The Fear Business Review (PC) – In The Business of Misery
There’s something about the retro aesthetics of the PlayStation 1 era that just blends so immaculately with horror games. Is it the jagged edges of the pixels evoking the juddering slash of a knife with ease? Perhaps it’s the uncanny, immovable facial model of a picture unnervingly placed like a Michael Myers mask on our character’s body? Regardless of what it is that works, The Fear Business is another indie horror title that aptly evidences how effective it continues to be.
Another town has been afflicted with mysterious disappearances and so it’s up to us to fulfill our horror game duty, sorry reporter instinct, to find out the truth and uncover the strange goings on. There’s mumblings of a satanic cult, but I’m sure that’s all hearsay and nothing terrible could truly be happening, right?… Right? Dig out the old camcorder and let’s hit the trail of this story.
Reporting For Duty
The Fear Business features a short but effective introduction to Sarah and the creepy little town we’ll be investigating. Enter a motel, discover there’s no available rooms, interact with some… interesting… locals and even conduct an interview or two. Right away, we’re indoctrinated inducted into the mystery, as the bar dwelling populace speaks of the disappearances of tourists and warns you from further exploration.
Naturally, Sarah is above all of that and wants in, accepting a dubious offer to visit the mansion where these disappearances are linked to. What follows is a relatively basic story about cults, rituals, sacrifices and the usual bloodletting you can expect. The Fear Business is slasher inspired and the roots behind this palace of blood and evil sticks close to it for its runtime.
I was impressed with the amount of voice acting, most of which is condensed to the opening. Delivery treads the line between B-movie bad and actually being pretty decent in places, though I can’t say that Sarah’s crying or dramatic flair for being scared was ever particularly convincing. For a game of this scale, The Fear Business has a pretty good setup and surprisingly decent production values, especially if you’re into slashers and retro horror vibes.
Fear The Walking Goat
Upon entering the mansion, you’ll quickly become accustomed to The Fear Business’ predator and prey gameplay archetype. The building is split into half a dozen sections, with a plethora of locked doors and random objects just begging to be interacted with. It’s old school Silent Hill – find an item, use item to unlock new room, discover another item, so on and so forth, for about two hours.
I wouldn’t really consider it puzzling in so much as it is using A to unlock B and rinse-repeating that until the end. There’s a couple of slightly more in-depth tricks like playing a string of piano notes (I needed a screenshot to do the entire sequence), or matching symbols to corresponding letters. However, The Fear Business is content to be relatively straightforward and unobtrusive.
If you tend to veer away from horror puzzling due to the obnoxiously ridiculous mental arithmetic that’s required, then fear not here. It’s akin to a slimmed down escape room, and I digged it. The Fear Business is complete with a small inventory (which can be expanded with two extra slots) and single-use save points. All of this adds to the retro style of the game and honestly, it was a blast reliving the old-school gore fests with pixelated violence and chunky graphics.
Oh, Please Don’t Kill Me, Mr. Goat Face, I Wanna Be In The Sequel!
Now, I do need to mention the obvious caveat that comes with the tank controls, inventory swapping and only having a finite number of saves. About halfway through, I realised I’d used the save spots pretty inefficiently. I then died and lost about 10-15 minutes of progress and about three puzzles I’d solved. When I reloaded I had to redo all of this and I can’t say I was overly pleased. However, after I got over myself and did it again, I appreciated the commitment to the inspiration.
It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if that’s the concession for producing a title so respectful of the source material, I’d argue it’s worth it. It’s probably worth mentioning Goat Face himself, given he’s the one who chases you like a crazed youth hunts down an already smoked cigarette. He’ll appear at almost any point, often accompanied with a jump scare piano rattle and found footage VHS visual disturbance.
Your options are to run… or run. Sarah can find sticks or pipes to hit him with (in true scary movie form) but these only stun him for about 1 millisecond and break faster than a KitKat wafer in boiling water. Given the tank controls, it can be awkward and fiddly to outrun him, but thankfully doors are your best friend and you can hide in a handful of cupboards to escape him temporarily.
Not Open For Business
I died a few times to ol’ Goaty McGoatface and I will say that while The Fear Business is understandably not on the level of the Xenomorph or Nemesis, he gave me a couple good jumps. I tired of running away towards the end as it felt like he became more relentless, and therefore more tiresome to wait him out, but again, it’s part of the old-school charm.
What most stands out is the PS1 era graphical style. Humanoids have disproportionately large faces, Sarah gravitates along the ground in Tomb Raider fashion and squares of red blurt out to signal damage. Everything from the camera UI to the HUD works wonders at transporting you back into the late 1990s and it was pretty cool to get hit with that kind of nostalgia again.
As mentioned earlier, the voice work and delivery can occasionally be a little off. This is made even funnier when Sarah’s static face is just existentially crisis-ing at a wall or into a random space. The found footage aspect is very cool however, with the little touches like the visual disturbance or the crackle of clicking onto the camera giving me many a flashback to rewatching Goldeneye on VHS tape over and over again.
The Goat Strikes Back
The Fear Business was a fun little throwback to a bygone era of almost 30 years ago (it’s only 30 in one month, it counts). It only took me about two and a half hours to finish (including my self-inflicted save pain) and it has tougher difficulties to face, if you dare. For the cheap price and great attention to detail in recreating old horror traditions, it’s relatively easy to recommend.
I also played it on Steam Deck, where it ran as smoothly as Sarah gliding away from Goat Face. A solid choice if you’re looking for a spooky, splatter filled afternoon of tense running around and unlocking of doors. The Fear Business may not be the best in the business, but it’s got enough on tape to make a decent startup movie and then some.
The Fear Business is available now on PC via Steam (review platform).
Developer: Tomás Esconjaureguy
Publisher: Selewi
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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