- 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 02/Sep 00:01

Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek – Review

Even though the Goosebumps franchise saw a recent increase in popularity again, thanks to two live-action movies and a series, things never got to the same popularity level again since the series’ inception back in 1992. We were even surprised, to say the least, that a new game was in the works, as that was nowhere on our prediction bingo list of 2025. Here we are, however, still a bit before Halloween, to delve into a spooky horror title that is geared toward teenagers. While some rough edges were certainly present, which aren’t all too uncommon for titles that have a younger audience in mind, we were still fairly entertained by what Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek had to offer. Story As this is a game that’s directed towards a younger audience, it’s not surprising that the story isn’t too complex. You’ll be playing as Sloane, a teen from Little Creek, who is sneaking out past the town’s curfew to investigate what is actually going on. Sloane and her friends are hellbent on finding out why the curfew is in place, and they’ll have to explore the town to do so. To keep spoilers to a minimum, they soon learn about the Monster Society, which might be the cause of recent monster sightings. The story unfolds as you’d expect, with quite a few predictable story beats, but also a few quirky original twists to spice things up. All in all, the narrative is interesting for the target audience. Graphics Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek doesn’t look too bad when keeping the target audience in mind. The character designs are neat, the monsters are scary, and the town of Little Creek does look fairly cool to explore. Sadly, when looking at the finer details, the proportions of a lot of items are off, there is so much character clipping, facial animations are poorly handled, and there is just a general lack of polish. Luckily, a younger audience will probably not mind the absence of a lot of smaller details, but it was very noticeable to us, nonetheless. Sound The overall sound design isn’t too bad, albeit a bit barren sometimes. You’ll be treated to a game that is mostly fully voice-acted, except for a few lines here and there for optional dialogues. It’s a shame that these lines weren’t recorded either. Some of the lines when you pick up items or inspect something are repeated a bit too often, though. The sound effects are decent for the most part, but they’re nothing to write home about. What disappointed us the most was the overall lack of music, as the game barely has any. There are a few tunes that you’ll hear here and there, but for the most part, you’ll have to make do with environmental noises. These are sadly also fairly rare. We reckon this was done to create a more tense and scary atmosphere, but it just ended up sounding a bit dull. Gameplay Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek is a horror adventure game with a lot of puzzle elements directed towards a teen audience. You’ll be playing as Sloane, who, together with her friends, is uncovering what is going on in Little Creek. With the small town enforcing a curfew and having monster sightings, you might be the key to solving the mystery. The offset is simple, as you explore the town and slowly open up new parts by completing objectives. Most of the game’s puzzles involve reading clues that will help you with the solution to solve combination puzzles, find items, figure out pass codes, and so on. You’ll often find what you need in the vicinity of the puzzle you need to crack, or there’s a clue telling you where to go next. It’s fairly well thought out and is adjusted to the target audience. Some puzzles are a bit trickier, and our prerelease version had a few bugs with parts of the puzzles not triggering. Luckily, when we exited the game and reloaded the save file, the issue was resolved. There are also quite a few stealth fragments present in the game. Small enemies can be dealt with with your trusty slingshot, but without special ammo, even small enemies will take a lot of hits to kill. This means you’ll rely on stealth a lot, and the game does offer a lot of hiding spots. Avoiding larger enemies becomes really tedious, though. More often than not, they spot you, even when not in their line of sight, and they will keep chasing you indefinitely. The latter grew old really quickly, and we can imagine younger gamers getting extremely frustrated by this. Luckily, you can take a few hits before you meet your untimely demise, and the game offers you a lot of healing items in the different locations. When you perish, however, you might need to redo a big part of what you just did. It’s best to save progress manually at the typewriters spread across the map, as the autosave is rather unreliable. The game itself is also rather short, as it took us roughly 4-6 hours to complete what Terror in Little Creek had to offer. We reckon that younger gamers will take a bit longer, but as the puzzles never get too complex, we still imagine it being a short experience for them as well. We honestly didn’t mind the shorter length, as the game would have otherwise overstayed its welcome if it were longer. Even so, the current price tag is still rather high for the amount of content on offer here. Conclusion Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek is a fun, bite-sized horror adventure game with loads of puzzles for teens who want a first encounter with the genre. While the audiovisual presentation wasn’t always perfect, and there were a few annoying chase sequences, the game was actually rather entertaining, even for our more adult standards. Even though the price tag might be a bit on the higher side, this is a fairly entertaining little title to play through for younger gamers or together with your kid(s).