Poltergeist: A Pixelated Horror Review

One thing the gaming world, to its shame, is short on are Haunting Simulators. In other words, games where you command ghosts to scare people in the best way possible. The only ones I can think of are Haunting starring Polterguy on the Megadrive, and one of my personal favourite rough diamonds Ghost Master. That’s it. Not only is the list short, they’re also not very good games if I’m honest. Well, now we have a new one to add: Poltergeist: A Pixelated Horror from two-person indie developer Glitchy Pixel. Can it do better than Ghost Master? Let’s see if they’ve got the spooks and ghouls and freaks and fools needed to spirit us away.

The story is kept simple, and doesn’t really matter but it ties things together nicely. After the death of his wife Henry B. Knight swore that he wouldn’t let the only other thing in his life go, which is his beloved mansion. Now himself dead he haunts the house and will stop anyone from staying there for too long, how ever he can. The plot’s told through neat cutscenes and are certainly fun, especially when we’re introduced to special characters. It doesn’t get in the way, you can skip every cutscene and won’t miss anything, but I actually enjoyed them since like everything else in Poltergeist it feels like it was made by a developer that actually cared what they were doing.

Simple cutscenes tell the story of Henry B Knight. You don't need to watch them to enjoy the game, but they add to the charm

Despite initial similarities to Ghost Master, Poltergeist is a very different game. It’s actually a deceptive simple puzzle game. You don’t get to explore the entire mansion, just a few small rooms that usually fit on your whole screen without scrolling (although you can scroll if you wish). There are 60 stages altogether which you can mostly play in any order (although you have to have progressed a certain amount), over four different time periods. You get a very select group of ghostly powers in each stage that you can only use a limited number of times, so it’s all about working out how to use those powers to efficiently scare the residents. Each resident has a sanity meter over their heads, with different powers doing different amounts of damage to that meter - once it’s empty they flee the house in terror.

The powers range from simple to devastating, and all (beyond the basics) are huge amounts of fun to inflict on the residents. There are three powers that affect objects in the environment: ‘Alter Object’ flips an object, ‘Launch Object’ fires an item from one room to another (scaring people in two rooms, but only a small amount), and ‘Possess Object’ levitates an object across a room doing double damage to sanity. Two powers allow you to move individual residents: ‘Call’ makes a noise that brings in a random resident from another room, and ‘Wolf’ summons a spectral wolf that chases a specific resident from one room to another. Finally the devastating powers: ‘Possess Human’ turns a resident into Regan from The Exorcist who can float from one room to any other freaking people out, ‘Spectre’ summons a demonic shadow ghost that floats in one room, and ‘Black Hole’ is the strongest power which removes an entire room of residents.

The Dark Spectre is actually pretty terrifying

There are of course complications other than a limited number of powers, for example some residents are distracted (by TV or a book) and so have to be interrupted before they can be scared. The biggest problem are “special” enemies, like Witches, Priests, and Ghost Hunters, who can block or remove specific powers and so have to be dealt with carefully and tactically. However out of the 60 stages twelve are “boss” levels where you face a powerful character such as a Bishop or the head of the Ghost Hunters, who can counteract any power and can only be defeated by scaring out all the other residents first.

As puzzle games go, Poltergeist is enormous amounts of fun. It also gets incredibly tricky from level 5 onwards, and yet Glitchy Pixel always wisely introduce new powers or enemies gently with a simpler stage to practice them on. The difficulty curve is pretty much perfect, so while I was definitely stumped on some levels I always felt like I knew everything I needed to know to solve them, I just had to solve it. I’ve played many games that believed “difficult” translates to “not giving the player enough information”, which actually causes frustration and anger instead, so Poltergeist gets a big thumbs-up from me in terms of challenge and pacing.

Flee little doggies! Flee!

It also excels in terms of look, presentation, and most importantly personality. While everything’s kept intentionally basic it’s done so with such a sweet style that you can’t help but love it. The goofy look on a little dog’s face before you scare it off and it runs yelping out the door is priceless. Even the blank-eyed floating moaning head-spinning Possessed Human is adorable. However a small black mark I have to give Poltergeist is in terms of UI, as it’s quite clearly an iPad game with its massive buttons and straightforward “just a few minutes” gameplay. The second isn’t a complaint, and the first isn’t really a problem since it’s all so straightforwardly designed, but anyone looking for a really deep long-lasting experience should look elsewhere. Funnily enough it’s bizarrely not actually available on iPad, so I’m not sure how to explain the chunky oversized icons.

My only real complaint of Poltergeist is that despite the introduction of new powers gradually over levels, which do admittedly add a lot, the gameplay does get a bit samey. There’s no real difference between time periods other than outfits and the odd electronic device, and it’s a bit of a cheat that it skips from the 1800s straight to the 1980s, which is already fairly modern, and then there are two present-day periods - ‘Modern’ and ‘Office’. If there’s a Poltergeist 2, and I hope there is (and that it’s not subtitled “The Other Side”), I want to see more residents, more variety in levels, and more things to get in your way. I won’t say I got bored with Poltergeist as it only lasts a few hours and does remain lots of fun, but I had to take breaks to avoid it getting repetitious.