Fear The Spotlight Perfectly Evokes The 90’s Horror Aesthetic

I missed the golden era of PS1 horror games. The original Resident Evils passed me by. I never played Silent Hill and Parasite Eve and Dino Crisis were never on my radar, I was too busy with my Nintendo 64. It’s only been recently that I’ve embraced the genre, playing through remakes from series like Dead Space and Resident Evil, alongside Biohazard and Village.

I’ve found a new love and appreciation for the genre, so when Blumhouse made their announcement at Summer Game Fest, I was excited. During the recent Play Days event in LA, I got to check out the first title from the publisher, Fear the Spotlight, and it ticks a lot of boxes.

The Blumhouse Way

Blumhouse’s model within the movie industry is to give directors the money they need to make their film, with full creative control — something which, when replicated for the video games industry is perfect. We’ve seen recently that people yearn for smaller indie titles, with the likes of Balatro, Animal Well and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes all within Metacritic’s ten best games of the year so far. With budgets ballooning, and c-suite execs vying for more control within development, the Blumhouse news is great.

Fear the Spotlight’s story is equally as interesting. Originally released on Steam last year, it was pulled in October, in order to make improvements and add “some new gameplay“. It’s reported that cash from Blumhouse allowed Cozy Game Pals to take a step back and make these changes.

After playing roughly 20 minutes of the game, it looks like a solid investment.

Fearing The Spotlight

When I first saw the trailer for Fear The Spotlight, I kind of anticipated a survival horror game, but it’s not. It’s an adventure game with some survival aspects. It tells the story of Amy and Vivian, who break into their school, steal an ouija board and perform a séance which goes horribly wrong. The ritual and what immediately followed presented some moments that, for the faint of heart, will certainly cause a scare or two, and it definitely built up a level of intrigue.

Following the séance, I was let lose in the school corridors to try and figure out what happened, solving puzzles and passing some platform-esque skill checks, all while, as the name would suggest, avoiding the spotlight, which is the core way in which your character gets damaged. Most of my demo time was predominantly focused around the game pre-ritual, so I didn’t get to see many of the scares Fear the Spotlight had in store, however, I am confident that the game’s early promise will deliver on that.

Fear the Spotlight does a lot of things well, but it does nothing better than its aesthetic. CRT lines, which can be turned up to fit its late-90s feel, adorn the screen, and perfectly designed polygonal characters take the… spotlight. It was clearly designed to evoke the feeling of a 90s teen horror/drama flick, and it’s executed to near perfection.

The game looking as it does isn’t the only way that it creates this atmosphere though. The character animations are fantastic and really help to sell the situation, at one point, I was holding a candle walking towards a plaque, and unprompted, my character moved said candle to illuminate the writing. It’s little touches like this that make the game feel real. This is cleverly built upon further by Cozy Game Pals. For example, Vivian’s teenage angst is typified by the fact that her health meter is a pair of lungs which can only be healed by asthma inhalers hidden around the school.

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Mechanically, there is nothing special about Fear the Spotlight. It’s a fairly standard story-based adventure game. However, where it looks set to truly shine is through its atmospheric storytelling. If you’re a horror or adventure game fan and this wasn’t on your radar, it’s one to keep an eye on. I didn’t know what to expect before playing it, but came away feeling like it was one of the most pleasant surprises of the show.

You can check out all of our coverage from this year’s Summer Game Fest right here.

Fear the Spotlight

Developer(s)

Cozy Game Pals

Publisher(s)

Blumhouse Games