The Creepshow name appears on all sorts of entertainment, from novels to comic books to a multi-season television show. Now we have Creepshow the video game. Like many other Creepshow-themed products, it’s an anthology of creepy tales with a comic book/graphic novel art style. With a run time of four hours or less, it’s not unlike spending some time with your favorite horror fiction.
Creepshow begins with four teens — Danny, Jack, Liz, and Melody — exploring an abandoned mall. They’re searching for clues surrounding the mysterious death of Danny’s father. Danny ends up in the underbelly storage area of the mall, separated from his friends. While looking for an exit, he stumbles upon an old arcade fortune telling machine. In classic creepy fashion, The Reader inside comes to life. He tells Danny that in exchange for reading to him from the Creepshow comic, he will help Danny find his friends. This becomes the framing device for the two stories — Metamorphic Love and The Toll Keeper — that form the heart of Creepshow.
The first story, Metamorphic Love (homage to Franz Kafka there) is about a bug lover named Andrew, whose wife dies in a tragic accident. Unable to work and falling behind on his bills, Andrew begins hallucinating voices coming from the insects in his collection.
The Toll Keeper is set in Ireland, where disgraced priest Father Torosian is reassigned to a run-down church in need of repair. The tale turns into a devil’s bargain of sorts, where each ring of the church’s bell supernaturally improves the church and the priest…but, as they say, at a cost. Bwa ha ha.
While Creepshow’s stories and premise could work as a graphic novel or TV show, it’s a game. This requires some level of interactivity. In this instance, the genre is point-and-click puzzle adventure. Danny will find and collect highlighted objects, use them to solve puzzles, and play some mini-games.
In terms of game mechanics, everything is pretty basic. A few of the puzzles are head-scratchers, but most are very simple. Creepshow suffers from a lot of uninteresting item fetching and puzzles that seem like run-time padding, rather than meaningful discoveries.
That’s not to discredit the two core stories, which are interesting tales of psychological horror and the supernatural. They might have been better presented as a motion graphic novel, with even less player input.
Presentation is important in a game based on a venerable comic book style. In some ways, Creepshow nails it, with objects and environments having a colorful, spooky, and very authentic comic book or graphic novel feel. Less convincing are the human characters and animations, especially faces, which can be unintentionally scary and grotesque. Especially in the opening frame story, character animations are particularly unconvincing.
While it’s better in the two central stories, the game’s dialogue and voice work are inconsistent. The quartet of teens deliver over-articulated lines that neither sound like teens or really, anybody’s actual speech. For me, the opening minutes and frame story immediately lowered my expectations for the game to come. I was happily surprised and relieved when things improved.
After playing Creepshow I’m still not convinced it wanted to be an actual game. Metamorphic Love and The Toll Keeper stories are good enough as narratives, and a lot of gameplay mechanics feel grafted on. Negatives aside, the game understands the tone of the Creepshow franchise and also how to keep its runtime in balance with its ability to deliver engaging player activities. In other words, it doesn’t outstay its welcome or creep around too long. It’s pretty rough around the edges, but fans of Creepshow, horror, and pulpy fiction might enjoy it.
***PC code provided by the publisher for review***