Felt like revisiting an old childhood fav standalone Source mod!
Nightmare House 2 is very clearly inspired by F.E.A.R. Not by the genre-redefining gunplay, mind you; but by the practically infamous aniemic horror segments it insists on hitting you with. You’d think setting to focus your game around those segments would be a downright disaster - nobody sees those parts of F.E.A.R. as its hard sell, but Nightmare House 2 kind of adopts this jovial haunted house ride approach. It is so densely packed with spectacle. Unique, snappy little sequences and spooky flourishes around practically every corner, finding new ways to disarm the player with scares that are oftentimes hilariously blunt, and occasionally wildly forward-thinking (for 2010) or subtle. All the while, never resorting to audio jumpscares! God I kind of love it. Granted, it’s never scary in the genuinely affecting sense, but I am utterly endeared by its desperately eager-to-please sensibility of packing the short runtime to the gills with as much as it can get away with while maintaining a decent sense of pace.
This could be some element of nostalgia talking here, but I really do think that the modern-day torrential downpouring of self-serious and utterly miserable horror indies that blast through the Itch/Steam pipeline could learn a thing or two from what Nightmare House 2 has going for it. It will make you laugh & it will make you laugh & it will make u think.
Nightmare House 2 is very clearly inspired by F.E.A.R. Not by the genre-redefining gunplay, mind you; but by the practically infamous aniemic horror segments it insists on hitting you with. You’d think setting to focus your game around those segments would be a downright disaster - nobody sees those parts of F.E.A.R. as its hard sell, but Nightmare House 2 kind of adopts this jovial haunted house ride approach. It is so densely packed with spectacle. Unique, snappy little sequences and spooky flourishes around practically every corner, finding new ways to disarm the player with scares that are oftentimes hilariously blunt, and occasionally wildly forward-thinking (for 2010) or subtle. All the while, never resorting to audio jumpscares! God I kind of love it. Granted, it’s never scary in the genuinely affecting sense, but I am utterly endeared by its desperately eager-to-please sensibility of packing the short runtime to the gills with as much as it can get away with while maintaining a decent sense of pace.
This could be some element of nostalgia talking here, but I really do think that the modern-day torrential downpouring of self-serious and utterly miserable horror indies that blast through the Itch/Steam pipeline could learn a thing or two from what Nightmare House 2 has going for it. It will make you laugh & it will make you laugh & it will make u think.