A horror game doesn’t have to be scary, to be considered a horror game. It may very well be about horror without being scary. Horror is a form of expression. It is a form of art. Sometimes a theme, sometimes a subgenre, and sometimes simply a style choice. While I advocate for this argument these days, a new comedy-horror game came out to support this argument. SPOOKWARE is out and it is very good at being a horror game without even trying to scare the player. It’s all about its love for the horror genre and it does a great job at reflecting this love to the player.
Today, we’re taking a look at SPOOKWARE. A brand new horror-comedy game developed by BEESWAX GAMES and brought to life by DreadXP. Big thanks to them for providing me with a review copy. They also gave me 5 Steam keys to giveaway. You can find the details of that giveaway here.
Before I jump into the main topic, I’d like to apologize for my lack of knowledge about what WarioWare is. Apparently, everybody but me is aware of its existence and knows about it because all of the reviews and user comments I read so far referred to SPOOKWARE as a WarioWare type game. Its name also suggests that. But I never played it, never seen it, didn’t even know about it until this game came out. So, apologies for that. This review will not refer to WarioWare at all. And I don’t think it has to, anyway.
SPOOKWARE is a comedy-horror game filled with all kinds of classic horror tropes you could imagine. Cut limbs, skulls, skeletons, and lots of horror movies. It’s a game filled with heaps of microgames along with an actual story behind it. You could even call it an RPG.
The game has 3 characters named Lefti, Midi, and Righti. These 3 characters have their personalities and character traits. One of them is cool, the other is chill, and the last one is a bit nervous. They all have their lines and their reactions to specific situations and characters in the story. You don’t choose and play with one of them, but rather play with all of them as a single character.
So basically, our skelly boys start the adventure while watching horror tapes and the player goes through these tapes in the form of microgames. There are 9 tapes in each round, with a boss “fight” at the end of them.
While at first glance the game may look like a bunch of microgames turned into a whole game, SPOOKWARE has a story. I’m not gonna talk about the further episodes and spoil anything for you but I can at least tell you about the start of their story.
When they were sitting in their basement watching horror tapes, they suddenly realize that they’ve been doing this same old thing for quite some time. Days, weeks, months, maybe even years. And they suddenly decide to go out and live their lives. Do the things they’ve never done. And where to start? They have to get an education of course. So they hop on the car and drive to the closest campus, register, and start their education. But of course, things take a quick turn and they suddenly find themselves on a more interesting, musical adventure. That’s all I’m gonna spoil. Each chapter has its own types of microgames with different control schemes and overall themes.
Every microgame in these chapters is extremely fun, intriguing, and easy to learn. They never managed to bore me, although I failed miserably at some of them a bunch of times. The game gives you 3 lives for 3 skelly boys in each of these microgame series. If you fail 3 times, you start over. But when you start over, the order of these microgames always changes to spice it up a bit. So you don’t exactly play through the same thing over and over again.
One of SPOOKWARE’s biggest strengths is its art style. It’s nostalgic, funky, gothic, cartoonish, Noire, scruffy, and… wonky? There isn’t a set word that I can use to tell you about SPOOKWARE’s art style. It’s just very unique and something that you, personally have to see and witness.
While the art style certainly shines through, its music and sound design are also top-notch. The game is filled with amazing jams accompanying its many microgames. They are ever-changing along with the game’s chapters and microgames.
Overall, SPOOKWARE is a fun, small comedy-horror game oozing with charm. It’s one of those games that you would want to launch after a long day of work or simply whenever you want to relax. It’s funny, amusing, and easy to get into. I’m currently having tons of fun with it.
This has been a relatively short review but I didn’t want to spoil anything about the game because its charm and style is something you, yourself have to experience. Definitely give it a try especially if you like horror as a whole, but not limited to the scariness factor of it. SPOOKWARE is a gem.
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