Horror themed titles have truly exploded in the past 10 years. Lots of cheap or free indie titles appeared after 2012 with all of the Slenderman and SCP – Containment Breach clones and the original release of Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion came at the tail end of that period. But what made it different back then, and still keeps it somewhat unique today, wasn’t even the random generation aspect of it. I’d say, that it was the mix of not taking itself seriously, while being a genuinely solid game and the fact that it’s an extremely simple game that is very easy to pick up and play. And even in its HD Renovation form, as a paid title, it keeps being simple, yet shockingly engaging.
The story premise of the game is simple and, frankly, completely unnecessary. There’s some story to it and some “lore” but it’s so nonsensical and silly, that you shouldn’t worry about it. It’s a mansion with horror tropes, as simple as that and that’s the beauty of it. The gameplay is about as simple – you go through randomly generated sets of rooms and in each room your goal is to open the door leading to the next room. You must go through a 1000 rooms, which sounds like a lot, but most rooms are very small and some are absolutely tiny. There will be stretches of the game where nothing happens, there will be occasional jump scares (cardboard cutouts that suddenly pop from a wall) and sometimes you will be chased by a Specimen.
The specimens are the main meat of the game that make you forget about counting the rooms, unless you’re desperately counting the amount of rooms left until the save point room, which usually come at expected intervals. There are very different types of these specimens, all of them are a trope of some kind (creepypasta references, typical j-horror long hair girls, all your Silent Hill’s and Penumbra’s, etc.) and all of them have some type of gimmick to them. Usually you just need to run away from them, but sometimes you’d need to do it in a specific way and since they can spawn randomly after being encountered in a controlled manner first, it keeps the game unpredictable and fun in a very basic, but fun way. Oh and yeah – all you do is walk or run, pretty much, with limited stamina, that regenerates quickly, and health that also regenerates quickly. You do get additional means of interaction occasionally, but that’s the main thing.
And that’s it, really. Run through rooms, hear the specimen theme kick in, avoid dying, get to the next save point, save, continue on until the game is done. Very simple, but really well done. There’s also an Endless mode which is all about seeing how far you can go without dying, it has even more unexpected room layouts and new enemy types, but otherwise works the same. There’s also a Karamari Hospital mode, which is an alternative continuation of the “story”, which plays like a more traditional first person perspective horror adventure and was released as a DLC to the original free version of the game. And there are plans for more modes and more content.
I never expected to actually like this game, really. I hate jump scares (I jump every single time a simple cardboard jump scare happens in this game, seriously), I dislike games focusing on randomly generated content, I rarely like simplistic horror themed games that go for the haunted house vibe. But I liked this game a lot. It’s really well done, it focuses on fun far more than the “challenge”. It flows really well. And it knows what it is and doesn’t try to be serious about itself. Granted, some of the specimens are rather poorly done and can be frustrating, some effects are a bit too nauseating and while the game has some good settings (you can actually disable both jump scares and the specimens, though the game will be extremely boring in this case), there’s a bizarre lack of an ability to, say, adjust the mouse sensitivity. Also some of the themes are tackled in a somewhat tasteless manner. Yet, this is a really fun game. And you can try the free version if you’re having doubts as it’s still maintained, though I’d say the HD Renovation is better.