It's hard to say what my perfect horror game looks like. I'm not a fan of jump scares, I'm looking for a story to invest in, and I want some interesting subversion of genre tropes and some good ass puzzles.
Leave it to Blumhouse to enter the games space, partner up with a game that already had those pieces clicking into place, and help the developers over the finish line to achieve all of their goals and then some. Let's stick to the darkness as we explore Fear the Spotlight and figure out how Cozy Game Pals managed to build exactly the kind of horror game I've been looking for.
Just the Facts |
Developer: Cozy Game Pals |
Publisher: Blumhouse Games |
Platform(s): PC*, PS4/5, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch *denotes platform reviewed on |
Price: $19.99 |
Release Date: October 22, 2024 |
Review key provided by fortyseven communications on behalf of publisher. |
The things I do for love...
The oxymoron of having a team like Cozy Game Pals develop a horror game with a constantly oppressive atmosphere like Fear the Spotlight's is why I love this industry. This LA-based married couple development team released Fear the Spotlight initially in September 2023. It was a hit for those who played it. But then just a month later, it was removed from Steam. The duo wanted to add more gameplay, port it to consoles, and all around enhance the experience — and they wanted folks to wait for the bigger version whenever it'd come.
Then, this June, they revealed a big partnership with Blumhouse Games, the publishing house from the world of cinema that promised to "encourage creators to be weird and subversive" and "find the most effed up, scariest things they can." Fear the Spotlight not only would be part of the new publisher's foray into gaming, but the first game on their slate.
Big pressure — but Cozy Game Pals has a game here that more than meets the moment.
Fear the Spotlight puts you into the shoes of Vivian, an awkward high school librarian's assistant who breaks into school at night to impress her cool goth crush Amy as the girls put on a séance together. Obviously a great idea, considering the school's dealt with a tragic and fatal fire in the past and Amy's been feeling some kind of presence following her in the halls. We've all taken risks for love.
The two of them set up in a tucked away nook of the library, break out the classic spirit board, and pretty quickly find themselves pulled into a twisted and nightmarish version of their school. There's a faceoff with a horrifying spotlight-headed man that results in Amy being pulled into the void. Then, Vivian's alone, wandering the halls of this school that's both familiar and strange. It's up to her to find and save her crush and get the two of them out of there safely.
As you explore the school, it becomes clear you've transported to a version of the school from before the fire. Notes shared between crushes, gossip about actors in the school play, and messages from school officials start to piece together the true horrors that took place in years past. They never explicitly spell out what happened — it's up to you to put the pieces together — but it soon becomes clear that the things that go bump in the night are nothing compared to the dark realities you'll uncover here.
Without revealing too much, Fear the Spotlight strikes a perfect balance between the surface-level horrors of monsters lurking around corners and the gut-clenching dread of real-world fears.
Cozy Game Pals called the game a young adult take on horror, and in playing it, you see that they've replaced sadistic torture and endless darkness with surprising warmth and relatability — all without sacrificing its unsettling edge. Even if I weren’t a self-confessed horror baby, the game’s voyeuristic atmosphere and constant sense of danger would still create an intense, nerve-wracking experience that leaves the player feeling vulnerable.
Fear the Spotlight strikes a perfect balance between the surface-level horrors of monsters lurking around corners and the gut-clenching dread of real-world fears.
All of that makes for the most comprehensively satisfying horror game I've played in years — in large part thanks to the likability of its protagonists, Amy and Vivian. These two teens are in over their heads, deeply afraid, and exceptionally relatable. Often, horror ends up in a place that has you judging its heroes, questioning their decisions, and lamenting about how'd you do better. But Fear the Spotlight succeeds because you understand these two and desperately want to see them make it out alive. (And maybe hold hands at the end of it all.)
The story content added since its initial release adds so much to the experience — enough that, even if you played the original and felt fulfilled, it's still worth diving into again. Fear the Spotlight's given even more heart and depth through these additions, featuring a brand new environment to explore that essentially doubles the original runtime.
I was born in the darkness... molded by it...
Fear the Spotlight is a non-confrontational horror experience, one that relies on its heroes hiding away and slipping by unseen rather than blasting them away. It does fun things to twist the horror formula: healing items like med kits or med sprays are replaced with inhalers, and your health is asthmatic Viv's lung capacity, for example. But the biggest paradigm shift here is right there in the name. Fear the Spotlight. Unlike other horror games that make light a source of safety, or even a weapon as in Alan Wake, Fear the Spotlight asks you to embrace the darkness to slide past your enemies.
It's not the first game to have you step into the scary shadows to survive, but by making light the enemy here, it feels the most deliberate in its subversion of those traditional light and dark connotations.
Devoid of conventional combat, Fear the Spotlight centers on exploration, evading the spotlight man and the disembodied spotlights that pop up in the school's eerie hallways, and solving puzzles.
Those Cozy Game Pals skillfully keep you on your toes and engaged, making you feel helpless at every turn. With hiding as your only defense, every room is as tense as the last. And navigating stealthily past multiple enemies while tackling a complex, multi-room puzzle? I was white-knuckling my controller at times. Add in the incredibly tactile interactions you have with most objects in the world — like removing vent covers one screw at a time, pulling drawers open, or breaking through windows — and even the simplest interaction gains some deeper tension.
One of my favorites of those immersive moments came in the game's opening, when I was reminded to hold down on the spirit board's planchette in a way that made me feel just as involved in this paranormal act as Amy and Vivian.
Fear the Spotlight, through its gameplay, further fulfills Cozy Game Pals' goal to offer a more welcoming horror experience by removing the usual pain points of the genre. No major inventory management, no wonky controls or combat, no jump scares. It's approachable for newcomers, but satisfying enough and atmospherically frightening enough for longtime horror fans to come away impressed.
Between this and other indie hits like Crow Country, you get the feeling that an entire generation of horror fans is being birthed.
Once again, addressing the new content, everything added in this re-release manages to not only be narratively powerful but drastically different on the gameplay side. The new content is so much more puzzle-focused, more about exploring a singular space that slowly evolves over time versus progressing through a sprawling space layer by layer. And most surprisingly? It's even scarier than anything that was there in the original release.
It's approachable for newcomers, but satisfying enough and atmospherically frightening enough for longtime horror fans to come away impressed.
Stumbling in the dark
While this studio's impressive debut satisfied me more often than not, there are a few minor gripes. One is purely visual: the game's filter introduces a lot of visual noise that some may find distracting or off-putting. Between the fuzzy TV/VHS filter and the heavily pixelated dithering that layers over the low-poly aesthetic (the former can be turned down, the latter cannot), there's constantly a lot to process visually, and it can be overwhelming at times.
However, similar to The Tartarus Key, I also found that the noise actually added to my horror experience, obscuring just enough to amplify my fear and even making me see things in the shadows that weren't there.
On the gameplay side, Fear the Spotlight is far from difficult. Healing items are doled out generously; you're almost sure to find one waiting for you after each enemy encounter. And you can tank quite a few hits from enemies before really being in danger. This is a light complaint, because with no combat, making enemies too dangerous would ruin the pacing — either through constant death or forcing you to be overly cautious when dodging them. But if you're a glutton for particularly challenging horror, Fear the Spotlight might not be for you.
The emotional backbone
Let me round things out by talking about one of my favorite pieces of the puzzle that is Fear the Spotlight: Its voice acting! Amy and Vivian are vividly brought to life by Maganda Marie and Khaya Fraites respectively, and both performers inject so much into these characters. Whether it's Fraites' shaky-breathed conviction to push through her fears and find Amy, or Marie's smooth "cool girl" confidence that gives way to a compelling vulnerability in the end, these two actors give the teens a layer of warmth and depth that sell their emotional journeys. In particular, I loved the dynamic in the clips you hear of the two of them in the past, really endearing you to this pair of awkward kids fumbling through the beginnings of a crush.
Vocal performances in horror games run the gamut of quality. There's a reason the performances in games like Resident Evil live in infamy to this day. But Fraites and Marie are the reason this game's heartfelt and otherwise solitary narrative works as well as it does.
Fear the Spotlight is one of those games that's just so well-roundedly good that it's hard to pinpoint its particular highs and lows. It's well-written — tense but tender — the horror is approachable and enjoyable for horror fans of all types, and their YA approach to horror makes Cozy Game Pals' debut emotionally resonant.
Running you somewhere between 3-6 hours of play time, Fear the Spotlight was the perfect Halloween treat this year, and really, it may just be the kind of thing I loop in as an annual spooky offering up there with autumn classics like Night in the Woods. Cozy Game Pals have a game to be proud of and one that stands out as one of my favorite horror games in recent memory.
Video Games Are Good and Fear the Spotlight is . . . GREAT. (9/10)
+ surprisingly warm and relatable narrative that isn't afraid to dive into the darkness, combat-free horror works well, puzzles and tactile gameplay are satisfying
- visual fuzz can be a bit much at times, without combat the game can feel a bit easy at times
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