Fear the Spotlight is a creepy (and surprising) start for Blumhouse Games

08.06.2024 - 19:43 / digitaltrends.com / Giovanni Colantonio

When I first heard that Blumhouse was going to start publishing video games, I had some very specific expectations in mind. The movie studio is behind some of this generation’s most beloved horror films, so I expected it to go a cinematic route for its games. Perhaps we’d see an approach similar to Until Dawn, giving players an interactive slasher movie loaded with A-list actors. That’s not the case.

As revealed at this week’s Summer Game Fest stream, Blumhouse is instead focusing on small-scale indies, some of which feature a retro feel. Fear the Spotlight is one of the first games in that crop. It’s a loving ode to video game horror, not movies. It’s a retro throwback to 1990s classics like Resident Evil, complete with eerie exploration, puzzle-solving, and crunchy PS1-era visuals. That puts it more in line with smaller indie games like Crow Country than Blumhouse’s cinematic heritage. Would that style really work for the new publisher? Based on a 30-minute demo I played at Summer Game Fest, the prognosis is great — but you shouldn’t judge Blumhouse Games by that just yet.

Returning to the Spotlight

While Fear the Spotlight might sound like a brand-new game, it actually isn’t. Developer Cozy Game Pals originally launched the project last September, but took it off Steam one month later. A note to its community said it would be retooling the gameplay, offering more translations, and bringing it to console.

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As it turns out, that move happened thanks to Blumhouse Games. The publisher found the game through its small, dedicated community and personally reached out to the two-person team behind it to offer support. The two struck a deal and the game was taken down to create a second version of it, which is set to feature an additional one to two hours of content. The partnership put a game that barely had 100 Steam reviews last October at center stage. So it’s more of a safe soft launch for Blumhouse Games than a grand opening.

That odd publishing history shouldn’t overshadow what Cozy Game Pals has been cooking up since October. The demo I played at Summer Game Fest showed off a promising horror game that’s much more than a retro throwback. Though it looks like a PlayStation 1 game, it’s actually more of a cross betweenSilent Hill and Life is Strange. I take on the role of Vivian, who breaks into her high school one night with a friend. I quickly learn some backstory as I find out the school had a deadly fire in 1991 that killed multiple students. While there’s some classic