💎 PREMIUM: Id/GrandmasterJ/recommended/ - Complete Album!

This game got popular on release and it was only $3 so I picked it up to give it a try. Everything about this game just screams low quality asset flip, I looked up what engine the game was made with because I was convinced it was Unity but color me surprised to see this is an Unreal engine game.

So first the plot is that the player is hired to find out if the cabins that the Haunted Cabin Factory makes (you know, for theme parks and whatever!) are actually haunted or not. Our workstation is a giant warehouse (but the player only gets a very small space to move around in) with a giant conveyor belt that brings in decent sized cabins for us to inspect. The bright warehouse dims immediately upon setting foot on the porch and the interior is extremely dimly lit. We are told if anything moves the cabin is haunted, so I pay attention to every detail to make sure they don't move until I notice a man just sitting there. Not a mannequin, like an actual man just sitting at the table. He doesn't move so I guess the cabin isn't haunted. The kid with knobby knees under a sheet upstairs wiggles a bit so I deem the cabin haunted, press the big HAUNTED button and send it down the belt.

This goes on for a while and at one point the radio in one of the cabins (all cabins have the same layout including actual human man sitting at the table) dumps all the backstory of the cabin on us, so I have about 80% of the plot about ten minutes in. I keep going until the door to the basement opens up (yes a basement in a cabin that is just sitting on a big conveyor belt) get the next 10% of story and one of the actual human beings in the cabin 'gets' me and I come to in the elevator opening sequence. I figure that's part of the game and go to inspect the next cabin when I realize that the lights indicating the cabins I have already done have reset.

You see, there are eight lights on the pedestal with the HAUNTED and NOT HAUNTED buttons that light up when a cabin is successfully inspected. After getting grabbed by a ghoulie the lights have reset. I figure I should have avoided getting grabbed so I decide to restart and power through the cabins until I can get back to where I was. The cabin sequences are all different, things are not going the same way they did the first time but whatever I can power through. But then I inspect a cabin and nothing moves, I don't notice anything particularly out of place and everything seems like a normal haunted cabin. I hit the NOT HAUNTED button and get a bzzt sound and the lights I have been working on turning on all go out. I made one mistake and my progress was reset. I quit out of rage.

I don't want to just write this game off as the lazy asset flip it appears to be so I gave it another try just now. I go slowly and examine all the usual moving suspects, I even encounter the sequence which 'killed' me and easily run past the danger. A few cabins later I walk out of the latest cabin to press the NOT HAUNTED button only to find the buttons are simply gone from the pedestal. In confusion I look around to see what else has changed only to get 'killed' by an actual human being that has somehow broken into the warehouse, I'm not sure how I was supposed to deal with that or where he hid the buttons but I come to in the elevator again.

At this point I'm angry, I'm trying to inspect eight cabins in a row without being 'killed' or making a mistake and I don't feel like hiding the buttons from me and attacking me outside the cabin was very fair at all. I try again and manage to work my way up to the last light, I only need one more successful inspection to 'win', I guess. So after a streak of 5 haunted cabins (reminder: there are eight lights) and spending a lot of time in the cabin making sure my last inspection will go well I don't see anything moving. There are no spooky sounds either, which do NOT COUNT for being haunted, scary noises are ok, it's just things moving. I exit the cabin, hit the big NOT HAUNTED button, and get the bzzt sound and all lights off and I have to start over.

That leads me to here, where I am giving the game a bad review, uninstalling it, and never picking it up again. I have one last complaint before I summarize up all that is wrong with the game and that is how the game slowed to a crawl during two cabins I had to inspect back-to-back. The moment I looked at the front door all my controls felt sluggish, turning took effort and time and I just knew something crazy had to have loaded into the cabin. The game looks like assets were bought straight off the Unreal store or gotten for free somewhere, yet somehow the game still managed to chug and slow to this point on Unreal.

So the game looks bad, like all the assets were premade and brought together. The story makes absolutely no sense at all unless there is a cutscene after getting all eight lights lit that adds immense amounts of context. The game slows down and chugs on particularly haunted cabins. While I can forgive (but not like) how the game resets on a death or bad inspection I can't forgive having carefully gotten through seven cabins and spent as much time as I could searching for anything moving on the eighth only to have everything reset because . . . of. . . something? With a game as clunky this I honestly don't know if I missed something despite my scrutiny or if it just doesn't work right. Maybe if the bright lights of the warehouse could penetrate the porch or windows of these cabins then I could actually see the interiors. Also, why am I inspecting these cabins if my corporate overlords already know which ones are haunted and fine? If I was the actual inspector then the cabins would be haunted or not purely on my say-so, but instead they are previously inspected, which cabins are haunted or not are known, and if I don't agree with the forgone conclusion then I get punished with a reset. It's all so very contrived.

I had some fun poking around at things and seeing what new 'horrors' awaited me in the cabins but actually trying to play the game was frustrating. I was more scared of the lights resetting than any of the actual human beings that come included with the cabins. You want your players to be scared of the things in the game, not the prospect of having to continue playing the game.

This game got popular on release and it was only $3 so I picked it up to give it a try. Everything about this game just screams low quality asset flip, I looked up what engine the game was made with because I was convinced it was Unity but color me surprised to see this is an Unreal engine game. So first the plot is that the player is hired to find out if the cabins that the Haunted Cabin Factory makes (you know, for theme parks and whatever!) are actually haunted or not. Our workstation is a giant warehouse (but the player only gets a very small space to move around in) with a giant conveyor belt that brings in decent sized cabins for us to inspect. The bright warehouse dims immediately upon setting foot on the porch and the interior is extremely dimly lit. We are told if anything moves the cabin is haunted, so I pay attention to every detail to make sure they don't move until I notice a man just sitting there. Not a mannequin, like an actual man just sitting at the table. He doesn't move so I guess the cabin isn't haunted. The kid with knobby knees under a sheet upstairs wiggles a bit so I deem the cabin haunted, press the big HAUNTED button and send it down the belt. This goes on for a while and at one point the radio in one of the cabins (all cabins have the same layout including actual human man sitting at the table) dumps all the backstory of the cabin on us, so I have about 80% of the plot about ten minutes in. I keep going until the door to the basement opens up (yes a basement in a cabin that is just sitting on a big conveyor belt) get the next 10% of story and one of the actual human beings in the cabin 'gets' me and I come to in the elevator opening sequence. I figure that's part of the game and go to inspect the next cabin when I realize that the lights indicating the cabins I have already done have reset. You see, there are eight lights on the pedestal with the HAUNTED and NOT HAUNTED buttons that light up when a cabin is successfully inspected. After getting grabbed by a ghoulie the lights have reset. I figure I should have avoided getting grabbed so I decide to restart and power through the cabins until I can get back to where I was. The cabin sequences are all different, things are not going the same way they did the first time but whatever I can power through. But then I inspect a cabin and nothing moves, I don't notice anything particularly out of place and everything seems like a normal haunted cabin. I hit the NOT HAUNTED button and get a bzzt sound and the lights I have been working on turning on all go out. I made one mistake and my progress was reset. I quit out of rage. I don't want to just write this game off as the lazy asset flip it appears to be so I gave it another try just now. I go slowly and examine all the usual moving suspects, I even encounter the sequence which 'killed' me and easily run past the danger. A few cabins later I walk out of the latest cabin to press the NOT HAUNTED button only to find the buttons are simply gone from the pedestal. In confusion I look around to see what else has changed only to get 'killed' by an actual human being that has somehow broken into the warehouse, I'm not sure how I was supposed to deal with that or where he hid the buttons but I come to in the elevator again. At this point I'm angry, I'm trying to inspect eight cabins in a row without being 'killed' or making a mistake and I don't feel like hiding the buttons from me and attacking me outside the cabin was very fair at all. I try again and manage to work my way up to the last light, I only need one more successful inspection to 'win', I guess. So after a streak of 5 haunted cabins (reminder: there are eight lights) and spending a lot of time in the cabin making sure my last inspection will go well I don't see anything moving. There are no spooky sounds either, which do NOT COUNT for being haunted, scary noises are ok, it's just things moving. I exit the cabin, hit the big NOT HAUNTED button, and get the bzzt sound and all lights off and I have to start over. That leads me to here, where I am giving the game a bad review, uninstalling it, and never picking it up again. I have one last complaint before I summarize up all that is wrong with the game and that is how the game slowed to a crawl during two cabins I had to inspect back-to-back. The moment I looked at the front door all my controls felt sluggish, turning took effort and time and I just knew something crazy had to have loaded into the cabin. The game looks like assets were bought straight off the Unreal store or gotten for free somewhere, yet somehow the game still managed to chug and slow to this point on Unreal. So the game looks bad, like all the assets were premade and brought together. The story makes absolutely no sense at all unless there is a cutscene after getting all eight lights lit that adds immense amounts of context. The game slows down and chugs on particularly haunted cabins. While I can forgive (but not like) how the game resets on a death or bad inspection I can't forgive having carefully gotten through seven cabins and spent as much time as I could searching for anything moving on the eighth only to have everything reset because . . . of. . . something? With a game as clunky this I honestly don't know if I missed something despite my scrutiny or if it just doesn't work right. Maybe if the bright lights of the warehouse could penetrate the porch or windows of these cabins then I could actually see the interiors. Also, why am I inspecting these cabins if my corporate overlords already know which ones are haunted and fine? If I was the actual inspector then the cabins would be haunted or not purely on my say-so, but instead they are previously inspected, which cabins are haunted or not are known, and if I don't agree with the forgone conclusion then I get punished with a reset. It's all so very contrived. I had some fun poking around at things and seeing what new 'horrors' awaited me in the cabins but actually trying to play the game was frustrating. I was more scared of the lights resetting than any of the actual human beings that come included with the cabins. You want your players to be scared of the things in the game, not the prospect of having to continue playing the game.