The title screen for Goosebumps: The Game issues a warning to players in a cute nod to R.L. Stine's corny but effective "reader beware" slogan – but there's more than just Monster Blood to fear here. Novels like It Came from Beneath the Sink and Stay Out of the Basement were enormous in the early to mid-90s, and this author happened to be growing up right at the peak of their popularity. With a new movie bringing the brand back from the dead (house), then, we'd been quietly hoping for a return to HorrorLand – but perhaps we should have been careful what we wished for…
Despite working on some pretty popular original properties, WayForward has become the industry's whipping boy when it comes to licensed products – and this visual novel is no exception. The story (a prequel to the film, apparently) is a bit of a mess, but it's mostly there to tie together as many Goosebumps references as it can muster. This is something that we can actually appreciate, and even after almost 20 years [Sigh – Ed] we remembered stories like The Haunted Mask and Bad Hare Day.
The problem is that, outside of any nostalgia, the game's frankly crap. The original Goosebumps series will never go down as a literary classic, but the writing's senseless here – and reading makes up approximately 72 per cent of the gameplay. When you're not groaning through god awful prose, you'll be moving a glacial cursor across the screen, interacting with items in an attempt to solve asinine puzzles that barely make sense. One section sees you combining a coat hanger with a sink in order to find a key. Another sees you spraying a toy robot with liquid soap.
There are clues throughout the game if you're paying attention, but reading the text is so laborious that you're easily going to miss them. Dialogue trees pop up on occasion but never really go anywhere, and the wrong decision at times will see you staring at a game over screen. Fortunately, there's no real penalty for dying – you just hit the 'retry' option and pick back up more or less where you left off. Not exactly the hairiest ever adventure, eh?
As you can probably guess, the production values aren't exactly going to be keeping you awake at night either. There's some effort gone into the cartoon art style, but it never really pops like you'd hope it would, and it looks like a cheap children's story book as a result. The audio's similarly bland, opting for foreboding synth sounds that are about as frightening as lawn gnomes. We will admit that the game did get us with a couple of jump scares – but in our defence, they're the cheap kind where a character unexpectedly pops up on screen.
Conclusion
Goosebumps: The Game can go eat worms as far as we're concerned. This dreary visual novel is packed with poor puzzles and even poorer prose, and it deserves feeding to the beast from the east as a consequence. The copious Goosebumps references will provide fleeting entertainment for fans – but we'd rather live the rest of our lives at ghost camp than even consider touching this sorry tie-in again.
Comments 12
Oh boy. Top game huh? Huh guys?
That sucks, not that I planned on picking it up. I used to be a huge Goosebumps need when I was a kid, and I had hoped that the game would have done the series justice. But I suppose this really should be surprise by this. On the bright side though I think I might go and watch an episode or two of the old TV show after hearing all the references in this review.
Awww, that's a shame. I did grab this just because I love the IP and my wife loves hidden object games, but even at full pop I'm glad I was able to support it. I love Goosebumps so much I even released a track based on The Haunted Mask a few years back! It's on SoundCloud, Spotify, all that jazz. Johnathan Glass Devaney is the artist name.
@glassmusic Ha, I also covered the Are You Afraid of the Dark? Theme, and created a track called I Hope This Isn't Chris's Blood. You'll never guess... Hahaha
That's all on the album The Haunted Planet, inspired by all the spooky stuff I loved in the 89's/90's. If anyone is in the Halloween spirit enough to give it a listen, I'd love to hear what you think.
@Aaronzord Totally agree. I think in some cases it's down to the old Nintendo exclusive thing where any third party Nintendo exclusive from the N64 onwards, when they really started to lose ground to Sony and MS, is massively overrated by fanboys.
Ahhhh I love Goosebumps. Actually, I was a bigger fan of Shivers, since they only cost 99p. I wonder if my folks still have my collection somewhere back home...
@kyleforrester87 Shivers were great.
@get2sammyb Yep, a personal favourite..
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cFTDwVkEL.jpg
(In retrospect there is something off about the scale of that artwork lol)
I'm a pretty big fan of WayForward - I love the entire Shante and Mighty Switch Force series as well as Duck Tales Remastered - but this one does look abysmal. I've noticed that for the most part, their original titles are pretty good, but they're terrible at licensed games.
I saw this in the store and I was like "dahell is this? Must be terrible" well...there you go xD
Also...WHERE THE F ARE THE PS PLUS GAMES? We should know them by now rage
@kyleforrester87 That looks a bit different to the version of Animal Farm I read.
Developed by Wayforward? Whaaaaaaaat? I've pretty much liked every game I've bought from them. Interesting.
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