28 reviews liked by ZombiePanceta


Based on my experience with Zelda II, i was really bracing for this to be borderline unplayable, but I was pleasantly surprised how smooth most of it was. Granted, I had to rely on a guide, since trying to freely explore led me into one of the hardest dungeons only to realize there were items i needed to actually complete it halfway through busting my ass against dark nuts and wizzrobes.

aww my first eshop switch buy

A perfect foundation for a minimalist survival game. Unfortunately Nintendo decided to make it a Zelda game.

A very good game, even legendary I could say.

This review contains spoilers

Exclusion Zone: The Archeology of Pain. You set off from a walled compound, out into what seems like an empty, foggy wasteland, making your way eventually to a long-abandoned, otherworldly shrine which crackles with radioactive contamination. You explore the site for clues, finding only glimpses of the outlines of what tragedy might have happened here long ago. There is a palpable anticipation as you confront this massive structure, its architrcture imposing on you and seemingly staring back into you.

Grandmother's Garden: A spiritual sequel/reworking of "grandmother" from the first Haunted Cities collection. After getting a key from Grandmother, who sits silently watching static on TV, you wander around Grandmother's Garden- a wooded farmstead teaming with viscera. Blood, bile, and phlegm are drawn from the well, to feed, feed, feed the parasitic trees. Get digging.

Tenement: The piece de resistance of the collection. You explore a neighborhood of tenement buildings suspended over a yawning void. This strange community is populated by digital ghosts with animal skulls for faces, each of which tells you a little story. This is the best of KittyHorrorshow's writing, in my opinion; the denizens of Tenement interweave the mundanity and horror of city living, describing hotels that eat you alive, or rooms pulsing with organs, all with a wistful, melancholy boredom. As you explore the town, the call of the abyss is inescapable, and eventually you will jump, only to find yourself in the sewers of Tenement, similarly haunted by storytellers. When you find a ladder up, you will return to the surface, but the town will be different- new denizens, a darker color to the sky, new films advertised on the theatre marquee (e.g. "The Theatre's Exposed, Beating Heart), alleys that are... not quite the same as before... You are trapped in a cycle of suicide and rebirth, locked in a lonely, decaying purgatory.

Lethargy Hill: There's no mistaking it this time- you are now in hell. You walk around under a blood red sky, never out of sight of the monstrous tick-like house on the hill. As you move, you are bombarded by unescapable text, recounting to you the story of an all-powerful hate-filled woman creating a family to make her miserable life even worse. This narrative, in turn, is interrupted by another voice, a metatextual screed against this world, this game itself. The apocalyptic world you wander is tearing itself apart, screaming, assaulting you the player. Brutal.


Gloompuke: Pretty weird little world to explore, but no real narrative progression or gameplay- just walking around and talking to the various characters, whose dialogues are pretty clever.

Monastery: The highlight of Volume 2. Controls are janky, but it's genuinely spooky exploring this old monastery and trying to guess what weird fucked up experiments the monks were doing. I love all of KH's themes of parasites and bloodsuckers and bodily transformation. Having to cut open creepy crawlies and dig up corpses to find keys is fun, but you spend a lot of time looking for tiny little out of place things to click on that are really easy to miss.

Roads: A strangely beautiful higher res version of Pente from Volume 1. This time, there are strange dreamlike twisting and intertwining paths taking you from floating stanza to floating stanza, all twirling around these classic vaporwave fairytale castles. A meditative journey to reveal a poem, without any "endgame."

Scarlet Bough: This one actually wouldn't load for me unfortunately, but I've watched gameplay of it and it looks like its got a pretty great Silent Hill kind of atmosphere. Thematically resonant with Monastery.

Overall I liked this one less than Volume 1 and 4, but I still think it's a solid selection of games, though there's less "Horror" going on here than the other 2 packs I've played.

Starting off with the two non-horror games, Gloompuke was definitely my least favorite as it's a bit aimless by design, but I still enjoyed talking to all the weird little characters. Then we have Roads, which is by far the most tonally unique of all the haunted cities games, and I was a big fan. It's a touching little tale about two star crossed lovers leaving their mark on the abstract world around them, and I thought it was short, sweet and effective.

Getting to the horror side of the pack, we have Monastery, which is probably the best of the bunch. I really liked the vibe of exploring this old worship site, and I love Kitty's constant use of leeches and body horror elements. And even though the progression can be the definition of unclear at times, I still enjoyed it, despite the rough edges. And then lastly, we have Scarlet Bough. Its a simple, but cool little spooky town that to me feels like a less fleshed out version of Kitty's other game, Leechbowl which I am a huge fan of. That comparison seems fitting, as Scarlet Bough actually contains a note that directly references the town of Leechbowl, which is not only a cool little nod to tie the games together, but it also makes me wish that Kitty would make an entire set of haunted cities games that were entirely made up of small, run down, US towns.

Haunted Cities is 3 for 3!

scarlet bough alone had so many moments that made me jump. i can't ever accurately sum up my love for kitty horrorshow and the works she makes, theres something so awesome about her style and i love her appreciation for body horror and insects and all kinds of creepy crawly things. really cool stuff!! though each of her games in these collections are rough little samples, i love her distinct atmosphere and style and her work really inspires me

Some really creepy little atmospheric dread-inducing short horror games. Leechbowl is a spooky lonely town to explore and throw blood on the walls, Pente has a beautiful almost vaporwave castle (but is pretty short and not very scary), but Grandmother is the standout, with a genuinely dreadful little farm in the woods to explore, as your grandmother stares lifelessly at the TV (or starts gasping horribly if you turn it off). With all of these the horror works by building up a sense of mystery and dread rather than through jump scares. You can see the seeds of the skincrawling masterpieces that Kitty Horrorshow would go on to make in her later entries in the series.