Fear the Spotlight Review

We live in a landscape where the studios behind AAA horror titles seem to be pushing the narrative that longer is inherently better. The recent Silent Hill 2 remake is easily twice as long to play through as the original. Alan Wake 2 is also close to double the length of its predecessor. We also see many horror devs across the board lean on jumpscares and gore to provide the blood-pumping rush their audiences are seeking. Just take 5 minutes to browse the Horror genre page on the Steam storefront and you’ll see what I mean.

Amidst this “More! More! More!” atmosphere of modern horror game development, Fear the Spotlight stands out as a shining example of horror as a craft that can produce impactful, harrowing experiences, with shorter playtimes and without jarring visuals.

Cozy Game Pals, the husband and wife team of developers behind Fear the Spotlight, are very clear that this game was designed with a young adult audience in mind. It features no jumpscares, but instead focuses on building both a strong narrative and intense tension throughout the experience. That said, I believe that horror fans young and… less young, can all find something to enjoy and appreciate (and hyperventilate about) in this game. Bryan Singh and Crista Castro, showcase their expertise from years in AAA game development and animation, respectively. Yes, the game plays smoothly and intuitively. Yes, the art direction and sound engineering are immersive and engaging. But their biggest triumph in Fear the Spotlight is their crafting of the horror narrative: the rich storytelling and the utter sense of dread built bit by bit through every tense moment.

In Fear the Spotlight, you play as Vivian, a teenager desperately searching for her friend Amy, who disappeared into the shadows of their high school after a seance gone awry. As she ventures deeper and deeper into the school, Vivian uncovers a lot more than she bargained for, and discovers disturbing details of the campus’s past.

While many horror games raise the stakes for the player by including extreme jumpscares or grotesque enemies to defeat, this game takes a different approach. Fear the Spotlight offers up compelling and sympathetic characters… and then puts them through hell. Through her friendship with Amy, and her reactions to the story’s horrific circumstances, we learn that Vivian is shy and bookish, but also thoughtful, caring, and extremely brave. She is the horror heroine I didn’t know I needed, and I loved getting to know her. I also got to know many other characters, through notes, letters, and diary pages. Although they go unseen throughout the whole game, I now feel like I know them as well as Vivian, and was rooting for them equally.

While many horror games raise the stakes for the player by including extreme jumpscares or grotesque enemies to defeat, this game takes a different approach. Fear the Spotlight offers up compelling and sympathetic characters… and then puts them through hell.

The visual art and gameplay beautifully bridge the game’s retro inspirations with modern quality of life. While the 3rd person over-the-shoulder perspective and low-poly graphics are exactly what you’d expect from a retro survival horror title, the camera transitions are smooth and natural. The controller mapping is so intuitive that I started crouching and running without thinking about it, before they were introduced to me in the tutorial tips. I especially loved that the classic survival horror health status in the menu was replaced with lung status, and the asthmatic Vivian was picking up inhalers rather than health potions to wheeze herself back to good condition. I felt seen in those moments.

While the game doesn’t include jumpscares, make no mistake, it is by no means a comfy cozy ride. There are plenty of startling, unsettling and eerie moments throughout. I really loved that every creepy moment was informed in some way by the story that was unraveling. Even small scares that felt random early in the game took on meaning as I uncovered more of the mysteries of Sunnyside High. The puzzles, the sections of stealth gameplay, all felt contextualized within the narrative, sometimes to a sickening degree (in a good way).

The soundscape of Fear the Spotlight had me immersed from start to finish. After the initial story setup, the player spends the first act mostly in silence. Except the silence has a sound. Shuffling through the halls of Sunnyside High, I felt Vivian wading through a thick white noise, which was barely perceivable, but also heavy. Only her footsteps and the occasional clank of a pipe or rustle of paper break the silence. Sometime towards the end of the first act, I said out loud to myself (because I yap when I get nervous) that I really couldn’t take the oppressive silence anymore. By the third act, I was longing for that silence again, now that a sharp, haunting musical score had kicked in. All that to say, the sound engineering had me feeling unwell.

In just 4 hours of playtime, Fear the Spotlight drew me in, introduced me to characters who will stay with me for many years to come, and made me absolutely sick with tension. It delights me to think that this will be many a young person’s entrée into the genre. It shows horror is a true craft, and that fear and suspense can be derived from more than jarring audio and visuals. They can also be derived from seeing sympathetic characters resist dreadful and horrific circumstances, against the odds. I already look forward to delving into the darkness of Sunnyside High again and again.

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No Small Games is an indie game recap and review podcast brought to you by hosts Kate and Emily! They became friends while streaming on Twitch and bonded over their love of indie video games. In each episode of No Small Games, the two will discuss an indie game they both played independently. They’ll compare their experiences: the good, the bad, their most memorable moments of their playthroughs.

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