I just finished playing this and it’s a fun little romp, but it’s interesting how straightforward it is for something that is so lauded. I feel like many of these older games are remarkable for what they accomplish in their time and place but coming at them from a modern sensibility just means they don’t hit the same way.
I’ve been reading Goosebumps books for months and only just started checking out the video games. I can immediately tell that the first video game is going to be my favorite. It’s a 1996 FMV adventure game called Escape from Horrorland. It blends live action actors and costumes, miniature sets and props, CG environments and effects, and presents the explorable environments in a full 360 degree perspective so the player can turn around and look at each environment from a range of angles. I think it really stands out to me because I’ve played some of the more recent Goosebumps games and their environments are so bland and lifeless compared to the intricate work done on the miniatures for this game. It features the kind of fixed movement we see now in many VR games, where the player stands at a fixed location and then clicks on the next fixed point to advance along a path. It may feel dated but it is also so specifically a product of the mid 90s when FMV was considered the next big medium for interactive adventures. We all know many FMV games were laughably bad but this game’s horror fantasy setting and high production values (Steven Spielberg and Bill Gates are among the investors of the project) lend it a specific charm that I really love. Even though I completed it, I wanna go back and play it again to uncover more stuff in this strange little world. The real shame here is that these amazing visuals have to be constrained by the technical limitations of the era. I’d love to get a sense of what a high definition version of this game looks like with the art rerendered for 1080p resolution (or higher).
Also, if you want to see Jeff Goldblum and Isabella Rossellini ham it up and spar against a bunch of children, this game’s got that, too. It’s quite available for Windows PCs.
