It’s surprising that more stories aren’t centered around high school reunions. There’s so much drama inherent to the concept: awkward reunions, possibly painful memories, differing perspectives on the past and things left unsaid all are par for the course. With all the anxiety these events bring forth in most people, it’s easy to see how the setting can be utilized within the horror genre.
Worse Than Death, the new game from Benjamin Rivers Inc, takes this idea and runs with it. A woman named Holly returns to her hometown for her 10-year reunion and quickly finds herself thrust into a horrorshow steeped in personal tragedy and small-town drama. After meeting up with her best friend, who recently lost his fiance in an accident most of the town blames him for, they end up chasing a mystery around town as the body count rises.
The story provides a good hook for the game, but I wish they would have spent a bit more time with some of the other friends at the reunion before things started getting spooky. The dialog has a little bit of trouble feeling natural, coming off slightly stilted, but there’s a lot to be mined with the relationships between Holly and her former classmates. Still, the story goes in some satisfying directions in its three-to-four hour runtime, exploring the dark secrets of the small town in ways that are compelling, even if not entirely surprising.
Like Benjamin Rivers earlier game Home, Worse Than Death is a 2D side-scroller with pixel-art graphics and comic panel style cutscenes to help accentuate important parts of the plot. Both art styles look sharp, but there’s something about the juxtaposition of the two that never really blended well for me. I thought the pixel art portions worked better, leaning on the vagueness to allow the player to fill in the grisly scenes with their own imagination. The comic sections of the game had a bit too cartoony of a feel for my taste, undermining some of the spookiness.
Worse Than Death was originally designed with mobile touch screens in mind, which means the gameplay isn’t quite as deep as it could be. Much of it feels like an old school adventure game, trying to find items and solve puzzles to progress through the game’s eight chapters. While exploring, you will have to run and hide from a strange creature that’s stalking you through the town. Most of the running and hiding is pretty rote and easy to do, making the tension not land as hard as it should. There’s a great audiovisual component to these sequences: the screen fogs up as the world gets cold, everything starts to shake and you hear sinister voices coming from the almost-invisible monster, but it never really unsettles. Hiding always felt more like a time tax on the player than actual tension, only posing any sort of challenge in the final chapter.
The game’s puzzles are what worked the best for me, even if they were slightly clumsy to navigate. Since it was built for a mobile device, the interaction with the puzzles was designed around a touch screen, which doesn’t translate well to a controller. Many puzzles ask the player to drag things around, shuffling items to reveal what’s underneath or simply moving a key to a lock. I played on the Switch, and these tasks were easier when using the touch screen in handheld mode, but were rather clunky with a joystick.
Aside from the interaction, the puzzles are mostly well designed. They usually involve figuring out sequences for elaborate lock systems on cabinets or obtuse directions for starting the machine. While they don’t always fit completely into the narrative, Holly will usually react with a comment like “someone must not have wanted anyone to get into this,” they still manage to be compelling. They require brainpower rather than simply collecting items, so I played with a pen and paper to keep track of information, reminding me of the puzzles in early Silent Hill games. A couple were pretty obtuse, but most of them were just difficult enough to make you feel satisfied when solving them.
The experience of the game is aptly kind of like going to your high school reunion. It’s a little bit awkward and you have to go talk to the people you’re less thrilled to see in order to find the ones you’re really interested in catching up with, but it’s got some high points that make it worthwhile, even if it’s not quite as memorable as you thought it would be. And much like the reunion, the runtime feels just long enough that it doesn’t overstay its welcome significantly, allowing you to move on with your life afterward. If you miss the days of horror game having adventure game-style puzzles, then give Worse Than Death a try, just don’t be expecting anything overly substantial in the scare department.
Worse Than Death review code for Nintendo Switch provided by the publisher.
Worse Than Death is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and the App Store.