Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors (2026) - Horror Video Game Review

A few years back I got bitten terribly by the Vampire Survivors bug. On the surface it looked like junk shovel-ware, but just one play was enough to discover just how insanely addictive that rogue-like auto-shooter really was. Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors is aiming to do the same with card battlers that the other game did with auto-shooters. Boy, does it succeed.

Much like its predecessor, the story here has you setting out to discover the source of the evil responsible for unleashing hordes of monsters upon the land. Starting off in a village, you choose your character and leave, the assumption being that a vampire is the cause. Of course, exactly the same as before, the big joke is that there isn't a single vampire to be found anywhere in the game.

Again, this is presented with a charming pixel-art style. Indeed, the monster and character models are lifted whole-sale from Survivors, looking even more basic and janky due to being blown up to a larger size to fit the first-person card battling. Each stage follows a familiar rogue-like pattern. Defeating enemies with your card attacks gives you XP gems, which then level-up your character, each level giving you the option of three rewards. There are different attack types, buffs, and special abilities to add to existing cards. Each card has a value, usually between 0 and 3, these allow you to build up combos, with each subsequent card in line getting more and more powered up. You traverse maze like levels in first person, dotted around are candles to break for gold and other boons (gold being used at the village to buy new heroes at the tavern, buy permanent upgrades at the shop, and later, adding ability slots to cards at the blacksmiths). Levels are usually made up of five floors, with the exit to each floor being guarded by a boss enemy whose charging attack can be quite painful to receive if not countered.

Story-wise, of course this is very basic. Levels are identical to Survivors, woods, an enchanted library, milk factory etc. It is very addictive and I always felt I was making progress, each run taking anything up to an hour to get through. I found it fun to play both with and without podcasts as background accompiment. It was also lengthier than you might expect, my final play time being over 24 hours! Similar throughout, I still rarely got bored playing this, and by the time the end credits rolled it just about hadn't outstayed its welcome.

Vampire Crawlers, much like its protégé was crack in the form of a game. Highly addictive and with a good sense of progression, this was very much worth playing. Even better, it is currently on Xbox Game Pass.

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Joe's Diner (2015) - Horror Videogame Impressions: 'Rotted Meat No.1'

The list of video games I own and have yet to play have gotten to such an amount over the years that I fear I will likely simply not even get around to playing some of them. Due to this, I have been more harsh lately, skipping games if I feel I am just not 'getting' them. This gave me the idea of creating a new series of posts. Titled 'Rotted Meat', these won't be reviews, but instead the impressions I had of certain games, and what led to me abandoning them. The first of these is Joe's Diner...

The Synopsis:

The game is a horror survival game that takes place out in the desert at a remote diner (Joe's Diner obviously). You play as a night-time employee of the diner, and have unusual tasks assigned to you. The place happens to have been built on the site of a Native American burial ground where two rival chieftains were buried. The hate they share for each other even resides in death, and so one of your jobs is to diffuse any supernatural occurrences that might arise due to the spirits of the chieftains still warring.

How the game felt:

This is one of those horror games where you are defenceless, and instead of fighting, you must sneak around the environment trying your best not to get killed by the evil spirits. Having a limited shift time, the game is split into different nights, much in the way of Five Nights at Freddy's, though here you are free to walk around rather than stuck in a single room. The game was unremarkable, basic looking, and really not a lot of fun. 

Reason for abandoning the game:

I started playing this shortly before upgrading to a Playstation 5, and Joe's Diner was one of the rare games that wasn't backward compatible on the new system, leading to me ditching it. Sure, I could have hooked up my Playstation 4 had I really wanted to play this one again, but I found the game super boring and dull, and so I really wasn't bothered about ever going through the minor hoops to return.

Fortnitemares 2024 - Thoughts on the Halloween event

I have said this before, but I really love Fortnite. Especially over lockdown it really brought me, my sister and my friends together, with us playing it more for social reasons than just to play. The game has in recent years begun to get really lazy with their month long Halloween event they call 'Fortnitemares'. Last year was the most lazy of the events with minimal map changes, the only changes being an added boss fight, pumpkin buckets outside houses, and a hard to spot blood red moon. Thankfully, this years event is the polar opposite, so much change has been made to make the island look spookier than ever.

Changes are across the map, with not only a new location (Freaky Fields replacing the train station POI), but the bright green river in the Underworld section of the map being changed to blood red, many areas covered in mist, Brawler's Battleground reimagined as the vine covered Brawler's Patch, and pumpkins absolutely everywhere, you can barely move for pumpkins of all sizes covering near every location on the map, my personal favourite being the giant statue at Mount Olympus now sporting a gigantic pumpkin head. I also liked the alterations at Restored Reels that now have Fortnite inspired horror movie posters displayed there. Perhaps the best change being the train that travels around the map is now a ghost train, it has a very cool effect.
There are two new boss fights added, with Billy the puppet (from the Saw franchise!) and a very cool original creation - the pumpkin knight themed Ultima Carver.
In addition is Horde Mode once again returning, the same as ever but is still fun to play. This time around you are able to buy attachments for your guns in between rounds. There are also plenty of rewards to unlock by completing limited time Fortnitemare quests.
Included with returning special weapons are a proximity bomb that is a little Billy the puppet on a tricycle, and Leatherhead's iconic chainsaw.

The other big part of the Halloween event is of course the skins. I always get suckered into buying many of the skins and this year there seemed to be a huge amount of both original and licenced skins. There are two more The Nightmare Before Christmas skins (Pumpkin Jack and Sally), Leatherface, Billy the puppet, three Disney villains, some horror Marvel skins (sadly no Marvel Zombies - a missed trick) even a skin for Edward Scissorhands! Original skins are more of a mixed bag, but the previously mentioned Ultima Carver is very cool looking, as was the zombie skin locked behind a Save the World deal. I wasn't impressed that a fun looking bright pink werewolf skin was locked behind a Fortnite Lego battlepass - Lego being the one mode I have zero time for so refuse to get that battlepass just for the skin.

I am a real sucker for spending far too much money on skins over Halloween, but Fortnite is a game I play nearly daily, having sunk over two thousand hours into the game over the past seven years! I will admit I had to dip into my savings this year.
The lack of any new Halloween themed mode for the game would have been disappointing if not for the huge changes made to the map. It really feels like they made a giant effort this year to 'horror' up the map, and I am very much on board for this.

Cube Escape: Paradox (2018) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

Cube Escape: Paradox is the thirteenth game in the interconnected series of games that take place in the Rusty Lake universe. This game more than any other, really requires you to be invested in the ongoing story as it is fit to bursting with references to all of the other twelve games in the series. By this point the developers really know how to make a good escape room game, this is a quality experience that offers something a little new. Unavoidable spoilers for previous entries to follow, and the synopsis is based on what I assume is occurring (the story thus far been purposely obtuse).

Detective Dale Vandermeer to my knowledge was last seen descending into the supernatural centre of Rusty Lake. He awakens to find himself in a small room, the only exit being a locked door. With no recollection of how he came to be there, he searches for a way out, piecing together his history as he does so.

Paradox is split into two different chapters as well as including a short eighteen minute film. The aim of both chapters is to obviously escape the room, which is done by solving a series of puzzles hidden throughout the room. Chapter one is free to play and has the typical escape room shenanigans I've came to love. Things are spiced up in that there are not only puzzles to solve, but also little mini games which were fun to do. One has you charting your route across a map, using clues to figure out where you need to be. Another had you in a literal puzzle game. A series of rooms which could be swapped around to create a path through, Dale appeared as a character on screen you could move around by clicking. Once the room is eventually escaped you get a first person maze to traverse leading up to a finale that then loops back on itself for chapter two.

Rusty Lake Paradise (2018) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

Rusty Lake Paradise is the twelfth game in the interconnected series of mainly escape room games, which all take place within the Rusty Lake universe. Following on from Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake Roots, this is the third stand alone game. Unlike most of the games (such as those contained within Cube Escape Collection), this almost felt like a point and click adventure, taking place over ten levels set in the same location.

Set in 1796, and upon hearing of your mother's death you return to the island commune of Paradise that resides out on Rusty Lake and which you left as a child. There you find things are not going well, the island has become cursed to suffer the ten plagues of Egypt. For each new plague that afflicts the islanders you set out to find a way to solve it, each time you are rewarded with a magical cube that you feed into an alter. For anyone who knows their plagues of Egypt however, it might become clear just where your crusade may take you...

First off, having each level being themed around those particular plagues meant that I had a good idea how long the game would be. With ten plagues that meant there would be ten levels. Each is set on the commune, starting off each time on the shore front, as the levels progress you gain access to new parts, such as a large tower. For around two thirds of the game I was slightly worried with the ease with which I was zooming through it, it seemed slightly too easy. With only so many different places you could go to, it was never too taxing discovering where the puzzles were and how to solve them. The difficulty certainly does increase however, and while I never got completely stuck, there were chunks of time when I did feel a bit lost.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall (2022) - Cyberpunk Video Game Review (XBox Series X)

I had fun with the isometric cyberpunk/fantasy video game Shadowrun Returns but have to confess I found it somewhat limited. It told a story that felt small in scope, while the game as a whole was finished within ten hours. Shadowrun: Dragonfall was originally released as an expansion for Returns, as such I went into this expecting a much smaller experience, not knowing that it was later expanded upon and released as its own game before 2022. I found the story to be far more epic, side quests to have become an essential and well fleshed out part of the game, and an overall playtime that was over double that of the first game. The world is the same as the first game, it is a cyberpunk future that has the added addition of fantasy creatures such as orks, elfs, dwarfs and monsters.

The game takes place in Berlin, Germany, which in the time of the game (around the mid 2050's I think) has become an anarchic free-state. You are a shadowrunner, part of a group led by Monika. Recently recruited, you and your teammates head with her to a remote countryside mansion, with the promise of an easy heist. Instead of a simple data snatch you instead stumble into something terrible, you discover a gigantic secret underground base populated by an army of soldiers, even worse, Monika gets her brain fried while attempting to hack into the place. The rest of you manage to escape, with your teammates grudgingly accepting you as their new leader thanks to one of Monika's last orders. You eventually learn that the underground base is linked to a great dragon that was allegedly killed decades earlier. Wanting revenge for Monika's death, and seeing it as your duty to stop this unseen threat, you and your team set-out to raise enough credits to pay the only information broker capable of getting you the intel that will give you a fighting chance on a return trip to the underground base.

Dragonfall is another isometric RPG, one that makes some improvements over Returns, but also some less good choices. Combat takes place over a grid like before, but unlike the first game where you had three action points with which to move around and use your weapons/powers, this time around you only have two. By the time the end came around this had been upgraded to three, but for most the game just having two ability points per character felt limiting. The first game had a weird imbalance between the first halves story heavy levels and the later half being full of action. This time around the balance is spot on. There is lots and lots of story which really makes Berlin feel like a living breathing place. The first game gave you a bar as a hub area, this time around you have a small town as your hub area, with missions accessed by the local tube train. Your hub town is full of all the shopkeepers you could hope for, plenty of side quests, and incidental characters who shed more light on the world.

Rusty Lake: Roots (2016) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

Over the past six months I have been working my way through the many different games that make up the Rusty Lake series. These are a bunch of simple horror escape room puzzle games that are interconnected in clever ways. In February I put up a review of Rusty Lake: Hotel, behind the scenes I have been playing far more of them, but due to me playing them in chronological order I have yet to finish Cube Escape: Collection which brings together ten of the games (I am nearly finished with it though). Due to playing Rusty Lake: Roots over a five month period the experience was a little lost on me, I could never quite remember what had happened before each time I returned.

Rusty Lake: Roots follows a family over several generations who happen to live in a mansion near to the titular Rusty Lake. Over thirty three different chapters, each of which is set during a different time period, we follow a story about a magical concoction that grants either immortality or death, and about a generational wide attempt to resurrect a man from the dead, via the use of a potion that requires various body parts and bodily fluids from related family members. Along the way there is murder, suicide, imprisonment, amputation and other horrors within the sordid family.

I admit most my synopsis I got through looking up the plot online. A very slight quibble, which I admit is my fault, is that by playing it over such a long period, and by only playing a few chapters at a time, I could never remember what had come before. The structure of the game has various chapters appearing on branches of a family tree. By the time that three children have entered the story the game has branched into three different paths that can be tackled in any order. For anyone who has played other entries in the series, this provides the origins of the creepy Mr. Crow. The game (I believe) takes place from around the mid 19th Century up to around the early 1920's.

Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek (2011) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

Lately while doing this blog at the weekend (for all my posts are typically written on a Saturday and Sunday) I have felt a bit like I'm dialing it all in, writing posts out of a feeling of obligation rather than feeling passionate. I blame all the video games I have been reviewing lately, I don't get nearly as much traffic for game reviews than I do for my film reviews. This weekend isn't the time to turn things around, I have just the one day I will be able to work on my blog as am going London for the day on the Sunday.
Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek is a hidden object adventure game (first released in 2011), a genre that reminds me of my parents, who at one point in their lives both played these games religiously. If that hadn't been the case I doubt I would have become interested in these and noticed that a fair few of them are horror based in nature.

The game starts off in an interesting way. You awaken in the middle of a storm ravaged village with your short term memory completely absent. You are a female detective who had headed to the area in search of the cause for the high number of missing people reported there, and it seems you had made some headway into your investigation. The memory loss however means you must start almost from scratch, with only the enigmatic (enigmatis?) notes and clues from your prior investigation to go on. What you discover is a village with a brainwashed population, something to do with a local preacher.

First off, that title is dumb. Sure, the game does take place at Maple Creek, but there are no ghosts at all here, it isn't that sort of horror game. Outside of the mystery of finding the location of all the missing girls, you also have to discover what is causing the village folk to act so weirdly. When hidden object games first appeared that was all you would do, search room after room of massively stuffed environments, with a whole laundry list of things to find. As the genre matured, these hidden object segments were made simpler, while a whole host of one shot mini games were introduced with a slight puzzle element to them. The puzzles here are as simple as the hidden object scenes, but not so simple that you don't need to at least vaguely use your brain. With the hidden object sections the only issues can come from not quite understanding what the object you are seeking actually looks like, but a generous hint system works there. With the puzzle sections these include such things as block puzzles and simple math problems. At any point you can use the hint system to point you towards where you need to go, while a map screen highlights any areas where you can do things to progress the game. 

Midnight Scenes Ep.1: The Highway (2020) - Horror Video Game Review (Microsoft Windows)

I recently purchased a bundle of games on Itcho for a good cause. I was having a look through them looking for something to try out and Octavi Navarro's Midnight Scenes Ep.1: The Highway stood out. This micro-game was obviously heavily inspired by The Twilight Zone, and with its attractive, yet creepy pixel art style I was interested.

The game begins with a Twilight Zone introduction to our protagonist, a woman named Claire who is travelling in her car late one night, having gotten delayed due to a flat tyre. She is out in the middle of nowhere when she finds a telegraph pole has fallen down across the road. There is an emergency phone not too far past it, but first she has to find a way to stop the power to the wires on the pole. This diversion sends her into a place of terror that plays out... in the Midnight Scenes.

So being a micro game the whole experience was over in roughly ten minutes. You control Claire via clicking on objects in the environments to get her to move over and interact with them, and there is a slight point and click style puzzle element needed for her to succeed. The game is in black and white and despite the pixel look this was a bit creepy. First off is the wonderful music that plays which builds up atmosphere, then there is world building going on, with first the discovery of what appears to be 'missing' posters for a young boy, and then the discovery of a crashed truck covered in blood. As the game plays out the horror gets stronger, and there were some cool moments that occured, such as walking into a bathroom and appearing to see a dead body for a split second before the bathroom light goes out. By the end of the game a story had been told, near entirely just by piecing together clues you encounter in the four or five screens. It then all ends on a prologue told via text.

As the 'Ep.1' part would indicate, this is the first in a planned series of bite size horror stories, and going from this I'm all for more of them. It seems there are a lot least two more so far (The Goodbye Note and The Nanny) It was impressive how such a vibe of The Twilight Zone was created from what is pretty simple. I enjoyed my brief time with this, certainly worth ten minutes of anyone's time.

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Rusty Lake Hotel (2015) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

I have had a bad week full of bad luck and as such I have been unable to keep to my usual schedule of blog posts. It has led to me spending more time than usual in my bedroom, it was there I looked into what decent iPhone games there are. I learnt of an interconnected series of slight horror games that take place in a shared universe based around the mystery of Rusty Lake. Many of these games were included in the free to play Cube Escape Collection. Rusty Lake Hotel was the first 'premium' game, meaning I had to pay for it, but at around £1.50 (I believe), it was well worth the price. 

In the grand order of the Rusty Lake series this is actually the seventh game and so some of the story around the edges here will not make much sense unless you have played the other games. Rusty Lake Hotel takes place in 1893 in the titular hotel. This hotel, owned by Mr. Owl, and run by Mr. Crow, has invited five guests to stay for five nights, they are Mr. Deer, Mr. Rabbit, Mrs. Pigeon, Ms. Pheasant, and Mr. Boar. Each day they will be treated to a new meal, one in which you have to collect the ingredients for. The darkness is revealed in the recipes themselves, each one is a meat dish, the meat coming from one of the guests...

Like all the other games in the series this one is an escape room game. Instead of escaping however, each of the five rooms takes place in one of the hotel guests' rooms, the goal is not to escape, but to find a means to kill the guests. Each of the rooms is full of simple puzzles to solve. Clues for these puzzles are dotted around the room in pictures and notes, often the prize for solving these will be keys used to unlock cupboards that in turn reveal either more puzzles, or items used to progress. Most the rooms have a theme to them, Mr. Rabbit for example is a magician, so his room is full of magic tricks, Ms. Pheasant wants you to take photos of her, and so her room is set up for a photo shoot.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) - Horror Videogame Review (PC)

I heard Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a scary game, this made me excited to play it as scary games seem to be rare nowadays. Finally with a laptop able to run it I eagerly gave it a go.

Amnesia is a first person survival horror in which you start the game in a strange castle with no memory of how you got there, or who you are other than your name; Daniel. A letter near where you lay is from your past self, it instructs you to head to the inner sanctum of the castle and kill a man called Alexander. As you explore the castle you start to remember bits of your past that involved finding a mystical orb in some ancient ruins, and an unspeakable evil that is hunting you down as a result.

Amnesia is set during the last third of the 19th century, as a result there is non of the modern tools you would usually find in a survival horror. In fact there are no weapons at all in the game, upon discovering a monster your only option is to flee and hide. Darkness drains your sanity meter, the longer you spend in darkness the more you begin to hallucinate. To combat this you have a torch that must be kept topped up with oil, and there are hundreds of wall mounted torches and candles around the castle that can be lit.

Initially I was concerned by how much variety there would be in the games world. The castle is not particularly special looking and truth be told kind of bland. There are various areas of the castle including prisons, sewers, and living quarters but none of these locations were interesting in design. The main bulk of Amnesia is solving simple puzzles that can be anything from piling up a load of boxes to reach an out of reach platform, or throwing a rock at a suspended chain, or collecting various items for use on a particular thing (such as using a hammer and chisel to break a floor open). More interesting are the various documents spread around the mansion. A lot of these are diary entries from your past self that give context for what has happened, also a cool idea were that loading screens provide back story.

I played this in the dark with headphones, and at night where possible but I just did not find it that scary. Sure random walls collapsing in the distance freaked me out slightly, but the atmosphere just wasn't there for me. Darkness irritated more than frightened, and this went for the enemies too. A cool twist is that even looking at the enemies drains your sanity meter. They themselves were not that well designed and didn't inspire fear so much as annoyance when they killed me. A few chase sequences were more fun, one that had me desperately slamming doors shut behind myself as I ran was cool, and a brief jaunt through some flooded rooms where touching the water alerted an invisible monster to my location was good.

I think my problem is that so many people had said how scary this game was that I hyped it up too much in my head. I had fun with Amnesia: The Dark Descent but it is not a game I could see myself going back to. The story whilst straight out of a H.P Lovecraft tale just did not engage me, I did not find it that interesting, especially with such terrible voice acting. Not bad, but certainly not the classic it has been made out to be. I wanted creeping dread and instead got occasional thrills.

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