PLATFORM: PC | RELEASE DATE: 13TH AUGUST
With eyes firmly fixed on Creepshow‘s 80s/90s heyday, the game kicks off with a stereotypical bunch of teenage misfits – the jock, the cheerleader, the gothy alternative girl, and the nerd – bickering amongst themselves while they explore an abandoned mall. Geeky Danny gets separated from the others and finds himself alone in the basement, where he awakens The Reader, the mildly creepy but cool-looking resident of an old fortune telling machine that turns out to be a handy linking device between a pair of weird and spooky tales.
In “Metamorphic Love”, Andrew Murray – not the internationally-renowned tennis player but a bug-obsessed burger-flipper – goes through a stressful time as he juggles his relentless mind-numbing day job while duty bound to care for his terminally ill wife, while “The Toll Keeper” follows a disgraced priest’s road to redemption by bringing a decrepit old church back to its former glory. The cel-shaded comic book art style is visually reminiscent of Telltale Games’ Walking Dead (and countless others besides) titles, and the gameplay follows a similar formula as well. You’ll explore a handful of small 3D spaces viewed from a slightly elevated side on perspective, moving around and interacting with clearly labelled items that either provide a small sliver of lore or are necessary for solving a handful of point-and-click puzzles.
Of the two tales included here, “Metamorphic Love” is by far the more engaging, with an intriguing premise that quickly takes a turn and pushes the player forward to find out where it’s going to lead. “The Toll Keeper” fares less well, with a confusing narrative and underwhelming conclusion that makes it come across more like a stop-gap between what should potentially be a third and final tale. Each story lasts around 30-45 minutes with 5-10 minutes’ worth of setup between them, so you’re likely to see the end of this one within a couple of hours, but a low price point makes it worth a punt for those who enjoy slower-paced narrative puzzlers.
