The Haunted Hoard: Spooky Ghosts Dot Com (PC)

While Spookyghosts.com is unfortunately not a real website, the fictitious website mentioned in the title of Grizzly Wizard Games’s PC game Spooky Ghosts Dot Com is the impetus for the plot of its tiny exploration-focused platformer. The events of this Metroidvania kick off when the ghost hunter Ruby gets hired through her website to visit a spooky mansion, but it seems a mix up occurred, the punk ghost who owns the place believing her website was used by people who want other ghosts to drop by rather than have them busted. To save himself and the spirits already present, the ghost plunges Ruby down into the depths of the mansion, and Ruby must fight her way out while making sure to do a thorough job of clearing out all the malevolent spirits.

 

Besides its Halloween appropriate aesthetic with plenty of bats, ghosts, and jack-o-lanterns, the main appeal of Spooky Ghosts Dot Com might just be the fact it is so short. A game that can take one or two hours to complete depending on if you want to find everything, it really is a bite-sized Metroidvania experience that manages to be well crafted despite lasting a short amount of time. Ruby’s abilities begin simple with just a jump and a gun she can slowly fire, and while she doesn’t ever reach the heights of power some Metroidvania protagonists reach, she’ll soon gain more maneuverability with a midair dash and more strength with a charge shot, both of these assisting both in battle and in level navigation. The interconnected map hits on a suitable size for having its subsections like the graveyard, basement, and dining area be large enough in size to show off their unique enemies and visual design without it being too difficult to return to them if you need a new skill or key to make further progress. Even with the relatively breezy navigation afforded by a map that manages its size well, there are shortcuts to be found or made, and if you can find the many cats hidden around the mansion, you can enlist the help of a larger white cat to teleport you to areas you’ve been before to make it even simpler.

As you platform your way through the punk ghost’s mansion, you’ll find Spooky Ghosts Dot Com achieves its difficulty in a similar way to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The enemies you face all can deal a good deal of damage to Ruby as can the hazards that ask you to be careful with your jumps and dashes, Ruby’s health never getting too high even if you collect all the candy buckets that expand your life bar. If you die you’ll be thrown back to a save point, and again, the map spacing here is done surprisingly well, especially considering save points are your only way to recover lost health. Exploring the level until you get to the next save point has a decent degree of risk because the save points are just sparse enough that you are at risk of dying before you reach one, and it’s definitely a relief to top off your health bar whenever you find one. That concern of wondering if you should plunge ahead versus heading back to a save point whose location you know makes the navigation feel weightier than it might be otherwise, although the difficulty modes can undermine this a little.

 

Spooky Ghosts Dot Com’s normal mode has the more thrilling approach to its health that makes for more dangerous navigation, but set it down to the easier level and healing becomes available elsewhere. When you kill a regular enemy, a set of colorful pixels burst out of them and scatter around the area, this turning out to not be monster guts but instead the game’s currency: candy. Collecting candy for its intended purpose is a little weak unfortunately, the game’s two shops charging pretty high prices so you might need to spend some time going back and forth to blast ghosts and environmental objects to stock up. The rewards are usually worth it though, the magnet helping suck in the candy to make collecting it less tedious and health upgrades appearing in the shopkeeper inventories as well. The easier difficulty has some of this candy randomly provide a little health though, and this undermines the challenge in a way that sort of harms the game’s main appeal. Without it, the navigation becomes too simple, and a lot of the fun enemy designs lose their edge. The raven mages who have fire rise up beneath your feet usually involve trying to get to them quickly, especially when there are multiple in an area, but if you can blast them apart to undo their damage they’re not quite as fearsome. You still don’t have a huge life bar, so getting careless with the speedy chef ghosts, shield-carrying skeletons who jump when you do, and chained spirits who turn intangible when you face them can wear you down still. The world having spikes, steam vents, and other hazards helps it stay somewhat dangerous as well, and the bosses at least don’t offer many chances to heal.

The bosses of Spooky Ghosts Dot Com carry over survivability being the main challenge while also tossing in the need to recognize patterns and openings. The witch boss is admittedly rather straightforward during her late appearance, but the giant hungry ghost is fought on the inside and has a few steps where you need to recognize when it’s safe to move and strike at his stomach walls or teeth. Some like the jack-o-lantern do boil down to proper execution once you understand their limited ability pattern while others like the zombie boss pull out a new trick near the end to ensure it’s not just one long series of the same actions. Still, many of the bosses can feel like they go on a tad too long, losses often coming from slipping up in a fight you already understand. The game’s length means they feel longer than they really are and most are surmountable once you’ve got the pattern down, but one other somewhat unfortunate part of Spooky Ghosts Dot Com is that it has little reward for 100% completion. Most of the small amount of exploration has a pretty immediate reward like upgrades or the cats that help with teleportation, but getting it all seems mostly done for the sake of it. The side areas usually do ask a bit more from your platforming skill to make them a decent optional challenge, but keeping itself short and lean seems to extend to its entire experience rather than there being a greater level of depth for an interested player. Spooky Ghosts Dot Com seems to be deliberately avoiding the kinds of time sinks Metroidvanias can sometimes set up, so it’s hard to dock it points for fully committing to the concept.

THE VERDICT: Spooky Ghosts Dot Com is a lunch break Metroidvania, its short length ensuring you can pick it up and beat it in one session but the content up to par when it comes to providing the genre’s appeal in short form. Enemies and hazards make the navigation of an interconnected mansion dangerous, the healing save points spaced well to keep things threatening unless you play the weaker easy difficulty. Bosses put up a good fight as well despite being a touch long, but in this breezy little indie game, even going for 100% doesn’t demand much time. It has the right approach to map design to make sure it feels hearty despite how quickly you can complete it, so while it might not scratch the same itch as much deeper members of its genre, Spooky Ghosts Dot Com delivers on what it promises: a snappy, spooky, exploration-focused platformer.

 

And so, I give Spooky Ghosts Dot Com for PC…

A GOOD rating. The difficulty and length of Spooky Ghosts Dot Com may put some players off, especially if it’s a purchasing decision, but for the short time it lasts, Spooky Ghosts Dot Com provides a strong mix of challenge and charm. The Halloween theming, the pixel art a step above the games like Momodora that its design evokes, and the cute touches like your dash being tied to a little ghost companion who follows you or the warping being tied to the cats helps its have an appeal beyond its status as a quick to play Metroidvania. Enemy design and hazard placement is meant to make up for the map being small in size, the challenge condensed into something that is quick to traverse but puts up a fight while you navigate it, and while boss battles can sometimes drag and some more reward for exploration would be nice, it’s found a pretty good way to keep the game engaging despite its short run time. A few more tweaks in certain areas like how the candy system works could tidy this up into a smoother experience, but it still achieves its goal and will appeal to players who know what it is going in.

 

Spooky Ghosts Dot Com does have some of the design sensibilities that could help if it was a longer experience while also benefiting from the fact some of them are tied to a relatively brisk play through. It’s not trying anything new and most of its bosses and monsters are just minor twists on Halloween monster staples, but it manages to build a tiny exploration platformer that still hits some of the same notes as its larger brethren, and that makes it a simple pleasure good for whipping out around the Halloween season.