Samhain

released on Nov 01, 2019

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Samhain is the Gaelic cultural festival that celebrates the end of the harvest season. It would later merge with the Christian holiday of All Hallow's Eve, eventually becoming Halloween. Samhain is responsible for aspects of Halloween that celebrate all things scary and spooky. The festival honours the spirit world, occurring at a time of the year where it was believed the veil between the spirit and corporeal world was at it's thinnest.

Samhain is also heavily referenced throughout the Halloween franchise, especially with Michael Myers being the embodiment of evil itself. To anyone who has watched Halloween III: Season of the Witch, some similarities will be immediately familiar within this game. Similarities include horror surrounding trick-or-treating, and the masks worn by the children in the game. Although you don't see your player character, we do get a glimpse of their costume as they pet the cat before leaving, appearing as a witch by my assumption. Your brothers are wearing a pumpkin mask and a skull mask, all three of these outfits are the cursed masks of the aforementioned movie.

Samhain's premise is as follows. On the night of Halloween, Alice, an older sister, is entrusted by her mother to accompany her younger brothers on a trick-or-treating adventure. With a firm reminder to avoid talking to strangers and to stay on the designated path, Alice leads her two brothers through the neighborhood, gathering treats along the way. The game follows the themes I discussed earlier surrounding the origin of Samhain the festival and it's relevance in the Halloween franchise.

The music OST is extremely well composed, lasting approximately 15 minutes total. Samhain's menu theme blends themes of the Halloween soundtrack with that iconic Stranger Things-esque synthwave 80s motif. The main theme is also exceptionally good, invoking trepedation with synth supplemented with woodwind instruments that blend so well together to create a really effective eerie sound. Although the ambient track serves its purpose well, the offkey notes remind me of wind chimes perhaps in the porch of the houses you visit throughout the night. When you reach The Hill, the ambiance is filled with the piercing sounds of wind, blowing aggressively which I think is probably the laziest aspect of the soundtrack. Darkness creeps is such a fantastic track that scratches the brain well, it's unsettling yet for some reason pleasant to listen to. Finally, the Final Samhain sounds like an exceedingly fast heartbeat which seems to contribute to the heightened anxiety the player character is experiencing.

I adore the colour palette of this game. Capturing the retro horror feel that Puppet Combo is reknowned for, except again stylistically experimenting. The environments are piercingly bright with eccentric colours like red and blue, however, they're still able to invoke an unsettling atmosphere. It feels like experiencing an Atari game from a first person perspective. Gothic stylised text throughout conveys to me that the horrors within this game are much older than you might initially anticipate.

The first significant moment in the game comes when you surmount the Hill, with the aforementioned soundtrack accompanying you. At this stage, you realise that one of your brothers has completely vanished, much to the dismay of Alice and her brother. At the precipice of the hill, you encounter a scarecrow, who encourages Alice to stray off the broken path. There are some dialogue options here, but this scarecrow isn't a threat, and the choices in dialogue don't affect the game whatsoever.

As you stray further and further from home, the soundtrack as I mentioned earlier, grows more and more ominous. Lurking eyeballs can be spotted through the gaps in the trees momentarily and the residents who's houses you knock on become more abrasive to the player.

Eventually you'll find yourself passing through a graveyard, seemingly approaching a tower in the distance. At this stage you realise you've lost your other brother, and now it is you alone traversing the unsettling environment. Here the gifts are also stranger, receiving bones, hearts, and tongues rather than candy and toys that we came for.

Straying off the broken path following a dead-end we find ourselves at a ritualistic campsite. Stakes adorned with human heads, and a campfire where we can offer the parts we collected from previous households. Doing so reveals the following text before ending immediately after:
The ritual was complete
The end came quickly as the four horsemen galloped
across the autumn sky and the seas turned into poison.
As fire rain down from above and the dead rose from their graves
it was the final Samhain.


Following the completion of Samhain, I can safely say that it is closer to a celebration of Halloween itself, rather than something truly akin to a horror game. Whilst it's effective in building tension, and accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack, Samhain doesn't offer a threat, and to all of my exploration I couldn't find any alternative secrets or endings. It's essentially a stylish 20 minute walking sim, that is dressed with old-school Halloween aesthetics. I find this game charming, but charm and a soundtrack can't carry the game to a great score and it lacks a lot of effective fear that we have come to associate with Puppet Combo titles.

I enjoyed this short game, very spooky atmosphere, I got it from puppet combo's itch io ! perfect spooky szn mood for all halloween lovers!