Ghosts is an interactive CD-ROM video game released in 1994 by MDI. It stars Sir Christopher Lee in his first computer game. Ghosts uses the format of a point-and-click format to explore haunted house Hobbs Manor. Lee, as Dr Marcus Grimalkin, invites you to explore the house looking for information on the supernatural. Various ghostly figures appear from time to time to guide (or scare away) the player, and there are several rooms to explore. Clicking in the right place can lead to The Book of hauntings (holding over 280 pages of illustrations covering ghostly legends of England), spirit photographs, details of the Enfield Poltergeist, interviews with eyewitnesses, ghosthunters and sceptics and six ghost stories narrated by Lee. While not offering the complex game play demanded by many gamers, Ghosts is a fascinating mix of puzzle game, point-and-click-adventure, mystery and documentary. Like many games of the time, it combined video footage and graphics in the game play elements. But the presence of Lee lends a gravitas to the acting that few other games had at the time.
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Ghosts is in the style of interactive museum edutainment games of the 90’s CD-ROM era. The game has you explore Hobbs Manor, a haunted house that acts as sort of a museum for hauntings and ghost stories across the United Kingdom. The house is brought to life in that first person Myst-like style which I’m also a sucker for. Your host for the night is none other than Christopher Lee, who also narrates the ghost stories you come across in the mansion. Like many of the edutainment games of the time there’s a whole collection of FMV clips to uncover, in this case dealing with interviews with ghost hunters and skeptical researchers for example. The game tries to play them off as both being on equal footing, though the game’s slack-jawed bias that ghosts are totally real guys and clearly the dude essentially LARPing Peter Venkman with stuff out of his garage has more credibility than this scientist lady with years of professional experience is apparent which probably isn’t the best tack to take when the game has that edutainment veneer. Regardless the trove of British ghost stories the game give you is fun to uncover. The main stories you activate by clicking on objects in the house which leads to the stories illustrated by still images narrated by Lee who obviously carries the material quite well. There’s also the requisite in-game encyclopedia that multimedia games of the era loved where you can go through perusing all the articles on British hauntings. There’s even some dedicated multimedia deep dives on supposed hauntings like this one in London during like the 70’s, where the game has a bunch of videos and text pertaining to it. The game treats this so completely bald-faced serious which is amusing when it’s got stuff like a voice clip of a girl getting “possessed” but it’s clearly her just doing a silly voice. There’s no real ending to the game persay, you just get your fill of the manor’s multimedia tour and leave, though there might be a little more to it…
Ultimately I enjoyed Ghosts because it is a just a genuinely fun, goofy interactive museum tour in a British haunted house narrated by one of horror cinema's greatest stars. It’s definitely a Halloween season recommend even if you have no nostalgia for the gaming period it came out of like I do.