Fear the Spotlight Is The Perfect Halloween Horror Game Even If You Don’t Like Being Scared
Should you be afraid of the light?
Fear of the dark is one of the most common buttons for horror to push. Even if there aren’t many stories specifically about that particular fear, darkness is used across all kinds of horror games and movies to conceal threats, hide the path to safety, and separate characters from one another. But in the right hands, the light can be just as terrifying as the dark, leaving you with nowhere to hide and making it clear that you’re being watched, whether you like it or not. Fear the Spotlight explores that second, far less common form of horror, and until October 30, it’s free to claim on the Epic Games Store.
Released just before Halloween of 2024, Fear the Spotlight is the first game published by horror movie studio Blumhouse. It follows Vivian and Amy, two high school girls drawn into the worst night of their lives after performing a seance. As the game opens, the two friends sneak into their high school’s library to play with a spirit board, attempting to contact a ghost that Amy thinks has been following her around. As it turns out, Amy was more right than she imagined, and playing as Vivian, you end up puzzling your way through an alternate version of the school to find your missing friend.
Fear the Spotlight is a horror game that’s more creepy than scary, making it great for horror newcomers.
For seasoned horror fans, Fear the Spotlight might not offer too much in the way of big scares. Rather than jump scares or gruesome scenes, the type of horror Fear of the Spotlight plays with relies more on creeping dread, and the scariest parts about it aren’t ghosts but a much more down-to-earth threat.
As you can learn by examining the library early on, the school suffered and is still recovering from a devastating fire decades ago, when multiple students perished. It quickly becomes apparent that the strange version of the school Vivian finds herself in is tied to that fire, and the closer she gets to rescuing Amy, the more she learns about the horrific circumstances that led to the tragedy.
Making your way through the school means solving a series of puzzles in classic survival horror fashion. They’re not quite as absurd as some of the puzzles you’d find in the original Resident Evil, but follow a similar pattern or presenting you with a locked door, then leaving a trail of bread crumbs in the form of smaller puzzles eventually leading you to the key. Fear the Spotlight’s puzzles tend to be quite simple and laid out in a linear path toward your goal, but they’re often clever at the same time, with solutions tying into the history of the haunted school.
The ghost story at the heart of Fear the Spotlight is more terrifyingly real than it might seem at first.
Uncovering that history is the real draw of Fear the Spotlight. As Vivian explores the school, she learns about the events leading up to a production of The Phantom of the Opera, which eerily mirror the plot of the play itself. Notes littering the hallways tell a story centering on Chrissy, a student who was one of the victims of the long-ago fire, and the terrifying turn her life took toward the end.
Along the way, she’s stalked by a spotlight-headed creature that harms her if she’s caught in its sight. There’s no combat in Fear the Spotlight, and outrunning the figure’s piercing gaze is simple enough. Rather than posing much of a challenge, the creature ties into the game’s central theme of being seen. Chrissy, described in other students’ cruel notes as a “weird girl,” wants to attract the attention of another student by performing in a play, but as the story unfolds, it shows a much darker side of unwanted attention. The searing spotlight of the game’s only enemy takes on an even darker meaning by the story’s end, representing a threat that’s all too real.
Amy is absent for most of this story from the player’s point of view, but a second chapter added after Blumhouse got involved puts her in the main role. This part of the game shifts the focus away from the school, putting the action in a smaller, altogether scarier environment, and while Amy’s story is great on its own, it lacks a little of the punch of the first chapter. Taken as a whole though, the game is much better for the revelations of the second chapter and the ramping up of horror that it brings with it.
