How I love Goosebumps: escape from horrorland.

In this game you are transported to Horrorland where you have to find your friends and fight werewolfs, mummie's and vampires along the way of escape. 

I know it is all nostalgic glee that is clouding my judgment and yes, in all fairness, it isn’t a very good game. It isn’t even really much of a game when you think about it. Like Metal Gear Solid it’s one long movie in which you are -occasionally- allowed to make a decision. But once you do you’ve got some nice little (child-level) puzzles set up for you. The whole singing pumpkin-heads puzzle still takes me a little while whenever I play it.

So much to see

But then why do I like is so much? For starters, it’s a highly visual creative game. The game is filled to the brim with strange little horror jokes. You can finish the game within 30 minutes. But exploring all the little nooks and crannies can take you hours. The whole tokes collecting subquest hereby is quite a challenging one.

So much to learn

Then there’s the whole technical aspect of the game that I like. Final Fantasy VII – I argue is, nowadays, almost unplayable because the graphics look terrible. I really am happy for the (current) fan-remake or the (upcoming) official remake. I hope this time Cloud’s hand is actually a hand instead of grey square.

Escape from Horrorland, however, doesn’t look that terrible. Of course the faults glare obviously at you when you look at it from a contemporary perspective but somehow it doesn’t really bother me because I see the techniques used. It’s like watching a 1960s monster movie. No CGI yet - so different techniques. It might look clumsy but that’s part of the charm. And you do, occasionally, wonder: ‘How did they do that?’.

Nostalgically speaking  there are two techniques I liked about this game. First those pre-rendered 360 images that were all the rage back then. It’s one of those first attempts at a 3D open world that paved the way for World of Warcraft and the like. Those games –I argue- owe a big debt to these quicktime scenes.

This technique eventually failed. And game making went full 3D in their world building. I believe the last breath of life this technique uttered was (symbolically) on the DVD of the Mummy as a special feature showing the movie sets in 360 degrees.

The second technical thing I like about this game is the use of cutscenes to tell the story. But instead of incorporating a simple .avi file into the game the technique used (back then) was a series of pictures.

If you, for instance, take a gander into the gamefile of the game The seventh guest, you’ll notice folder after folder with frames/pictures. The gamemakers shot a movie and saved it as a series of pictures. That was the way it was being done back then.  Even though I haven’t been able to  check it I am betting that the same technique is used in Goosebumps.

So a movie is 24 frames per second (25 for television) we all know this. So this game shows us  twenty-four photos  a second with the accompanying audio track. No wonder the game sits at a comfortable  1.22 gb, it’s got over 10.000 pictures in it. Naturally this technique was quickly abandoned after this game. Later game makers simply used compressed movie formats within their games. Much easier , much more efficient, way less consuming.

So much fun

But back to what I liked about this game. Well, as the third –and the most important - reason: it’s just so much darn fun. It has a great silly story at its core (with some amazing quirky humor). And then there’s the acting which is wonderfully entertaining and –actually- quite good. The child actors perform pretty well –even more if you consider the fact that this is a videogame and not a professional movie set.  They have great chemistry amongst each other and through this they draw you into the silly story and make you feel part of the Goosebumps adventure.

Also –as a little side note- I do miss those actors in videogames directly talking to the camera. There was this short period of time during the ’90 where it was commonplace (Congo, Myst, Titanic: adventure out of time) and then it was gone forever. It sometimes resurfaces in those Hidden Object Games but it’s not the same. Anyway, back to acting.

However, It are the adult actors who really take the cake in the game. In what kind of other medium can we crush Isabella Rossellini by bed and watch Jeff –the Brundlefly- Goldblum deliver wicked speeches through loose fitting false vampire teeth? I you ask me what my personal pinnacle of awesomeness is then this is it. Being chased by a Jeff Goldblum Dracula, hell yeah.

See, learn, fun –that’s about right.

We live in a world where everything from the past is bad (or worse: things suddenly become ‘hip’) . This game is from the past but still highly playable and enjoyable. I doesn’t require a lot of effort for modern eyes to adjust to its older techniques (heck, your contemporary PC  can probably run this game better than those Windows 95 systems it was made for) and you might even learn to appreciate  the technical skills behind it. The game may, however, require a bit more effort for adults to get back into the childish story mode (if your kids won’t play it) but once you do you’ll be rewarded with a great little comedic mystery with a dash of nightmare fuel like only the 90s could deliver.