Halloween, in part, has its roots in the ancient celtic festival of Samhain. On October 31st, ancient Gaels believed that the border between the worlds of the living and the dead disappeared, and for that night ghosts were a real, tangible threat. 
Is it true? Probably not. But we can pretend, and get into a deliciously spooky mood, with Ghostscape.
Ghostscape, a new escape game by Psionic, is just chock full of supernatural goodness. You play a veteran investigator of the occult who, upon hearing rumors of a haunted house, cannot stay away...and what a paranormal gold mine it turns out to be! Chairs and cups move as if grasped by some invisible hand, mysterious diary entries litter the floor, grotesque paintings adorn every room. And then, of course, there are the ghosts. But who would believe you? Luckily, you have your trusty camera to provide proof. You'll spend much of your time photographing phenomena and collecting evidence, but along the way you'll begin to unravel the story of a very disturbing crime... and, as the door has conveniently slammed shut and locked behind you, you'll need to calm the restless spirits before making your escape.
Ghostscape is very good-looking. The environments are heavily atmospheric, draped with shadow and splattered with blood, and evoke a wonderfully creepy aura. The game is not very difficult; there's zero pixel-hunting (which I appreciate), and the solutions to most of the puzzles are basically handed to you. This doesn't make it any less enjoyable, however. It's a ton of fun to play ghost hunter, and your many tasks keep you constantly engaged even as you learn of the house's terrible past. The game's interface is simple and user-friendly; clicking on the inventory button leads to a handy to-do list of things to photograph and provides access to the occult items you've collected, whereas more generally helpful items (such as a crowbar and your camera) are kept on the main screen. Nothing fancy here.
In the end, really, the plot of the game becomes secondary to the overall experience of moving through such a fun and fantastic setting. More than anything else, Ghostscape reminds me of an extremely well-executed haunted house, one you might visit with your friends; the environment is way too over-the-top to be truly terrifying, and the scares are more thrills than chills. Which, in my opinion, is perfect for the Halloween season!
I ain't afraid of no ghosts:
313,000 pts, 37:56 minutes and the first one I've ever done with zero help!
297000 in 30:17. i did end up missing one picture of remains though.
15 minutes flat...only needed help once to find the ladder, because I'm practically blind and missed it, even when it was right in front of me, ha ha.
The
skull in the wardrobe
practically gave me a stroke, though.
Does anyone have a walkthrough - icant find the last candle or all the remains.
Thought I'd help you out with general locations of everything, in case someone gets stuck. The case codes are also included. :)
The only thing you really need to escape are the red candles, and one photograph of a ghost. You don't need to take pictures of anything else to escape, but it's highly recommended to get a better score. "Useful Items" are all the things such as keys that help you advance through the house. "Evidence" are all the things you can pick up and capture with your camera.
Everything in the "Evidence" category that moves shows up SPORADICALLY and may take up to fifteen seconds to appear, but some appear more frequently than others. Try to catch things in this order - Messages, Moving Chairs, Moving Cups, Ghosts, Orbs.
Also, you can squish the many cockroaches you find on the floor for a "bug bonus" of 50 points a bug. :)
Useful Items
Crowbar
Underneath right gargoyle
Scrap of Paper with Code
Far right, Unlocked Bedroom
Ladder
Kitchen, back corner between stove and knocked-over shelves
Keys
1. Bathroom Key, plant to far left in Bathroom
2. Cellar Key, open locked Unlocked Bedroom case with 6294
3. Bedroom Key, open locked Cellar case with 7832
4. Pantry Key, open locked Locked Bedroom case with 1006
5. Front Door Key, light all 5 red candles and take a picture of ghost
Case Codes (try to figure these out for yourself first, it's not that hard!)
1. Unlocked Bedroom case - 6294
2. Cellar case - 7832
3. Locked Bedroom case - 1006
4. Attic case - 9385
Evidence
Candles
1. Bathroom, far right on the windowsill
2. Unlocked Bedroom, unlock case with code 6294 (also with Cellar Key)
3. Cellar, unlock case with code 7832 (also with Bedroom Key)
4. Underneath the Pantry, on a rock in the left-middle of the screen
5. Attic, unlock case with code 9385
Diary Pages
1. Lobby, by cellar door
2. Kitchen, by pantry door
3. Underneath the Cellar, far left
4. Locked Bedroom, far right on windowsill
5. Underneath the Pantry, underneath red candle
Ghosts
1. Lobby, comes down the stairs and straight at you
2. Kitchen, appears in between the stove and the knocked-over shelves
3. Locked Bedroom, comes out of the leftmost wardrobe, take a picture when you open it
4. Study, around middle of screen
5. Attic, light the red candles and take a pic of the main spirit
Orbs
1. Lobby, floats around middle of screen
2. Lounge, floats around middle of screen
3. Upstairs, floats around stairs to go down
4. Unlocked Bedroom, floats around shadowy part of room
5. Dining Room, floats around table
6. Kitchen, floats around middle of screen
7. Cellar, floats around middle of screen
8. Underneath the Cellar, floast around middle of screen
Messages
1. Lounge, "Why are you here", between moving eye portrait and wolf portrait
2. Dining Room, "Come and join us", on lit spot on wall above table
3. Kitchen, "We will devour you", above table
4. Upstairs, "Get out of here", to left of demon portrait
5. Study, "Leave us alone", on lit spot on wall
Moving Cups - have to capture them while moving
1. Lounge, on table to right
2. Dining Room, on table to right
3. Pantry, on shelf above entrance to Underneath the Pantry
Moving Chairs - have to capture them while moving
1. Lobby, slightly to the left
2. Lounge, far left
3. Dining ROom, far left
Paintings
1. Lobby, on the wall slightly up the stairs
2. Lounge, middle of the room
3. Lounge, far left
4. Lounge, far right above table
5. Study, on far wall slightly to right above book
6. Dining Room, far left (underneath left arrow)
7. Dining Room, far right
8. Upstairs, middle of room
Remains
1. Cellar, in the shadowy corner
2. Underneath the Cellar, on far left
3. Underneath the Cellar, on far right
4. Underneath the Pantry, on far left
5. Underneath the Pantry, on far right
Occult Items
1. Study, "The Book of Spirits", underneath creepy portrait.
2. Unlocked Bedroom, "The Ring of Insanity", on the floor just right of candle stand in shadowy corner
3. Cellar, "The Dagger of Hatred", on shelves to right of stairs
4. Locked Bedroom, "Amulet of Blood", between bed and candle stand
Very fun game, and just the right kind of scary for me. :) There was only one instance where something jumped out and frightened me, but it was dulled down by the fact that I knew it was going to happen. I like things that are creepy, but not extremely scary, like Stone of Anamara.
I ended the game with a total score of 359250 and a time of 9:44. :) Beat that!
I didn't mean that I'm scared of the stone of Anamara, I meant "such as" the stone of Anamara! :) House is the one that really scared me, lol.
interesting original game, though not very difficult
full ambiance
Really basic question: where is the attic? I can't find the entrance for it.
Thanks!!
I enjoyed playing with this game, but not so much playing it. It seemed to me that far more effort went in to the mechanics and scenery than concept. That...
...almost nothing that you collect is part of the game -- the diary pages, the photos, the amulets, rings, daggers...
... left me underwhelmed.
Are there any jump scares in this game? (If you don't know the term, a jump scare is when something suddenly pops up on the screen, causing you to recoil. It's a scare purely based on reflexes and I find it rather cheap.)
Yes joye, there is one. Look at the third post.
Aha. I did see that but I wasn't sure if it was a jump scare or just something really creepy looking. There is a certain Japanese horror movie where a certain image nearly made me jump out of my seat, but it was not a jump scare, it was merely a very disturbing image; it came into view at a normal pace.
The key thing about jump scares, to me, is that the image itself is really not important to the scariness. You can have a gingerbread man suddenly take up the screen and achieve the same effect, or in real life, a loud bang will give you the same scare. It's just the instinctive response to sudden stimuli.
I really liked the effect of this...it was perfect for halloween. It was a little annoying that it was less escape and more find the objects but at the same time that's a refreshing change from your usual find the keys and the coins and the codes etc.
and the twist at the end was really clever!
Not bad, but as a seasoned Silent Hill junkie, I wasn't creeped out, either (I jumped when the skull popped out at me, though, haha). Wonderful for setting the mood for Halloween.
meh, the atmosphere was great, but
not only did all the stuff you picked up have no bearing on the game, you didn't even get to find out the whole story! There's obviously more happening than just the ghost of the woman who killed her husband and herself, given all the skeletons you took pictures of.
I played this a while ago and wondered if Jay is Games was going to have it as a Weekday Escape. It was a little buggy the first time I played it, so maybe this time it'll be bug free.
Did I miss the back story? The game talks about taking pictures of evidence and getting things back to the lab, but no mention of who we are or why we would bother. If the story we discover at the end is in the newspaper, then why do we need to go investigate?
It was also bad writing/planning to talk about needing certain items for something that was in a location the player hadn't (necessarily) been to yet.
It seems it's impossible to get a game that has an non-cliche story and good writing. The best we can hope for is something visually and atmospherically well-executed like this to creep us out.
Ex Mortis 1 & 2 had an interesting setup and a skeleton of a story, but it was still cliche and the writing artificial-sounding. Same for Goliath the Soothsayer. Pergatorium was pretty good for being intentionally as short as it was.
The writing on Monster Basement 1 & 2 was unbelievably crappy, though I'm pretty sure the author is a native English speaker. Many of the other games in the genre have such patchy writing you wonder how their creators ever got out of high school.
House, The Stone of Anamara, and Project Pravus all had their strong points, but the puzzles and writing were hit-and-miss. I realize it's hard, but can't these people team up with a friend who's taken college fiction-writing classes and create something unusual and well-written? The age of the internet it shouldn't be that hard.
I must admit the games they have created are better than the ones I haven't...
Click the "horror" tag at the top of this JIG entry for links to all the games I mentioned.
Oh wow! So much subtle detail in this. I love it! :D This is gonna be a real treat.
weak. If HOUSE had the mechanics and environmental spooks that this game had, it would be a perfect game. lol. I liked the idea of the side quests, but IMO, there should have been more focus on puzzles and tying the diary and occult items into the big picture. I thought it was kinda lame that the codes for the chests were right there in plain sight...
I think it was more interactive fiction than a game. It was really spooky and the story was cool but it was very unchallenging. All in all it was enjoyable.
Excellent. Nothing too challenging, but atmostpheric and fun.
Strangelander - just wondering, what do you mean by hit-and-miss?
In my opinion, House and Stone of Anamara were excellent. I figured out the entire story playing through once, so comparing it to this one (where it was obvious what was going on but not the WHOLE story was explained) doesn't seem fair. Stone of Anamara, I believe, was created by a man from Argentina (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think .ar is Argentina), so that may have been slightly to blame for the "disconnect".
As for the House, well... the House was simply made for its scare factor. :) This was made specificially to be a spooky scavenger hunt.
I'm not trying to be rude, so please forgive me for any statement that might offend you.
@jackie
to get into the attic, place the ladder found in the kitchen next to the picture of the devil thing, the place to put it is obviously under the attic entrence, just look at the ceiling, and then look for a square on the ceiling
My take on the plot:
First of all, you play a paranormal investigator, not an actual cop. The police and the newspaper obviously didn't have the whole story. The woman's husband was a serial killer (hence his strange behavior mentioned in the diary pages, the ghosts, the corpses in the basement, etc.) Was he psychotic to start with, or driven to it by an evil force alreay in the house? To me the loading screen and diary suggest the latter, but I guess you could take it either way.
In any case, the woman figures it out at the end, and (obviously also strained under the influence of the spirits in the house) puts an end to all of it. The newspaper is important not that it explains the whole plot, but in that it reveals too important bits of information. We find out the fate of the couple, and we learn that the (very incompetent, since they didn't even check the cellar) police never found the other bodies and learned the woman's true motivation, which is somehow more saddening than learning the woman died.
How do you...
Light the candles?
Nevermind about the
candles. You click in the middle of the pentagram where it says click here to light red candles.
I'd like to see a
Prequel
you have to take pictures of moving items in the house.
get crowbar from the room.
use crowbar to open the door.
turn right and get the paper .
go upstairs.
enter the bathroom at the right .
get the candle from the window.
get the key from the flower pot.
use key to exit the bathroom.
enter the bedroom at the right.
get the paper.
turn left in the room and get a ring.
go downstairs and enter the diningroom.
there is kitchen door.
enter kitchen.
get the ladder.
and get the paper.
enter bedroom and open the safe with the code "6294"
get the cellar key and a candle.
open the cellar door with key at downstairs and get a dagger.
open th safe with code "7832" get the candle and a bedroom key.
use crowbar on the woods to open the hole.
get the paper from the hole on the wall.
go upstairs and use the key on the bedroom door at left.
get the amulet next to the bed.
open the safe with code "1006"
get the key of pantry door.
go down to the kitchen.
open the pantry door.
open the closet on the floor with crowbar and get a candle and a paper.
go back to the attic.
open the safe with the code "9385" and get a candle.
click on the pentagram to light up the candles.
take the photo of the ghost and get the front door key.
go back and use key on the back arrow.
get the newspaper outside.
not sure if this is a complete walkthrough but it has a lot in it.
Thanks atomic1fire!
Oh man the Stone of Anamara! In my opinion that's the best one of all. I wonder if the second one will ever come out? It's been three years...
Exmortis, while technically excellent, I just found too nihilistic and depressing because of:
its conception of a world with no gods, but plenty of sadistic demons. Funnily enough this means I didn't actually find it that scary, as such. I guess I just find it too over the top for it to scare me.
For other scary point and click, I also like O Cofre, which I could have sworn had a JIG review, but it's not listed under the horror tag.
(Sorry Jay, I hope this horror game discussion isn't too off-topic.)
this is just too much like stephen kings the shining, house is haunted takes over a member of the family and everybody dies. this sucks. very disapointed.
Metanaito:
I haven't had time to replay the two games in question, but as I remember, storywise they were fairly cliche -- someone descends into madness, murders ensue. Likewise, the puzzles were a lot of find-the-key/object.
What I'd like to see is unusual characters we care about, journals and captions that sound like something someone would actually say, and plausible puzzles. I do know that's harder than it sounds, but since you start with a script, and know you're going to sink months of work into it, for crying out loud, start with a good script. If you know you can't write one, get together with someone who can edit what you've got and brainstorm.
A simple example of what I'm talking about: the PG animated movie Monster House. Not without its flaws, but a cool basic premise, interesting characters with flaws and unexpected revelations and personal development, and an unusual motivation for the supernatural events. It's just a kid's movie, but they got that much right.
Point-and-click is another medium, but one capable of these things, I think.
Joye,
O Cofre was reviewed on JIG. Type O Cofre in the find a game box and the link for it will come up. I really liked O Cofre, especially the fact that you could die without escaping the game. Pretty cool. It gives you a little more motivation. Happy Halloween!
Hmm. You can photograph the noose outside the attic and it says "Photo taken" the same way it does when you photograph a painting, but nothing happens! Must be part of a chain of evidence that's not longer in the game.
This sorta reminds me of the remake of "The House"(movie). Where the evil spirits take over the father's head. Who tries to murder his family.
Yay! Complete in 13:50, with no help.
Hahah! One of the first games that we've completed without having to use a walkthrough. Lots of fun and the right kind of scary. Not too much, but not too little either. One of the best scary games, for sure.
I finally finished an escape game on my own! 32 minutes and one second!
I'm already stuck. How do I
open the door with the crowbar? I've clicked everywhere on the door.
What am I missing?
nevermind. i got it.
i finshed the game in 51 minutes. no hints... yay!
i kept missing the
moving cups n chairs
so i had to keep on re entering the rooms.
over all a good game. not think out of the box at all. fun!
whooo just did my first escape game with no wakthrough or hints! And under 40 minutes too. I got everything except 1 message too! And surprisingly nothing made me jump..
yuhoo...great!
Dont forget:
there's a red candle in the bathroom
I got all the scores except the 2 remains and an item in the inventory list.
crush bugs for more scores
359500 in 10 Minutes... and with no help!!
Not bad!!!
Pretty good clue type game. Not real scary except for the ghost busting out of the bedroom wardrobe. Actually gave me chills when it did.
great game but
skull in the wardrobe
is going to give me a heart attack
Looks like Ghostscape will be a favorite of mine each and every Halloween. For a moment I thought the plot would've been similar to that classic(now there's a new version out) horror flick-"The House". The original was awesome(part 1). The whole place was itself an entity!
Where are the messages? I found 4 but where's the last one?
I actually liked the plot here. It was definatly not what I expected. I thought-hoped, more accuratly- the woman escaped, the man left, and the place just went to the dogs (or spirits). Remember you don't enter the house to find out about the crime, but merely because there are reports of paranormal activity within. Therefore, one could argue that the photography is the main essence of the game and the diary entries are just trivia.
I remember going to leave the house, deeply puzzled-what happened to the unhappy couple? I found the newspaper at the stairway and everything fell into place. The woman, in a desperate attempt to stop her husband's demonic rituals, slew him and unable to come to terms with what she had done took her own life, thus forever sealing the fate of the house. My friends always used to say a place could only be haunted if the killer and the victim died in the same place, which clearly happened here.
While the spelling and grammer did leave much to be desired, every game has its flaws, and certainly there was not much else to complain about. A simple game good for people new to escape games and horror, with unexpected twists and a couple of heart-stopping moments to remind players that no horror game can be classed as tame.
HELP! cant unlock the chest...can anyone tell me whats the code..please..can't understand the occult symbols..tnx!
307,000 pts. I had everything but the messages. I had 3 of them... in 14 mins.
Beat the game with 317,000 points. My additional info is that there is a
Noose
in the room with the pentagram.
Nvm found all items and... yea everything. Had a final score of 330,750. This game is fun for a "ScarY" game. (This isn't scary at all, but it is fun to do a little scavenge game)
295 000 in ten minutes flat. Yeah, I rule this game!
Wow once I got the hang of this game I played for 8:50 and beat the game!!!!
it's a cool game
but i dont know what is a remaining.......
:| ohh,well that makes tha game interesting
HOPE YOULL ENJOY THE GAME
I love this game.
Although it does have some flaws in the script writing, i find that most of the storyline fits in quite nicely. Ghostscape 2, however, made me feel, simply, robbed of my time and energy. It had no visible plot, and was just plain confusing.
For example in ghostscape one:
You start off as a investigator looking for paranormal activity not as a reporter, or investigating the deaths, but looking for ghosts, spirits, ect. Thats why you have the camera to try and find evidence of paranormal.
The skull in the wardrobe gets me everytime, but maybe i'm just a scaredy cat. XD
Now off i go to play monster basement. :D
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