Ghostscape 3d

[Channing Rupnick]

Halloween, in part, has its roots in the ancient celtic festival of Samhain. On October 31st, ancient Gaels believed that the border between the worlds of the living and the dead disappeared, and for that night ghosts were a real, tangible threat. Is it true? Probably not. But we can pretend, and get into a deliciously spooky mood, with Ghostscape.

Ghostscape, a new escape game by Psionic, is just chock full of supernatural goodness. You play a veteran investigator of the occult who, upon hearing rumors of a haunted house, cannot stay away...and what a paranormal gold mine it turns out to be! Chairs and cups move as if grasped by some invisible hand, mysterious diary entries litter the floor, grotesque paintings adorn every room. And then, of course, there are the ghosts. But who would believe you? Luckily, you have your trusty camera to provide proof. You'll spend much of your time photographing phenomena and collecting evidence, but along the way you'll begin to unravel the story of a very disturbing crime... and, as the door has conveniently slammed shut and locked behind you, you'll need to calm the restless spirits before making your escape.

Ghostscape is very good-looking. The environments are heavily atmospheric, draped with shadow and splattered with blood, and evoke a wonderfully creepy aura. The game is not very difficult; there's zero pixel-hunting (which I appreciate), and the solutions to most of the puzzles are basically handed to you. This doesn't make it any less enjoyable, however. It's a ton of fun to play ghost hunter, and your many tasks keep you constantly engaged even as you learn of the house's terrible past. The game's interface is simple and user-friendly; clicking on the inventory button leads to a handy to-do list of things to photograph and provides access to the occult items you've collected, whereas more generally helpful items (such as a crowbar and your camera) are kept on the main screen. Nothing fancy here.

In the end, really, the plot of the game becomes secondary to the overall experience of moving through such a fun and fantastic setting. More than anything else, Ghostscape reminds me of an extremely well-executed haunted house, one you might visit with your friends; the environment is way too over-the-top to be truly terrifying, and the scares are more thrills than chills. Which, in my opinion, is perfect for the Halloween season!

The only thing you really need to escape are the red candles, and one photograph of a ghost. You don't need to take pictures of anything else to escape, but it's highly recommended to get a better score. "Useful Items" are all the things such as keys that help you advance through the house. "Evidence" are all the things you can pick up and capture with your camera.

Everything in the "Evidence" category that moves shows up SPORADICALLY and may take up to fifteen seconds to appear, but some appear more frequently than others. Try to catch things in this order - Messages, Moving Chairs, Moving Cups, Ghosts, Orbs.

1. Lobby, comes down the stairs and straight at you
2. Kitchen, appears in between the stove and the knocked-over shelves
3. Locked Bedroom, comes out of the leftmost wardrobe, take a picture when you open it
4. Study, around middle of screen
5. Attic, light the red candles and take a pic of the main spirit

1. Study, "The Book of Spirits", underneath creepy portrait.
2. Unlocked Bedroom, "The Ring of Insanity", on the floor just right of candle stand in shadowy corner
3. Cellar, "The Dagger of Hatred", on shelves to right of stairs
4. Locked Bedroom, "Amulet of Blood", between bed and candle stand

Very fun game, and just the right kind of scary for me. :) There was only one instance where something jumped out and frightened me, but it was dulled down by the fact that I knew it was going to happen. I like things that are creepy, but not extremely scary, like Stone of Anamara.

Are there any jump scares in this game? (If you don't know the term, a jump scare is when something suddenly pops up on the screen, causing you to recoil. It's a scare purely based on reflexes and I find it rather cheap.)

Aha. I did see that but I wasn't sure if it was a jump scare or just something really creepy looking. There is a certain Japanese horror movie where a certain image nearly made me jump out of my seat, but it was not a jump scare, it was merely a very disturbing image; it came into view at a normal pace.

The key thing about jump scares, to me, is that the image itself is really not important to the scariness. You can have a gingerbread man suddenly take up the screen and achieve the same effect, or in real life, a loud bang will give you the same scare. It's just the instinctive response to sudden stimuli.

I really liked the effect of this...it was perfect for halloween. It was a little annoying that it was less escape and more find the objects but at the same time that's a refreshing change from your usual find the keys and the coins and the codes etc.

not only did all the stuff you picked up have no bearing on the game, you didn't even get to find out the whole story! There's obviously more happening than just the ghost of the woman who killed her husband and herself, given all the skeletons you took pictures of.

Did I miss the back story? The game talks about taking pictures of evidence and getting things back to the lab, but no mention of who we are or why we would bother. If the story we discover at the end is in the newspaper, then why do we need to go investigate?

Ex Mortis 1 & 2 had an interesting setup and a skeleton of a story, but it was still cliche and the writing artificial-sounding. Same for Goliath the Soothsayer. Pergatorium was pretty good for being intentionally as short as it was.

The writing on Monster Basement 1 & 2 was unbelievably crappy, though I'm pretty sure the author is a native English speaker. Many of the other games in the genre have such patchy writing you wonder how their creators ever got out of high school.

House, The Stone of Anamara, and Project Pravus all had their strong points, but the puzzles and writing were hit-and-miss. I realize it's hard, but can't these people team up with a friend who's taken college fiction-writing classes and create something unusual and well-written? The age of the internet it shouldn't be that hard.

weak. If HOUSE had the mechanics and environmental spooks that this game had, it would be a perfect game. lol. I liked the idea of the side quests, but IMO, there should have been more focus on puzzles and tying the diary and occult items into the big picture. I thought it was kinda lame that the codes for the chests were right there in plain sight...

In my opinion, House and Stone of Anamara were excellent. I figured out the entire story playing through once, so comparing it to this one (where it was obvious what was going on but not the WHOLE story was explained) doesn't seem fair. Stone of Anamara, I believe, was created by a man from Argentina (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think .ar is Argentina), so that may have been slightly to blame for the "disconnect".

to get into the attic, place the ladder found in the kitchen next to the picture of the devil thing, the place to put it is obviously under the attic entrence, just look at the ceiling, and then look for a square on the ceiling

First of all, you play a paranormal investigator, not an actual cop. The police and the newspaper obviously didn't have the whole story. The woman's husband was a serial killer (hence his strange behavior mentioned in the diary pages, the ghosts, the corpses in the basement, etc.) Was he psychotic to start with, or driven to it by an evil force alreay in the house? To me the loading screen and diary suggest the latter, but I guess you could take it either way.

In any case, the woman figures it out at the end, and (obviously also strained under the influence of the spirits in the house) puts an end to all of it. The newspaper is important not that it explains the whole plot, but in that it reveals too important bits of information. We find out the fate of the couple, and we learn that the (very incompetent, since they didn't even check the cellar) police never found the other bodies and learned the woman's true motivation, which is somehow more saddening than learning the woman died.

its conception of a world with no gods, but plenty of sadistic demons. Funnily enough this means I didn't actually find it that scary, as such. I guess I just find it too over the top for it to scare me.

I haven't had time to replay the two games in question, but as I remember, storywise they were fairly cliche -- someone descends into madness, murders ensue. Likewise, the puzzles were a lot of find-the-key/object.

What I'd like to see is unusual characters we care about, journals and captions that sound like something someone would actually say, and plausible puzzles. I do know that's harder than it sounds, but since you start with a script, and know you're going to sink months of work into it, for crying out loud, start with a good script. If you know you can't write one, get together with someone who can edit what you've got and brainstorm.

A simple example of what I'm talking about: the PG animated movie Monster House. Not without its flaws, but a cool basic premise, interesting characters with flaws and unexpected revelations and personal development, and an unusual motivation for the supernatural events. It's just a kid's movie, but they got that much right.

O Cofre was reviewed on JIG. Type O Cofre in the find a game box and the link for it will come up. I really liked O Cofre, especially the fact that you could die without escaping the game. Pretty cool. It gives you a little more motivation. Happy Halloween!

Hmm. You can photograph the noose outside the attic and it says "Photo taken" the same way it does when you photograph a painting, but nothing happens! Must be part of a chain of evidence that's not longer in the game.

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