Blumhouse’s Fear the Spotlight is the perfect indie horror experience

For years, Blumhouse Productions has been taking Hollywood by storm with such popular horror titles as Split, Get Out, Halloween, Paranormal Activity and M3GAN. While some of the company’s films are better than others, the sheer quantity — not to mention variety — of its output is undeniably impressive. This made it a no-brainer for the studio to branch out into the world of horror gaming with the appropriately named Blumhouse Games.

And so far, those plans have seemed quite promising. The idea behind the label is to support indie developers making smaller-budget original horror games. To see a Hollywood studio to go that route, rather than the safer licenced IP approach, is refreshing, to say the least. At Summer Game Fest (SGF) in June, Blumhouse Games also came out to tease five mysterious games, including one from Sam Barlow’s Half Mermaid (Immortality) and Canadian director Brandon Cronenberg (Infinity Pool). However, we didn’t see much from any of them, so it was hard, at the time, to really get excited about the long-term. So, it’s safe to say that Blumhouse had my curiosity, especially as a fan of both horror movies and games.

But after playing through all of Fear the Spotlight, the publisher’s first game, I can say it absolutely has my attention. That’s because Fear the Spotlight is a fantastic experience and one of my favourite indie titles of the year.

Notably, the horror game was developed by LA-based Cozy Game Pals, a team of just two people: married couple Bryan Singh (a Naughty Dog alum who worked on Uncharted and The Last of Us) and Crista Castro (former Nickelodeon art director on shows like the Animaniacs reboot). Clearly, there’s a lot of talent there, but it’s nonetheless impressive to make any game with just two people.

And Fear the Spotlight, as it turns out, is pretty ambitious. The third-person horror adventure game follows two teenage girls, the quiet and nerdy Vivian and rebellious goth Amy, as they sneak into their school at night to perform a séance. When the ritual goes wrong and Amy goes missing, Vivian must conquer her fears to find her friend and avoid the searing light of a mysterious creature.

Right off the bat, Fear the Spotlight will win you over with its grainy VHS filter aesthetic, which draws from ’90s horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. With so many games nowadays either going for photorealism or sprite-based visuals, it’s refreshing to have something as striking yet still lovably retro like Fear the Spotlight. At the same time, movement is modernized so you don’t feel like you’re fighting with old-school tank controls.

In fact, that’s just one of many ways that Cozy Game Pals has commendably ensured that Fear the Spotlight is a welcoming horror experience for people with all levels of experience with the genre. For one, there’s no combat or inventory management to worry about. Whenever you’re being hunted by the spotlight beast, you only have to worry about crouching and staying out of his sight, occasionally consuming healing items (one-use inhalers Vivian finds throughout) to restore health should you be seen and take damage.

It’s a smart and efficient way to ensure there’s still a level of tension in evading a pursuer while streamlining the process so you don’t have to worry about shooting and ammo conservation. The game will also occasionally shake things up by having search lights come from the ceiling, leading you to use parts of the environment, like broken desks or gaps between lockers, to sneak past. Admittedly, the way the lights spawn seemed to be finnicky; at times, I’d come out of a classroom only to almost immediately be hit with one and take damage, which didn’t feel fair. Thankfully, though, this only happened a couple of times.

They’re just standing there… MENACINGLY!

But even outside of these encounters, the ambient music, eerie visuals (including these unsettling little alien-like people who sometimes pop up to just observe you) and retro aesthetic all add to the spooky atmosphere. And to further the Resident Evil comparison, Fear the Spotlight features similar puzzles in which you have to backtrack through different rooms, hallways and hidden passageways to find the right items to progress, like a crank to drain an infested pool or fuses to repair a generator. Through these interconnected areas, Cozy Game Pals exhibits a deft handling on pacing and level design to ensure a pitch-perfect mix of enemy encounters and moments to breathe.

But I was most pleasantly surprised to discover there’s a deeper story at play involving the school itself. As you progress, you’ll find all sorts of diary entries, photographs and other mementos that reveal that the institution has been harbouring a sinister secret, and I found myself eager to uncover more of that over time. That was an especially meaningful narrative hook since I was admittedly finding myself disappointed in how little Vivian and Amy’s friendship had been developed, given how quickly the latter goes missing. And so, by the end of the two hours it took to finish the story, I found myself a tad underwhelmed by the conclusion. “That’s it?” I asked.

Burn baby burn.

But then I realized Fear the Spotlight was about to play its true hand: a second campaign à la Resident Evil. Without spoiling anything, this part of the story, which is also about two hours, provides crucial context not just for the relationship between our lead duo, but for Amy’s backstory as well. It also adopts a completely different yet even more compelling structure, taking you from the sprawling and lifeless halls of the dilapidated school to a more claustrophobic and lived-in setting. All told, this reminded me in the best way of the likes of Gone Home or What Remains of Edith Finch, slowly learning more about the characters as I explored a tactile environment, equal parts anticipating and dreading what horrors I might find.

Overall, I had a fantastic time with Fear the Spotlight. I came for the outstanding retro-inspired horror vibes and stayed for the surprisingly touching story about two troubled teenaged girls. It’s an all-around tight, well-designed experience that has me excited to see what Cozy Game Pals does next. And beyond that, if this is the sort of quality we can expect from future Blumhouse titles then sign me up.

Fear the Spotlight will launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC on October 22nd.