TheMaskMan Demo

Horror games have only one job: to make the players feel scared. It’s not that easy to do so, but it’s not overly complicated either, because only a handful of elements is needed to obtain the desired effect. On the other hand, if one truly wishes to terrorize and traumatize the audience for good, a lot more work is required, given the fact that you cannot do it with a few jump scares and the occasional zombie.

TheMaskMan banks it all on the atmosphere and the location, because we all know how important those two elements are. In essence, whether there is even a monster to begin with is irrelevant, because you can pretty much feel trapped and scared without seeing any apparition at all. It can be rather difficult to achieve this, however, unless you mix the perfect combination of sound, music, and environment.

The story in TheMaskMan is nothing out of a bestseller, but it tells you what you need to know and it sets the mood nicely. As such, your role is to investigate a mansion and find out what happened to the family that used to occupy it before it got abandoned. However, the house is far from empty, and you soon find out that a masked figure is roaming the mansion at night, and he is probably not the friendliest person.

So far, the gameplay sounds like something that might succeed in giving you the creeps. Unfortunately, things start going wrong once you meet the actual masked man, because he is poorly coded and glitchy. Hence, he gets stuck in the environment, tries to walk through walls, and generally stop moving if you manage to get far enough from him. Thus, the horror turns into disappointment in a rush.

The graphics are actually pretty good, especially when it comes to level design and the post-processing effects. You can find a variety of small details and objects hidden around the mansion, but nothing too extravagant either. Lastly, the sound effects are decent, but they can also glitch every now and again, causing you to hear nothing at all for minutes on end.

When it’s all said and done, TheMaskMan is on the right track, but it needs more work to turn into something good. As of right now, it just has too many problems to be scary or fun, so you might want to wait for an augmented version to come out before you try it.