Review for Incubus - A ghost-hunters tale
Jonathan Boakes of Darkling Room and Matt Clark of Shadow Tor Studios are known not only for game development but also for ghost hunting. They’ve been putting out hauntingly adventurous fare since Dark Fall back in 2002 and Barrow Hill in 2006. Both of those titles, along with all of their games since, feature their joint hobby of paranormal investigation. Although they operate separate game studios, the two often collaborate, which is the case for their latest spooky outing, Incubus - A ghost-hunters tale. With photorealistic environments and a “based on a true story” label, Incubus aims to give players the opportunity to conduct a true-to-life paranormal investigation — with invented scares, of course. It doesn’t always live up to its exciting promise, but if you stick with the repetitive gameplay, it’s a passably fun experience.
Incubus sees you exploring a haunted house at 6 Dread Pit Road in London’s East End. It’s an actual house that Boakes and Clark have investigated multiple times themselves, filming footage that they used for the game’s real-life photographic environments. You’re given a 360-degree view of each room, which you can look around freely. Unfortunately, you can’t walk around freely; instead, you must move from room to room by clicking the mouse via the directional prompts. This slideshow technique works well for games with 2D environments but feels a bit lackluster in a 3D game. Still, the house is an intriguing location with liminal vibes, a perfect setting for a ghost hunt.
Since you’re a proper paranormal investigator, you have several gadgets at your disposal. This is your first time flying solo, but you’ll get regular check-ins via your mobile phone by Bear and Jen from the O.P.G. team, your fellow ghost hunters who act as mentors. Your phone is mainly used for communication, but you can snap photos with it if you feel like making memories with ghosties. The other gadgets in your paranormal arsenal include: an EMF meter for taking general readings, a spirit box for listening to chatty ghosts, a digital camera for seeing phenomena that can’t be viewed with the naked eye, an infrared camera for spotting heat-based phenomena, and a flashlight for nighttime investigations.
The first half of the game alternates between day and night sequences. The daytime segments are relatively calm and feel lower-stakes. They’re kind of like coaching sessions with Bear and Jen, and they’re less spooky simply by virtue of natural light. You explore the house, utilizing your gadgets as you move around the rooms, until you determine which three locations are haunted. Maybe there’s a wailer in the kitchen — a ghost whose eerie sobs you’ll hear intermittently. Perhaps there’s something more malevolent on the first floor — a pusher, which you’ll become privy to by the camera going wonky and your heartbeat in your ears.
The kitchen kind of acts like your home base, although it can become haunted. On the counter sits a laptop with surveillance camera views of the rooms as well as a floor plan of the house. You can interact with the floor plan, placing icons to distinguish which phenomenon occurred in which specific spot, and you’ll finish your investigation once you get all of the placements correct. You’ll always find exactly three phenomena, and they can either be confined to one room, spread throughout a particular floor (there are three in total), or they’ll encompass the entire house. Nighttime segments work much the same way, but you have less support from Bear and Jen, and the atmosphere transforms from mildly spooky to downright scary.
You can tell that the investigation aspect was meant to be the legs for the game to stand on, but it got somewhat too repetitive for me. It’s interesting for the first hour or so, but after that the creepy factor is replaced with frustration. I resorted to using the game’s hint system: a QR code in the kitchen that you can snap a picture of with your in-game phone, and it’ll tell you which three locations are haunted. It felt a little like cheating, but after a certain point I just wanted the story to progress. The repetition is not helped by the fact that Bear and Jen spout the same lines after every daytime investigation, making those segments come across a bit like filler.
I would have preferred only one or two daytime investigations, with a few more at night. That would not only cut some of the repetition but would also make sense narratively, with those initial daytime segments being your “training” and the nighttime ones being the nitty-gritty of your investigation. I wanted to be thrown to the wolves! I didn’t need so much daylight, particularly since the horror became watered down by multiple investigations featuring the same phenomena.
You’ll uncover bits of lore about the house as you explore, with the daytime discoveries being significantly less jarring than the items you unearth at night. Journal entries, photographs, creepy toys, and blood-soaked notes will all eventually lead you to the house’s truth, and with that, the endgame begins. I won’t say too much here for fear of spoiling the story’s big twist, but the latter portion of the game requires you to use all of the knowledge you gained during the first portion and deploy your equipment in a more puzzle-centric style, which — I have to say — was a welcome change after the repetition of 6 Dread Pit Road. I genuinely relished using everything I’d learned to solve the sequence of puzzles Incubus threw at me in the end, with very little hand-holding.
Incubus’s narrative doesn’t have much to say and certainly isn’t its strong point. While the game takes an interesting approach to the way the story is presented, by feeding it to you in small increments as you roam the house, it doesn’t really pack a punch. It’s a typical “you mess with the devil and you’ll get the horns” affair involving a pact with a demon and some ancient artifacts. It held my interest well enough, but it’s not something I’ll be thinking about long after playing the game. One place where Incubus does excel, however, is its sound design. The atmospheric whispers, screeches, and thumps kept me on my toes and creeped me out more than any of the spirits I saw, proving that age-old adage that less is sometimes more.
Incubus - A ghost-hunters tale is the kind of game to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon with, preferably with your favorite hot beverage on an overcast day. It’s not breaking any boundaries, but the endgame puzzles and real-life liminal spaces of the house were enough to hold my attention. I probably won’t be going back for more, as the gameplay is too repetitive for me, but I enjoyed my time with it — a solid five hours — and I’m eager to see what Darkling Room does in the future, particularly with their use of photogrammetry and real-life environments.
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