Spooky's House of Jump Scares

The first time I played Spooky's House of Jump Scares was when it first came out, a good while back but then I had a bit of an issue with how things looked. Navigating through the rooms and corridors was a bit odd. It just didn’t feel right and not from the whole horror theme point of view. We’re talking mechanics here.

I picked it up again and started playing, the issue was gone, the game looks much better and now here I am 250 rooms in and I can’t stop. I might have a problem.

Spooky's House of Jump Scares is a dead serious title. This is a scary game so don’t you go thinking that just because it looks harmless it’s going to be so. The game will get some good scares out of you and a good deal of them are caused by cardboard cutouts of little smiling octopuses. I mean it.

This indie title manages to implement a bunch of things that make a horror game good while still maintaining a rather different look. You get a misleading environment, monsters that chase you, monsters that kill you, a randomized maze to panic in, humorous notes and all of those are covered in an excellently created atmosphere.

The rooms in Spooky's House of Jump Scares do tend to repeat themselves a lot. Sometimes it feels like the game is a bit too repetitive but when that feeling starts to take shape, something happens and resets your understanding of the game.

Every 50 rooms you reach a save point and from that moment on the game slightly changes in looks and a new gameplay elements appear. Gradually, Spooky's House of Jump Scares becomes a lot more interesting than you initially thought.

For example, I really didn’t expect to come across a Pac-Man arcade game which I could actually play. Not to mention that I wasn’t the pellet hungry thing but one of the ghosts. Spooky's House of Jump Scares has its fair share of weird moments that easily become sinister.

On a closing note, Spooky's House of Jump Scares is a game that might really surprise you if you’re into horror games, the kind that don’t rely on gore and body parts nailed to walls. Simply put, it’s a wacky looking game that quickly gets strange and then unsettling.