Haunt the House: Terrortown Review

We assume ghosts don’t feel hunger. They have no need for material possessions. They don’t get tired. Technically, no place on Earth is barred off to them. What, then, could the little spirits want? Why are they always up and around with the moaning and the chain-rattling?

Haunt the House: Terrortown by SFB Games has an answer. Ghosts want quiet. They want to marinate in their misery and loneliness, but it’s hard to brood when us humans are constantly yelling and partying. Thus, Terrortown presents us with an uneasy scenario: when we make noise around a ghost, we do so at our own peril. An irritated ghost might not stop at shaking a few curtains. It may well commit a bit of murder.

Haunt the House: Terrortown features four locales that need to be purged of humans. They include a museum, a hospital, a theater, and a cruise ship. Each area is stuffed with movable, breakable items that are a poltergeist’s dream.

Players possess items and perform one of several actions that hopefully send nearby humans running for the hills. The more the ghost haunts, the more "spirit energy" builds up in a level. Spirit energy opens up more haunting options. Given energy, a chandelier that might simply wobble can actually drop, or flick its lights on and off.

There are tons of objects and actions in each location, which makes haunting a gas. Moreover, different scares have different effects on the living. A person that’s only made a bit uneasy by a blinking statue might run screaming from a polar bear statue that comes to "life" and starts meowing.

The ghost can even reap the souls of certain people, if the player knows the key to dispatching them. Said spirits can then be used as avatars, which is creepy and fun.

Though Terrortown is a good-looking and clever title that offers tons of achievements, it’s a pretty short game overall. Only perfectionists are going to want to comb through every single scoring option, whereas everyone else will probably sate themselves with a couple of playthroughs.

But spending even a mere couple of hours in Terrortown is worth the price of admission. The game is a good reminder that cute ghosts aren’t necessarily friendly. Respect the dead, or suffer the consequences.