My favourite thing about follow the picture game manufacture closely as part of my business is seeing how much it evolve over time . It ’s a joy to see something like nomadic games grow from playingSnakeon my phone to console - tone secret plan . And it ’s similarly rewarding to follow a studio apartment from its debut game to its bigger , more ambitious labor decades later . spectre Townlets me see both of those evolutions play out at once .
The new VR puzzle game is the latest labor by Fireproof Games . If you ’ve played a batch ofmobile gamesover the geezerhood , you may recognize that name as the developer behind The Room , an excellent series of sullen escape room game . After four hit on mobile , Fireproof would expand its skillset with 2020’sThe Room VR : A Dark Matter , a must - haveVR gamethat showed how much more the studio could do . Five years afterwards , Fireproof has raise the bar for both itself and VR play at big again withGhost township .
In The Room series , players mostly puzzle out a series of puzzle box as a creepy backstory unfolds in the background . Ghost Townis very different in that it ’s a narrative game first and frontmost that better thread its tactile mystifier into a write up . The risky venture follows Edith Penrose , a ghost hunter who sets out to find oneself her brother after a paranormal coming upon . Her quest have her from the seas of Scotland to an eerie otherworld as she casts out stray spirit and work plentitude of puzzles .
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It ’s much bigger in reach than any of Fireproof ’s previous game , but it ’s ground by dependable gameplay . Building onThe Room VR , Ghost Townhas players grabbing objects and tinker with switches to solve tactile puzzles enhance by smooth motion control . These section keep up The Room ’s lead-in by drop me in an interlink series of interactions that I require to come near like an flight elbow room . One has me make a concoction in a test tubing by scouring a room for clue as to what liquids I need to pour in . Another has me point a brightness level around a room and finding clues blot out in the shadows it casts . Those here and now are , unsurprisingly , whereGhost Townis at its good .
In between those larger set piece , I ’m doing more one - off teaser that naturally slide into the story . When I head back to my flat and show my ghost hunting partner an artefact I ’ve find , I chuck it into a machine and psychoanalyze it by drag a microphone around its surface and looking for a specific pattern as we chat . Those micro puzzles allow the story to represent out more fluidly rather than between long gameplay sequences .
Though I do love that organic evolution of Fireproof ’s formula , there are moments where I wish the one - off puzzles had a slight more deepness to them . Since they are n’t always ramp up to tie into the next step , a few great idea can be left feeling a fiddling one - note . That ’s to be expect considering that Fireproof is shaking up a normal it has perfected with five games in order a ten . It hits on some truly great ideas , like during itsP.T.reminiscent finale , but there ’s room to push its blossoming idea even more .
That same moral force can be felt in the narrative , which is the biggest vacillation the studio throw here . Ghost Towntells a fun supernatural story that does a great business at creating a paranormal realism where science and supernatural sports meeting . It ’s more cinematic than The Room too , with one standout chapter sending me up a haunted lighthouse as a ghost tries to evade me . The storytelling does palpate a fleck loose , though , as there ’s a lot of traditional knowledge mob into four or five time of day of constantly moving story beats that do n’t always find machine-accessible . Still , it moves through some exciting set piece that take full advantage of VR ’s ability to convincingly ravish us to new spot .
trace Townfeels like as much of an evolution for Fireproof Games as it does a new beginning . It ’s a studio apartment reaching its height with The Room and starting again from the ground up . I almost see it as a re - debut — and a great one at that . Though just as exciting to me is how it feels like a step forward for VR as a whole too . Just attend at the jump fromThe 7th Guest VRtoGhost Town , two very interchangeable paranormalpuzzle gamesthat feel at least five days apart rather than two . secret plan like Ghost Town continue to change by reversal VR into a viable platform full of gems for anyone committed to the tech . Who knows where it will be 10 age from now , but I hope Fireproof Games is at the head of the table by then .
spectre Townis out now on Steam VR and Meta Quest headsets .
