I don't think this is really a horror game for hardened horror fans.
Nor is it the first thing I'd pick for a YouTuber looking for something to stream.
Unless they're completely defenceless against horror games.
Then it might work beautifully.
What it does seem remarkably well suited for is a date night at home with a partner who doesn't normally play horror games, accompanied by a few glasses of Scotch.
In other words, the horror-game equivalent of a date-night horror film.
Play it together and perhaps the two of you will even come out of the evening feeling a little closer.
I'm explaining what I think the right audience is before anything else because, from this point onwards, I'm going to complain about the game almost without interruption.
For me, I found myself in a strange house and I'm scared sits in an awkward place.
It isn't bad enough for me to condemn it.
But I can't quite bring myself to recommend it either.
To explain why, I think I need to talk about modern art first.
One of the crueller things about modern art is that the person who gets to an idea first gets to be the original.
They get the reputation.
They get the value.
Everyone arriving afterwards with the same idea risks becoming an imitator.
This is an Exit 8-like.
And I really don't like Exit 8-likes.
If a developer I knew told me they were thinking about making one, I'd probably try to talk them out of it.
That doesn't mean I dislike The Exit 8.
Quite the opposite.
The Exit 8 is successful modern art.
To me, it also has a very simple but crucial implied premise.
Whether I'm trying to get home or go to work, I've got off the train and I'm supposed to leave the station, return to the busy, mundane city outside and carry on with my perfectly ordinary life.
Except I can't get out.
For me, that is the bloodstained fountain from which The Exit 8 draws its horror.
And it never seems to run dry.
My normal life has been broken.
Perhaps I'm simply particularly fond of that kind of horror.
Actually, I'm fairly certain I am.
But I'm not criticising Exit 8-likes simply because they aren't to my taste.
My problem is that some of them seem to struggle to build the same kind of suggestive context around the loop.
The mechanic remains.
The anomalies remain.
But the reason I should feel disturbed by being trapped there becomes much thinner.
Let's talk briefly about The Cabin Factory.
Does it have a clear narrative context?
Yes.
Your job at the Cabin Factory is simple.
Inspect the cabins and decide whether they're haunted.
If you find an anomaly, get out immediately.
Does it have a horror presence with a distinct identity, something that actually stays in your memory afterwards?
Yes.
The family.
That's why I don't really think of The Cabin Factory as merely another Exit 8-like.
To me, it stands alongside The Exit 8 within an emerging school of modern horror art built around anomalous change.
It takes that artistic language and makes something recognisably its own.
I found myself in a strange house and I'm scared is exactly where that becomes a problem for me.
The game does give you a clear objective.
You're trapped inside a strange house and need to escape. Each completed cycle removes one of the chains from the basement door, gradually bringing you closer to whatever waits below and, presumably, a way out.
Mechanically, that works perfectly well.
Narratively, though, I never found much reason to care.
I don't really know why I'm suddenly trapped in this strange house in the first place.
Granted, stupid horror-film protagonists wandering into suspicious houses and getting thoroughly punished for it is hardly an unusual genre tradition.
But even that usually comes with a little story.
Here, I wanted more.
At the very least, something like Saw would have helped.
Wake up somewhere you don't recognise, realise some lunatic has put you there, and then hear:
"I want to play a game."
Fine.
Now I know something has been done to me.
Someone is responsible.
Whatever happens next has a purpose.
Or take Cube.
Its characters wake up somewhere impossible without knowing how they got there.
One of them can only say:
"I just woke up here."
But the film gives you questions to pursue and fragments of background to uncover.
Eventually, one of the people trapped inside admits:
"I designed the outer shell."
Suddenly the place has another layer to it.
I don't necessarily need a complete explanation.
I just need enough of one to make me want to know more.
The frightening things that appear throughout the game have a similar problem.
They're scary enough.
They're disgusting enough.
And that's about it.
They don't have much personality.
I'm not saying every horror developer needs to create some astonishing new visual icon for their IP.
If you can do that, wonderful.
But in an already overcrowded horror-game market, creating a truly iconic villain is an extremely difficult thing to ask of anyone.
What I do think is achievable is giving an antagonist a distinct persona.
Some behaviour.
Some character.
Something that makes me remember that particular creature rather than simply a scary thing that appeared in a room.
I never really got that from the creatures here.
Instead, they reminded me of staff working inside the haunted house at some ambitious new theme park.
They've put on their ghost make-up.
They've climbed into their monster costumes.
They're hiding around the corner.
And they're terribly excited for the next visitor to walk in so they can jump out and go, "Boo!"
Then there are the trends.
The Exit 8.
The Backrooms.
TUNG TUNG TUNG SAHUR.
I really didn't like this part.
Seeing them all together starts to feel like the hypothetical result of a company boss walking into the office and saying:
"Make something based on whatever's popular right now."
And everyone reluctantly getting on with it.
Trend after trend after trend.
More than anything else, that was what bothered me.
Then there is one tiny piece of text that annoyed me far more than it probably should have.
An achievement description.
"I'm sorry if I scared you."
Excuse me?
Why on earth are you apologising to your audience for frightening them?
If you make horror, that is the one thing you should never apologise for.
Don't say:
"I'm sorry I scared you."
Say:
"Thank you for being scared."
Thank them repeatedly.
They gave you exactly the reaction you were trying to create.
Perhaps that achievement description is only a joke.
Almost certainly, in fact.
But it still managed to irritate me.
Because by that point, the game had already given me such a strong impression of something built by combining enough current horror trends and hoping the mixture might turn into a hit.
And that is the impression I find hardest to shake.
It stops feeling like horror made because someone desperately wanted to make this particular horror game.
It starts feeling calculated.
That may be unfair.
I can't know what was going through the developer's head while making it.
I can only describe the impression the finished game left on me.
And that impression is why I can't quite recommend it in good conscience.
At that point, it felt less like a horror game and more like something worse than a sardine pie.
Still, as I said at the beginning, that doesn't mean the game has no value.
There is absolutely an audience for it.
A couple who don't normally spend their evenings playing horror games could have a lovely time with it at home.
A YouTuber who is spectacularly vulnerable to horror games might get some excellent reactions out of it.
And someone who simply enjoys anomaly-loop games may have a much better time than I did.
The game is polished.
The scares are well constructed.
It just isn't my flavour.
And I think that's one of the nice things about all the "-likes" sold on Steam.
When a particular dish becomes popular, developers start producing variations of it.
Different seasoning.
Different ingredients.
Different flavours built around the same basic recipe.
And Steam players seem quite happy to taste all of them until they find the version they like best.
That's actually a rather lovely part of game culture.
But when developers make those variations, I wish they'd occasionally think about a line Steve Jobs famously repeated, usually attributed to Picasso:
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
I found myself in a strange house and I'm scared didn't steal The Exit 8.
It copied it.
And, to be fair, it copied it well.