You know you are doing something right when I'm basically shivering and being scared shitless at what are essentially still images.

If I've made something clear from the very start of this rather small Spooktober voyage, is how me and horror... have a very complicated relationship. Not because I dislike the genre, quite the contrary in fact; I've always been extremely easily scared by any kind of horror art-form, from videogames to even paintings, but at the same time... I've always had this sheer fascination for it. It's doubly rare when you consider that I do not enjoy most of the horror films I've consumed over the years, but even back when I was much younger, even if I was being scared as all hell, even if I was covering my face to not see because of the fear... I was always peeking, still watching, the feeling of wanting to run away of danger conflicting head-first with the everlasting curiosity for the unexplainable. Jump-scares do not usually get me, I'm not a jumpy person in that sense, but it's that constant feeling of dread, that feeling of perpetual unnerving and sheer terror what scares me to my very core, and at the same time what keeps me going back, and for me, no other way of horror has the potential to achieve all of this than the ‘’Found-Fotage’’ film genre…

Once again, quite bold of me to say this considering that most movies under the banner are of… questionable quality to say the list; its own nature as a more easily producible and cheaper (monetary speaking) way of horror makes it so the abr for entrance is much, much lower, and overabundance of sub-par quality films was destined to fill cinemas and streaming-sites alike, specially back during the 2010’s; hell, even now, the 2020’s have seen the blow up of the ’’Analog Horror’’ format, a branch of ‘’Found Footage ‘’ in many ways, and the same problems of low quality and over abundance are already very much present… but that also shouldn’t deter us from the truly magnificent delivering of this very experimental formula: The Blair Witch Project, Marble Hornets, REC, even more recent on-line offerings like The Walten Files evoke that most primal of fears, even with a screen between us and the action, the fact that’s acknowledged, the fact we are at the mercy of what a real physical lens can provide, and the fact our understanding of what we are facing it’s so limiting, that’s what makes the horrors blend with reality, and that’s what makes Teleforum so interesting, ‘cause it’s no mere attempt to bring the formula to the videogame realm: it’s a game that seeks to stare at you soul and make you question everything about it, and goddam does the fucking game succeed at that.

I really wasn’t expecting this to be a point-and-click centered game, and much less that it’d work so well; the pacing of each action, the scenery and ambience, it’s all so slow and claustrophobic, so utterly terrifying from the start; being somewhere to investigate why a suicide happened was never going to be the most of joyful settings, but it somehow finds the way to make it even more unnerving; it toys with your memory, it toys with your expectations, as if it was almost laughing in your face the whole time. There’s no real resolution, not even bang to finish things off, the confusing flashing frames fill the screen, the darkness eats away every hallway, the days play out like a broken recording, and it’s never made clear why… If anything, I wished the game played even more with what you are seeing, everything is too clean, to distinguishable, and considering how the game excels at that feeling of discomfort, I kinda wished it went all out with it. It’s a rather brief experience, with two whole playthorughs amounting to an hour tops, but even tho I thing I have my answers and theories… there’s so much yet unknow, so much so unconceivable, so much that still calls out to that primal fear, and even if the game itself asks me to stop looking a it, that enough is enough… like a tape, I play it once again. Incredibly ironic in a way, a game that asks about at what point is worth to keep pushing forward, what’s the limit before we are force to keep going, to evoke this curiosity in me… perhaps that was the idea the whole time, and that thought alone makes it genius on its own.

I still crave for the day a full free movement quality ‘’Found Footage’’ game is released, but until that day, this is the best thing I could have asked for; it’s bound by its limitations and that stops it from feeling truly real, and clashes to hard with the scenes that are fully acted, but still, this is nothing short of an accomplishment, a fantastic little horror game, one that I wish can be a good reference for others to inspire, and to show that it’s with effort, knowledge and mastery that good ‘’Found Footage’’ horror can be produced in the videogame realm, because almost everything I’ve described at the start, this game has…

… and with this, even if the horror ventures haven’t ended for me quite yet, Spooktober comes to a close; happy Halloween everybody, stay safe and stay spooky… and watch out for the biggest monster of all… the public television…