“Huh, now that you mention it maybe Monica’s board game nights *have* gotten a bit extreme…”
There’s plenty of well-established horror fodder to gorge on for Halloween in film, television, and games, and just as many pieces of advice floating around about the definitive cultural touchstones that everyone needs to see this time of year. For my money, as someone raised on the old AMC Monsterfest (given an excellent breakdown here, by Jim Vorel writing for Paste), you’re not doing the holiday justice unless you catch something that’s as obscure as it is schlocky. Less Halloween, more Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
To further that end, publisher Aksys Games Localization are putting two iOS thriller/horror titles on sale for 99 cents apiece this Weenmas time, a discount of a couple dollars for each. 999: The Novel is the iOS version of Nintendo DS title 999, and concerns the “Nonary Game,” one of those “kidnap a bunch of individuals who constitute a perfect cross-section of society and lock them in a spooky place” schemes that cults and evil corporations are so fond of. The spooky place is a ship, and the motivation comes from these fly wristwatches linked to bombs planted in every person’s stomach.
Banshee’s Last Cry, meanwhile, is a port which hearkens back all the way to 1994 and the Super Famicon, the when and where for the original “sound novel” (literally just a novel with sound effects) of the same name. It’d be fair to call this one an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, if Agatha Christie wrote her stories down in Japanese first, then had someone else translate them. Oh, and then sold them with a phonograph and recording of her going “ooooOOOOHHHHHHooooooo.”
Both titles promise interactivity and branching story paths, though it seems that 999: The Novel has none of the puzzles from the DS version. Still, a buck or two for some undoubtedly cheesy Halloween fun is fair enough. You used to have to shell out for expanded basic cable to get Monsterfest. Scary.
999: The Novel is available on iOS for a buck, and Banshee’s Last Cry is free to download, with a one-dollar in-app purchase to unlock the full game. A few screenshots down yonder, living in an shack our heroes think is abandoned.
Gods above, the anime production of Les Misérables is in grave danger! (999: The Novel)
Come on monster blood…. come on monster blood… (Banshee’s Last Cry)
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