I never quite watched Are You Afraid of the Dark as a kid — my time and place had given me completely different childhood traumas — but even regardless of my lack of familiarity, I can still tell just how hard this manages to capture the vibes of one of those children's horror shows. It looks a bit cheap, and it's clearly meant to feel more fun than scary, then the other shoe drops and suddenly something genuinely evocative or tense gets thrown right in your face, like, say, the chase sequences. You'll collect an item, then suddenly something will come after you and the music will ramp up as you're forced to run: not quite knowing where you need to go, not quite sure how far your pursuer is behind you, or even if you're allowed to pause the game given how the music keeps playing only until you take out whatever's chasing you. For what's specifically an adventure game, and for... something a bit more evocative of its source material (or, say, the Goosebumps TV series), it's pretty impressive, both from a technical standpoint and from how the game manages to balance its horror elements.

I was also a pretty big fan of the framing device, and how it works to function... both as a part of the story and as a game mechanic. The events of the game are you, the player, attempting to continue a scary story started by somebody else, and at any point you can jump up a textual level and talk to the people around the fire with you, either playing through your past conversations for an indication of where to go next, or to get a direct hint upon a game over through the form of the rest of the people at the campfire discussing the story. There's hints of a fun little dynamic between the people at the campfire — something that might mean a bit more had I context of its source material — though I do wish perhaps the hints themselves were wrapped a bit more within the framing device. I understand that it... might be a bit confusing for hypothetical children playing this game otherwise, but if I'm telling a story, why are the other people at the campfire talking explicitly about game mechanics, or saying that *I* was the one who pressed the 'do not press' button? It's minor, but it did stick with me as something where the game could've committed a bit harder to... what's easily one of its strongest points in the framing device.

Besides that, I liked this! It's a nice, quick adventure game that works to avoid a lot of the more esoteric puzzle design of the time (aside from, say, some areas that are a bit too large and empty and where it's easy to get lost) which does a lot to evoke its genre of kid-friendly horror, and has a fairly unique and cool framing device to wrap the whole thing together. Definitely sad that this wasn't financially successful — I would've loved to see more like this. 7/10.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (3rd Oct. – 9th Oct., 2023).

Between the 1960s and the 1980s, audiovisual horror production gradually tended towards family films and series. Such an approach was not necessarily obvious, as horror – and its iconic figures – were mainly used in fantastical, comic or didactic productions, without any explicit desire to frighten the viewer. Even in late-night series aimed at adults, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Twilight Zone (1958) or Night Gallery (1970), horror was largely mixed with detective stories or speculative genres. The emergence of true children's television horror in the late 1980s can be explained by a number of factors: the publication of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981) by Alvin Schwartz frightened generations of American children with his gruesome reinterpretation of folk tales and urban legends. In particular, Stephen Gammell's disturbing, misshapen illustrations imposed a lasting aesthetic style, to the point where it became one of the books to provoke the most petitions for its withdrawal from libraries and schools [1]. Similar controversies arose when Gremlins (1984) and Robert L. Stine's Goosebumps (1992) were published.

At the same time, the development of cable television, much harder to regulate, created new problems. The television adaptation of Goosebumps (1995) was undoubtedly a product of the audiovisual capitalism of the 1990s, the aim of which was to sell books and various merchandise by creating visceral reactions in children – in other words, by genuinely scaring them. In contrast, Donald J. MacHale's Are You Afraid of the Dark? series (1990) deliberately employed the directorial codes popularised by Hitchcock – suspense rather than gore – and embedded its stories in a buffer zone. The diegetic existence of a Midnight Society, made up of imperfect American teenagers, serves to dilute the horror and cast the protagonists as heroes overcoming their fears [2].

The video game adaptation The Tale of Orpheo's Curse follows a similar spirit. Unlike titles like Phantasmagoria (1995) or Harvester (1996), the game is closer to Myst (1993) and The 7th Guest (1993). The player becomes the narrator of the story and is asked to make the right decisions to save Terry and Alex from the curse of the Orpheo Theatre. The setting is vast and it is easy to get lost between the various objectives: the horror comes from the time the player spends in slightly threatening environments, while being surveilled by the awkward eyes of wax statues. However, The Tale of Orpheo's Curse mitigates this aspect by allowing the player to interrupt the story and return to the Midnight Society's campfire, where various clues are given to the player. As in the series, this is a place to unwind, confirming the title's effective atmosphere and friendly disposition towards a relatively young audience.

There is something about the staging that always maintains the illusion of the story without resorting to violence or gore. The comic book-style visuals hide a lack of budget, but also serve to remind the player that this is fiction. These sequences, however, contrast with the chase scenes, which dramatically shifts the tempo of the exploration. While the premise is interesting, The Tale of Orpheo's Curse may be a little intimidating for younger audiences due to the cryptic nature of some of the puzzles – although they can be solved without too much difficulty thanks to the diegetic die-and-retry. The title even becomes a didactic tale: the Midnight Society points out that the story is a little too anti-climactic if the player manages to escape the theatre too quickly. In terms of creativity and narrative experimentation in an adventure game, The Tale of Orpheo's Curse, despite certain stylistic flaws, would have been well suited to the 3DO, alongside games like Psychic Detective (1995) or Lost Eden (1995), offering a unique and intelligent experience. Disappointingly, the title never received a sequel due to its poor commercial performance.

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[1] '100 most frequently challenged books: 1990-1999', on American Library Association, consulted on 6th October 2023.
[2] Jessica Balanzategui, 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Children’s Horror Anthology Series in the 1990s', in Adrian Schober, Debbie Olson (ed.), Children, Youth, and American Television, Routledge, London, 2018, pp. 208-211.

I have fought with emulators on multiple computers over the years when every few years I want to replay this game. I first played it when it came out and I will play it again.

It's exactly the right balance of cheesy and spooky and is very well optimized for the time. They dealt with a lot of hardware limitations with style and art direction. The interface is a little odd but it's a relic of the time and isn't particularly hard to get used to.

I want the theatre it takes place in as a VR environment to loiter in.