The Haunted Hoard: Goosebumps: Dead of Night (Xbox One)

The 2015 Goosebumps movie hit on a fairly efficient way of adapting R.L. Stine’s wide range of child-friendly horror stories, that being to have many of its many unrelated but memorable monsters literally emerging from the pages of the actual Goosebumps books. For the tie-in Goosebumps: The Game though, that effort to unite so many recognizable characters buckled as it struggled to link them together through tedious point and click inventory puzzles. Goosebumps: Dead of Night five years later though would still continue on with the same basic premise of Goosebumps book characters brought to life, but by steeping it in a more fitting first-person horror play style and practicing some self-restraint, it actually shows there might be some potential to the concept in video game form too.

 

Goosebumps: Dead of Night begins with one of the series’s most recognizable faces, Slappy the living ventriloquist dummy, trapping R.L. Stine in a typewriter. Slappy gets to work using a spell book to bring other Goosebumps characters to life as well, but playing as the unseen ally of Stine known only as Twist, you head off to try and get the spellbook back so you can shove Slappy and his accomplices back into their fictional stories. R.L. Stine, who was portrayed by Jack Black in the two Goosebumps movies, reprises his role here, serving as a guiding voice at first to introduce mechanics and characters, although when you do find shredded books on the ground, he perhaps gets your hopes about what might lie ahead a bit too high. Hearing that something like the giant mantis from A Shocker on Shock Street might be lurking around is an exciting prospect, but the torn up Goosebumps books you find are mostly just for callbacks to popular stories in the same way that the famous Goosebumps cover art by Tim Jacobus can be found in picture frames all around the house you start the adventure in. Reining in the amount of monsters directly represented in the course of play was ultimately a wise decision though, the introduction of a new one more interesting because you aren’t being bombarded with references and can actually spend time responding to the unique threat one poses.

At the beginning of the game the main goal is to collect 10 pages from the spell book Slappy used to call in monstrous back-up. These are scattered around the two story house of R. L. Stine, but a few creatures and characters start to roam its halls as well, hoping to sabotage your efforts or outright kill you if they can get a hold of you. Since this is a game aimed at children the death scenes are more a slightly scary quick cinematic before you see the words Game Over, but respawning afterwards is surprisingly quick and rarely much of a setback. This certainly helps to make it more accessible but also piques your curiosity as you can let yourself get caught by the new creature to see what it can do. However, to actually make progress you will need to start using hiding spots until you lose the monster on your trail. In an interesting touch, the gradual rollout of new Goosebumps characters to complicate your search actually has each of them playing different roles. A few will patrol specific areas, but some like the living lawn gnomes pose unique dangers. While a gnome won’t kill you if it catches you, a red-hatted gnome will pilfer a page you’ve found and try to lure you into danger while the more common yellow-clothed gnomes will actually go from room to room turning off lights. While it’s fairly easy to see in the dark and you can start tearing the place apart in your search for pages even in low light, Murder the Clown can teleport into dark rooms and grab you if you get too complacent in such conditions.

 

This opening house section certainly copies ideas from other popular first person horror games where you can’t fight back but provides it for a younger audience who might be too disturbed or upset by more intense instances of this helpless scenario. However, the gnomes do start to wear out their welcome a bit due to their numbers, but luckily before Goosebumps: Dead of Night can run this concept into the ground or make it too tedious, it changes setting, the later parts of the game actually having different types of play to overcome. The second area you visit is more focused on puzzle solving rather than actual danger, and while the particular puzzles aren’t too involved or difficult, they still have you poking around and remaining engaged enough that it’s a nice change of pace after the careful creeping around the Stine household. This second segment takes place mostly in a hostile greenhouse adapting elements from the story Stay Out of the Basement, but a broader focus appears afterwards as you enter a sci-fi laboratory for the last part of the game that not only features more involved puzzles that require some thinking but actually gives you a means of fighting back against the monsters. Your electric gun is mostly going to be used to blow up giant gummi bears, but its need to recharge often actually makes having to run through tight corridors while being chased by respawning gummi bears another bit of decent play with some legitimate if not exactly difficult to avoid danger.

Had Goosebumps: Dead of Night just been scampering around the house hiding from monsters its whole runtime it would certainly be acceptable but unimpressive, but its decision to head in new directions helps it stay fresh and swapping in new locations, allies, and hostile Goosebumps characters gives the game a better spread of variety and makes elements like the pesky gnomes and a pretty slow first boss fight easier to overlook. It has some small issues, one puzzle in the greenhouse section seemed to want Twist to gather bugs from different parts of a room as a bit of a navigational challenge but you could just grab bugs from the same hive over and over again, and some patrolling dangers like the little robotic toys in the lab are practically not a threat since they’re so easily eliminated. However it also has some smart concepts like the early survival horror inspired house section having a stamina system for your running that means you can’t always escape at threat if all you do is try to sprint away when you see them. Overall it is a very short experience though so issues tend to not stick around enough to be grating and smart decisions help buoy the sections that need them, but Goosebumps: Dead of Night doesn’t put up too much of a fight so it’s more of a haunted guided tour than something that will get your hairs standing on end or test your brain too much.

THE VERDICT: Goosebumps: Dead of Night is a fairly short experience that benefits from not dwelling on its ideas too long. Sneaking around the house at the start is kept interesting and varied with foes who pose different threats, but before they get too tedious to manage, you’re moving onto the puzzle sections of the next area and eventually even fighting back a bit. The small series of gameplay and setting shifts lets the game phase in and out its creatures and characters so there’s the curiosity about what might appear next to drive the player forward, but the simple challenges and swift pace at parts can mean it is lacking much of a hook beyond encountering familiar Goosebumps horrors.

 

And so, I give Goosebumps: Dead of Night for Xbox One…

An OKAY rating. Far better than Goosebumps: The Game in both giving you time with recognizable faces and providing something to do along the nostalgic tour, Goosebumps: Dead of Night doesn’t really excel in too many spots but has a few decent enough ideas to make the short adventure a fine time for fans of the franchise even if they’re fairly young. You won’t get as much fear from its survival horror start as a game with more focus and its puzzles aren’t so complex that they’ll really get you thinking, but elements of the adventure do start to get enough substance to them that they hold your attention and make your interactions lightly entertaining. An Extreme mode unlocked after the adventure shifts some elements around to make things more difficult with the game’s brisk pace meaning you likely won’t be worn out from the normal journey and can at least give this variation a go if you did want the pursuing monsters to be more capable. It still won’t be the most exciting horror experience, but its pacing still works in its favor since you actually get to spend time with unique threats and aren’t being barraged by shallow references. Many of its concepts could be fleshed out into a full Goosebumps adventure on their own and the promise shown in the varied ideas for things like how a creature can pose a threat suggests the development team might have had the level of creativity necessary to do so. What we have though is a decent tasting menu of Goosebumps’s brand of spooky fun though, one that still has some interesting moments to keep you along for the ride.

 

Goosebumps: Dead of Night does perhaps cost a bit too much considering it is a short and simple experience, but find it for the right price and it can provide some familiar frights in some mostly effective formats. It’s not really going to challenge you or wow you with any innovative ideas, but it’s not complacent or confusing either, measuring things so that you’re progressing at a pace that works for what it offers. It’s hard to say if a true definitive Goosebumps game could be made considering its existence as a disconnected anthology of spooky stories, but it certainly does better than Goosebumps: The Game at providing callbacks with substance and gameplay that holds up the experience well enough.