Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion (formerly known as Spooky’s House of Jump Scares) is a first-person horror game developed by Lag Studios. In it, the player must traverse through 1000 rooms of a haunted mansion. In this review, I’ll discuss everything from the gameplay to the story and explain just what makes it my favourite horror game.
Of course, you’re not just going through a thousand empty rooms. Each room has its own twists and turns, its own decoration, and many other things to spice up your journey. In addition, some rooms contain puzzles that you must solve before proceeding. Of course, these rooms won’t show up during the chases, where various monsters known as ‘Specimens’ will chase you through the winding halls of the mansion. Each of these specimens has a unique locale in which you encounter them and unique abilities that you must account for to survive.
Even when you’re not running for your life, there are plenty of things the game does to creep you out. For example, ambient music plays throughout the mansion to put you on edge, and cute cardboard cutouts pop up every now and then to give you a little bit of a scare. These two mechanics, as well as the specimens, work together to keep you on your toes the entire time you’re playing.
Like all good games, Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion has a story. This story is told throughout the game and its two DLCs and explains what happened to the mansion’s resident ghost, Spooky. I won’t go any further into detail, but there are plenty of videos detailing the game’s lore if you’re too lazy to figure it out yourself.
Almost everything inside of Spooky’s mansion is there to induce fear, and boy, does it induce fear. Everything from the creaky elevator to the repetitive rooms that make you feel like you’re going in circles, to even the notes scattered around the mansion all come together to send chills down your spine, even when there’s no danger.
There are four modes in Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion so far, with one more soon to come. I’ll exclude the main game since I spent most of this review talking about it, and instead, I’ll cover the other three modes. First, we have an endless mode, which is pretty self-explanatory- infinite rooms, one life, all the enemies, and you can survive as long as you can. There are a few new things in endless mode, though- there’s hundreds of new room layouts and five enemies that are exclusive to endless mode. There are also two DLCs, which have you traversing a set area, going back and forth instead of roaming through randomly generated rooms.
To summarize, Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion is a wonderful game that does exactly what it sets out to do. If you like horror games, I’d definitely recommend you check it out. There’s a free version of the game and an HD version with both DLCs, so you can check it out whether you have the money or not. Overall, I give Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion 8.7/10.