fig1: The UI is simple but leaves much to be desired for the gameplay. A simple point and click game with it's own issues.

Story

You play as yourself! A generic male or female silhouette that wears your name, or any name you put in. The story begins with two delivery drivers hard at work, and sharing stories of a previous scary jobs. The cutscenes are a layered image with the same animation on loop while voices are pretty much non – existent, forcing you to read the rather rapid text at the bottom of the screen. At this point in the game no character names are identified so while it may not be important it still would have been nice to know who was speaking.

In true Goosebumps fashion something makes a noise in the back of the truck and they go to investigate (according to the text) and with that the screen fades to black with a scary noise. Suddenly you’re standing outside a school faced with a terrifying dilemma. ..you’ve lost your mobile phone! With that revelation game play begins and after a series of events you eventually discover a number of monsters from R.L Stine’s novels are out in the world and hungry for revenge on the novelist. Your job is to stop them. (and supposedly get your home back because they take that over too)

Gameplay

The game gives you very little guidance and leaves you to flit between areas, collecting items and inspecting things. Many areas do require numerous revisits as solving various problems and puzzles opens or changes the environment. Quite frankly the first 5-10 minutes of game play is just gathering anything and everything you can get your slimy goosebumps pointer to pick up. The mobile phone (spoiler you find it!) serves as an intuitive map and tutorial reminder. ..until you realise it’s actually running out of battery. (The Horror!) In spite of this I found very little use for the phone aside from at the beginning when the game prompts you look at the map, an irritant when I realised completing the game without using it is actually an obtainable trophy.

The game progresses at a relatively good pace for a while with a number of puzzles taking a while to figure out if you haven’t gotten the item or access to a room you need just yet while other appear to just be pot luck. For instance it took a fair amount of time for me to work out how to develop some photos I needed when I actually found the information just minutes after solving the puzzle myself through trial and error where as a puzzle later on, despite reversing what was needed I found just hitting various combinations afterwards worked just as well. Overall the game works in a similar way to the choose you own adventure books except there only appears to be one path, with any deviations eventually leading to a puzzle restart or (in most cases) to your death, and as poorly timed pun appears on screen.

The game shows amazing potential with its story telling to begin with and leaves you wondering what the happening to turn your idyllic suburban home into ‘The house of the dead’. If you can manage to ignore the 5 second loop of sound effects in each area it does sport a number of jump scares but the monsters themselves look more strange than scary, with abnormal colouring, weird sound effects and often an unusual face expression but in a way this still fits with the art style on the novels.

Very quickly you find that a number of items you pick up serve little or no purpose which makes flicking back and forth between inventory pages tiresome, and some of the time based elements of game play later on are great at first but soon become cumbersome. For instance, at one point during the game you need to avoid a security guard while solving puzzles In a mall which is exciting at first as he will appear down the hall, in a reflection or you’ll see his shadow looming on the ground beside you after a certain number of clicks or time spent waiting. This serves as a prompt to move away from the area and return again after a loop of the building to finish the puzzle or item collecting you were doing.

Conclusion

All in all the game does handle well and it’s art style looks good. It is only a cheap game so expectations weren’t terribly high to begin with but with such a promising start to the game through the story set up, the ending was just a complete disappointment and felt slapped together with little explanation which goes wholly against the premise of the Goosebumps books. The game is filled with various cameos from classic goosebumps books; the camera from say cheese and die, monster blood and house of the dead to name a few but by the end of the game I felt cheated out of what could have been a great story with some better scares and instead reward with numerous and ludicrous ways to die (Killer Taffy for instance!).

Final opinion? If you’re a Goosebumps super fan you’ll appreciate this game a whole lot more than I did but if not? It’s worth picking up if you have the money spare but i won’t be rushing back to replay it. Maybe Telltale games should have picked up this challenge instead.