Fear Spotlight Review

A version of Fear the limelight was released last year, but in a rare occurrence, the game was pulled from sale. The horror film production company Blumhouse Productions, known for films such as Paranormal activity, Sinister, M3GANand Five Nights at Freddy's adaptation, picked up the publishing rights to the game under their new Blumhouse Games label, with developer Cozy Game Pals given the opportunity to expand on their original vision. Fear the limelight is the first game released by Blumhouse Games, and if it's any indication, it looks like the company will find the same success in the video game space as it has with movies.

Fear the limelight is the story of Amy and Vivian, two teenage girls who sneak into the high school at night. A tragedy struck their school decades earlier, making it the perfect place to use a Ouija board to converse with spirits. Things go awry, Amy goes missing and Vivian must explore the school all by herself to find her missing friend. Unfortunately, the school has turned into something of Silent Hilland so Vivian must solve puzzles and avoid a malevolent creature if she hopes to save Amy.

Fear the limelight Puzzle is classic survival horror, with most themed after the school environment. It's clear early on that Vivian is exploring an early 90s version of the school, so she has to do things like find a transparency for an overhead projector and hook up a VCR to an old TV. Fear the limelight does a good job of making the puzzles feel like a natural extension of the environment. They make the most sense in the context of the story, which is something even the best survival horror games struggle with sometimes. The school environment is used to great effect in Fear the limelightbrought to life with lots of little details that will make 90s kids nostalgic.

I enjoyed solving Fear the limelights puzzles, but they are a little too easy. The puzzles in the game can be borderline trivial at times, though their interactivity is a nice touch. While most of the Fear the limelight played from a third-person perspective, the puzzles switch to a first-person view, with players able to click and drag things using a cursor. Some of the ways players can interact with puzzles are quite clever, reminiscent of puzzles developers used to design for the Nintendo DS touch screen. For example, players acquire a pair of pliers early in the game, and instead of just using them on objects, they have to make the move to physically pry things open.

A strange monster stalks players in Fear the Spotlight

Horror fans will spot it Fear the limelights stealth sections also lean on the easy side, so the game doesn't have much in the way of challenge. There is no battle in it Fear the limelight. Vivian is a child, not a US government agent like Leon S. Kennedy, and so she won't be shooting and confusing any monsters. Her only course of action is to hide from all the threats players encounter in the game. Sneak in Fear the limelight involves hiding under desks and behind objects until the creature moves away, then continuing. In the unlikely event that players get caught, they should be able to use Vivian's inhaler (Fear the limelights counterpart to Resident Evilgreen herbs) to heal, and they don't lose much progress at all if they die. The lack of stakes sucks a lot of potential tension out of these encounters, and in turn makes what's stalking Vivian less scary.

A humanoid figure with a literal spotlight for a head appears at key points throughout Fear the limelight. The thing looks like one Silent Hill monsters and deliver some serious jump scares before losing their aura. As it happens, the non-threatening ghosts are actually scarier than the headlight man. Fear the limelight players often see kids with glowing eyes watching them from afar, and it's nothing short of annoying. The game's eerie atmosphere is enhanced by its throwback graphics, which replicate the look of the PS1 Silent Hill and Resident Evil game.

Type the initial Fear the limelight the story unlocks significant new content that I don't want to spoil here. But rest assured that the extra mode is even better than the base experience. It takes Fear the limelight to the next level, with better puzzles, little to no loading screens for added immersion, scarier moments, and on top of all that, it wraps the story in a bow. Even if someone played through the original version of Fear the limelight when it was available, it's worth diving back in to experience this new content.

Fear the Spotlight is perfect for introducing newcomers to the Survival-Horror genre

Fear the limelightThe story has a good ending, although it's a shame that overall it's a pretty generic ghost story with a lot of predictable beats that players will see coming. Still, the story remains engaging thanks to the endearing main characters. It also alludes to dark things without diving into the blood and gore that others in the genre do, making it a suitable intro to the survival horror genre for younger gamers. Sometimes it almost feels like a “cozy” horror game, strangely enough.

For the most part, Fear the limelight makes the genre proud. But one misstep is that it doesn't seem to offer significant replay value. It's possible I missed something, but there doesn't seem to be much to the game beyond playing through its two, fairly short, stories. Replay value through things like alternate endings is a hallmark of the survival horror genre, and it's disappointing that Fear the limelight does not offer anything similar.

Each of Fear the Spotlight's two stories takes about 2.5 to 3 hours to beat, so it's a short game, but doesn't bog down with filler and is very well paced.

Even so, I can see myself returning to Fear the limelight in the future. It's a great game to get into the Halloween spirit, with an effectively creepy atmosphere that doesn't feel overwhelming. Die-hard survival horror fans will probably find it all a bit too simple, but it's a great way to introduce newcomers to the genre and is consistently entertaining from start to finish. Fear the limelight ensures that Blumhouse's new video game initiative gets off the ground and gives horror fans a game that is likely to become a Halloween favorite for years to come.

Fear the limelight launches October 22nd for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. Game Rant was provided with an Xbox Series X code for this review.