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Before I ever walked through Silent Hill or fled Nemesis in Raccoon City, I read Goosebumps. R.L. Stine’s nigh bottomless fountain of Young Adult horror novels lit a spark that turned into a black flame, eating away at my nerves in the quiet hours. Fear the Spotlight has that same spark. Designed for young adults, going all in on creepy atmosphere and story instead of jumpscares, Fear the Spotlight nails the spook factor, making it one of the best dark horse horror games of the year.
Fear the Spotlight Review
Two girls break into their school to swipe a Ouija board. When they use it for a seance, something answers. Fear the Spotlight follows a formula established by genre classics like Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark: you explore creepy locations, solve puzzles, unravel mysteries, and try not to die at the hands of the spotlight-headed monster I will hereby call Spotlight Head. Fear the Spotlight eschews jumpscares, instead discomforting players with a soup-thick atmosphere. By limiting the core mechanics and then polishing them to a Master Sword glint, Cozy Game Pals has nailed its take on ’90s survival horror.
Story: On the Sunnyside
There was a fire at Sunnyside High, but there have been renovations since. If it weren’t for the memorial plaque commemorating those lost in the blaze, you’d never know about the tragedy. Vivian and Amy aren’t just trespassing: they’re trespassing with a purpose. There’s a spirit board in the library display cabinet, and the girls want a word with the spirit realm. The planchette begins to move under the girls’ hands. Something is communicating. Then the candles go out. When Vivian relights them, Amy is gone.
Cozy Game Pals writes tight horror, and the story never feels like an excuse for a puzzle or stealth sequence. Like characters out of a Robert Bloch or Ramsey Campbell novel, Amy and Vivan reveal their personalities through small but impactful moments. Though Fear the Spotlight isn’t long, there’s plenty to spoil here, so I’ll be talking around instead of about the biggest story beats. Fear the Spotlight avoids dull interpretations of the Final Girl, Skeptic, Jock, and other horror tropes. Whereas the disposability of characters in other horror stories makes empathy all but impossible, I cared about Amy and Vivian.
Following horror game tradition, Fear the Spotlight relies on environmental storytelling and scattered notes to reveal its world. I don’t know if the brevity of these messages is a nod to the game’s YA roots or a concession to a tight development schedule, but it works in Spotlight‘s favor. Instead of walls of text, we’re treated to a scribble from a teacher here, the ominous words of a bully there. We reconstruct the school’s social scene one stroke of exposition at a time, revealing children with inner lives as complex and often painful as those of their parents. Spotlight does a great job of tying these moments of characterization back to its main plot as well.
Gameplay: Back to (Old) School
The botched seance leaves Vivian alone to explore Sunnyside High or rather a nightmarish version of it. Exploration follows the survival horror rulebook, funneling you from one creepy area to the next as you collect items and solve puzzles. The signposting is clear without being obnoxious, and I never wandered lost for long. My only real complaint with exploration is that neither Vivian’s walking speed nor her jog feel fast enough. They’re not so slow that they mess up action sequences or spoil the overall experience, but if I’m ever trapped in a nightmare version of high school, I hope my step brings 20% more pep.
Spotlight Head joins Pyramid Head, Siren Head, and a legion of other Head entities in the annals of horror, and it’s a fantastic addition. Through a coincidence of development schedules, this year brought us both Fear the Spotlight and Silent Hill 2. The scope of those projects could hardly be more different, and a direct comparison would be fair to neither, but it’s telling that Spotlight handles Spotlight Head just as well as Bloober Team’s geometric nightmare man. Spotlight Head is unsettling and persistent, especially since you lack the means to kill it.
The puzzles in Fear the Spotlight are, for the most part, well-balanced and fun. I got stuck on one tricky fusebox bit but otherwise had no difficulty, and given my lousy puzzle-cracking abilities, that feels about right. What sets Fear the Spotlight‘s puzzles apart is how you interact with them. The game has a marvelously tactile point-and-click interaction system. You don’t simply click on a cabinet you want to open; you grab the handle and pull. You don’t just click on a statue’s hands to take what they’re holding; you pry loose its fingers one by one. Everything, and I mean everything, benefits from this system.
You can’t fight the monsters here, only hide or run. By the end, Vivian could lead a Hide and Seek team to Olympic gold. Stealth sequences benefit from strong level design as well as the seamless mechanical integration of Spotlight Head’s vision. It lets you tell at a glance how much trouble you’re in without ever breaking the oppressive atmosphere. Are you inside the burning orange cone of this nightmare creature’s gaze? If you said yes, Vivian is about to have a terrible day. Vivian also requires periodic puffs on her Inhaler to stay on her feet, injecting a limited but welcome resource management mechanic.
Graphics & Audio: Bumps in the Night
Amy’s face hovered before you in the candlelit library like a silver balloon cut free of its cord, but she’s gone now. Fallen bookcases block the aisles, forcing you to work your way around. There’s something ahead of you, framed against a pulsing red light. It’s a person, Amy, but she isn’t looking at you. Why isn’t she looking at you? In a violent instant, her feet leave the ground, gravity suspended, and an all-consuming light devours the room, taking Amy with it. Fear the Spotlight is appropriately named.
If you’re a fan of Crow Country, Haunted PS1, Puppet Combo’s work, or any of the other great recent retro horror projects, Fear the Spotlight is your new home. Low-poly models, simple textures, and the almighty power of shaders create a PS1 throwback look. If you’re not into retro, you can swap between smooth and retro framerates in the options menu, as well as scale back the TV filter, polygon wobble, and ambient camera wobble. With all the retro bells and whistles on, I experienced a few minor instances of texture flickering, but nothing severe enough to spoil the visuals or vibe.
Fear the Spotlight‘s audio design is, if anything, even richer than its graphics. From the cheap, tacky squeak of Vivian’s sneakers to the wooden rasp of the sliding planchette, Spotlight feels far richer and more alive than all that polygon wobble and shader dithering might suggest. The sound design makes stealth and escape sequences much more stressful than they’d otherwise be, but even in quiet moments of exploration, you’re rarely at ease. Cozy Game Pals created something anxiety-inducing without the need for constant jumpscares, a horror design direction that more games should pursue.
Music takes a backseat to SFX, which is fine when the SFX is this good. The voice acting is spottier, with some deliveries sounding unnatural and forced. It’s by no means a dealbreaker, and if (like me) you have a taste for B-movie jank, it’s almost a positive. That said, these inconsistencies in dialogue are tough to overlook because of their sharp contrast with the game’s otherwise immaculate sound. Lastly, it’s worth noting that I experienced few glitches and no crashes during my time with the game.
Conclusion: Giving Goosebumps
Fear the Spotlight doesn’t need gore or a screaming PNG to scare you. Like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, its horror is compact and visceral, yet still appropriate for a younger audience. It’s atmospheric retro horror with an eye-catching villain, fantastic puzzle mechanics, and a cool story. Though a few flaws hold Spotlight back from perfection, Cozy Game Pals and Blumhouse Games should be disturbing our sleep for years to come. You can step into the spotlight on PS4, PS5,
Review copy received from Publisher.
Fear the Spotlight (PC Reviewed)
A creepy YA horror romp that blends a low-poly retro aesthetic with tense stealth sequences and tactile puzzles to create one of 2024's most unsettling games.
Pros
- Creepy and immersive atmosphere
- Engaging puzzles
- Spotlight Head
Cons
- Inconsistent voice lines
- Slow movement speed
- Minor graphical issues
