Fears to Fathom: Episode 1 - Home Alone (2021)

It ain't all fun and games when you're home alone.

★★★★

Now this is a game, unlike any other I've played. To be more specific, this is a different kind of horror game. Unlike most horror games, that have a fictonal story, "Fears to Fathom" takes real life stories of victums and creates them into a game. Rayll, an independent video game creator, developed and published "Fears to Fathom," a series of psychological horror anthology games. The series premiered on July 2, 2021. The series will contain five games in the first season, four of which are already playable and the fifth having just been released, during the time this is being written. Additional seasons are planned.

"Episode 1" centers around a 14 year old kid, named Miles, who is home alone while his parents are out of town for work. Miles is happy about being home alone, so he asks his mother if he could invite his friends over, as well as order food. His mother agreed on inviting his friends over, but said no about the food, because she had prepared food ahead of time. While Miles is home alone, he decides to finish his Chemistry homework, until late at night, a mysterious, creepy figure enters his house. Miles suspects there is someone in the house, so he hides. His mother soon finds out from the neighbors and asks Miles to hide until the police shows up. The game ends with the police showing up.

This kind of horror game isn't about the spooky jumpscares, it's the things happening because these things are events real people have experienced. Hence why I love it. With other horror games, you can predict what could happen, but with this, since it actually happened, you can't tell. It all comes in as surprises and even when you least expect it. This is a smart approach for horror games.

In terms of gameplay, it's very simple. What more could you ask? You've got you basic movement using the WASD keys, LMB, RMB, SPACE, G, and F, for action commands, and other keys. "ESC" isn't the pause menu, it's to open up your text messages, which you'll get constantly throughout the game. You can even type in responses, but cannot send them. What are you crazy? You can't change something that already happened. You can type something like, "MOM, THERE IS A SCARY MAN OUTSIDE," and among other stuff, but it won't matter cause it won't work. That's what get's the adrenaline running.

The game isn't graphic demanding game. But it does require some GPU power, so be sure to change the graphic level to however level you want because the main menu is unassessable throughout the whole game. The game was created using "Unity" and uses a graphic style that has a retro vibe, using the VHS static. That also fits of the "storytelling" aspect of this game.

The first episode is free, while the rest cost money, mostly under $10, so, play the first one then try out the others first.