Fear the Spotlight Review

A version of Fear the Spotlight was released last year, but in a rare turn of events, the game was pulled from sale. Horror movie production company Blumhouse Productions, known for films like Paranormal Activity, Sinister, M3GAN, and the Five Nights at Freddy’s adaptation, picked up the publishing rights to the game under its new Blumhouse Games label, with developer Cozy Game Pals given the opportunity to expand on its original vision. Fear the Spotlight is the first game released by Blumhouse Games, and if it’s any indication, it seems the company will find the same success in the video game space that it has with movies.

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

Fear the Spotlight puzzles are classic survival horror, with most themed after the school setting. It becomes clear early on that Vivian is exploring a version of the school from the early 90s, 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 Spotlight does a great job of making the puzzles feel like a natural extension of the environment. They mostly make sense in the context of the story, which is something even the best survival horror games struggle with sometimes. The school setting is used to great effect in Fear the Spotlight, brought to life with a lot of little details that will make 90s kids nostalgic.

I enjoyed solving Fear the Spotlight‘s 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 Fear the Spotlight is 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 fairly clever and reminiscent of puzzles that developers used to design for the Nintendo DS touchscreen. For example, players acquire a pair of pliers early on in the game, and instead of simply using them on objects, they have to make the motion to physically pry things open.

A Strange Monster Stalks Players in Fear the Spotlight

Horror fans will find that Fear the Spotlight‘s stealth sections also lean on the easy side, and so the game doesn’t have much in the way of challenge. There is no combat in Fear the Spotlight. Vivian is a kid, not a US government agent like Leon S. Kennedy, and so she’s not going to be shooting and suplexing any monsters. Her only course of action is to hide from any threats that players encounter in the game. Stealth in Fear the Spotlight boils down to hiding under desks and behind objects until the creature moves away, and then continuing on. In the unlikely event that players do get caught, they should be able to use Vivian’s inhaler (Fear the Spotlight‘s equivalent of Resident Evil‘s green 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 it so the being stalking Vivian isn’t all that scary.

A humanoid figure with a literal spotlight for a head pops up at key points throughout Fear the Spotlight. The thing looks like a Silent Hill monster and delivers a few solid jump scares before losing its aura. As it so happens, the non-threatening ghosts are actually scarier than the spotlight man. Fear the Spotlight players will often spot children with glowing eyes watching them from afar, and it’s nothing short of unnerving. The game’s spooky atmosphere is heightened by its throwback graphics, which replicate the look of the PS1 Silent Hill and Resident Evil games.

Beating the initial Fear the Spotlight story unlocks substantial 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 Spotlight 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 up in a bow. Even if someone played through the original version of Fear the Spotlight 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 Spotlight‘s story has a great ending, though it’s a shame that, overall, it’s a fairly 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 stuff 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 players. At times, it almost feels like a “cozy” horror game, oddly enough.

For the most part, Fear the Spotlight does the genre proud. But one misstep is that it doesn’t seem to offer significant replay value. It’s possible I overlooked 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 Spotlight doesn’t offer something similar.

Even so, I can see myself returning to Fear the Spotlight in the future. It’s a great game to get into the Halloween spirit, with an effectively creepy atmosphere that doesn’t feel overbearing. Hardcore survival-horror fans will likely find it all a little too easy, but it’s a great way to introduce newcomers to the genre and is consistently entertaining from start to finish. Fear the Spotlight ensures that Blumhouse’s new video game initiative gets off on the right foot and gives horror fans a game that will likely become a Halloween favorite in the years to come.

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