The Boogie Man

There are two ways people can write and present horror stories, depending on the type of audience they are after. As such, you can either scare people using loud sound effects and bloody masks, or you can choose to traumatize them for a few nights after that, using psychological tricks. Naturally, the latter works a lot better in video games, although it all depends on what you are in the mood for.

The Boogie Man is not your typical horror flick, mainly because it takes the story aspect very seriously. In essence, you do not have to do an awful lot gameplay-wise, because your most common task is to walk around and figure out things like in a classic adventure game. On the other hand, everything from dialog to the artwork is designed to be as terrifying as possible, in more than one way.

To begin with, you are greeted by a rather long introduction in which you have to get familiar with the characters and a bit of their background stories. As such, you play the role of a detective who is forcefully sent on a vacation by his boss. To avoid upsetting him, you take your wife and go to an old castle, where you have to spend a few days along with other visitors. Naturally, things get out of hand pretty quickly, and you’ll soon be dealing with suicides, a lot of gore, and many other disturbing scenes.

Although horror games usually have you running from this and that on a regular basis, investigation is your main concern here, which is why most of the gameplay revolves around finding clues and searching for things. Dialog is important as well, and there are long sequences where you do nothing but talk to other people. Unfortunately, you cannot choose what to say, but you can go along for the ride anyway.

The game tries to look and feel retro as well, which is why it features a 2D engine and a very old-school graphics style. You play from a top-down perspective, although you can use the keyboard or a gamepad to move around. Since the game is translated from Japanese, it’s only natural that the voice acting was translated as well. Unfortunately, it is not very good, but you can still learn to live with it after a while.

All things considered, The Boogie Man is actually terrifying, which is a compliment in the genre. It doesn’t try to use jump scares on the audience very often, and the story is complex enough to get your mind train rolling. Hence, if you are up for a thrill and you do not mind a bit of insomnia, you might as well give this a try.