After a late Friday night of partying, you wake up to a strange package at your door. Four mysterious tapes you don't remember ordering. Will you dare to watch them? Four of the scariest Puppet Combo shorts in one shocking anthology! They will rattle your body and haunt your dreams! - Work the NIGHT SHIFT in a desolate convenience store. - Defend your family from blood thirsty SPIDERS! - Clean up the streets and FEED ME BILLY - Witness the shocking tapes of THE RIVERSIDE INCIDENT - Bonus: Play the Power Drill Massacre Arcade game in Night Shift
Reviews View More
Spiders - 1 star
Night Shift - 1.5 stars
Story Mode - 2.5 stars
Night Shift - 1.5 stars
Story Mode - 2.5 stars
5/10
It's just a brief playable horror story connecting four anthological episodes. It is quite harmless, it just confirm the talent Puppet Combo has in orchestrating haunting horror experiences in very small environments (here you have just an apartment and a basement).
The hole in the bathroom leading to an impossible space is a reference to Silent Hill 4: The Room that you just can't enjoy if you love survival horrors.
It's just a brief playable horror story connecting four anthological episodes. It is quite harmless, it just confirm the talent Puppet Combo has in orchestrating haunting horror experiences in very small environments (here you have just an apartment and a basement).
The hole in the bathroom leading to an impossible space is a reference to Silent Hill 4: The Room that you just can't enjoy if you love survival horrors.
first game was peak
Scary Tales Vol 1 is a Puppet Combo anthology title that packages four retro horror titles in one product at a very reasonable price. These titles are Night Shift, Spiders, Feed Me Billy, and The Riverside Incident. I have reviewed these titles on their respective dedicated pages and I see no point in reviewing these experiences again.
What's new to Scary Tales Vol 1 is a story mode, which provides reasoning as to why these experiences are in a bundle. I actually like this addition a lot, and it's an entirely optional experience. If the player wants to jump directly into a particular game they can do so on the main menu, but Puppet Combo put some extra care into the game and introduced a pretty fun narrative to neatly wrap this up in a nice package.
The following is going to cover this brief narrative and give some thoughts along the way. Woken abruptly to the sound of the doorbell, the player makes their way to the door to find an ominous box with four VHS tapes inside. Each tape represents one of the four aforementioned Puppet Combo games. You can play these tapes in any order you choose.
After finishing your first tape, strange things begin to occur throughout your home. Your kitty cat is missing, your refrigerator is open, crawling with bugs. In the bathroom you find a peephole, something is in the microwave but it appears jammed. The player can kill the bugs with bugspray, interact with these various changes throughout the house. This does a good job of building tension, it's not something you expected following the completion of the first tape, however, it now leads to this dread following the insertion of the second tape as you don't know what will be awaiting you after completion.
With the second tape completed things have taken a drastic turn, the infestation has gotten worse, the peep hole has turned into a vast tunnel, and the power is completely out which means no more tapes. Now comes one of the most heartbreaking moments in a Puppet Combo game. You receive a phonecall urging you to check the microwave. Upon opening it you find your kitty cat completely disfigured yet somehow still alive. I physically remember puckering my bottom lip with sadness, I'm a sucker for animals.
Equipped with a knife you can traverse through the peep hole and down into the basement to reignite the power. Throughout you'll see various references to cats, such as cat carriers littered throughout the area, pliers and cat claws are present on a table too. Upon restoring power and returning to your apartment you are met with three humanoid fleshless cat figures. After dispatching of them, they melt into a gooey mess. Just before you can put the third tape in, a knock at the door urges you to open, it's the police. However, too preoccupied with the contents of the tapes, you choose to enter the third experience.
Awakening from your third tape you appear in a police interrogation room. Choosing to recount your story the officer results in a beligerant attitude as he doesn't believe you. The interrogator, convinced by your desire to watch the fourth tape, allows you to do so. Upon completing the final tape you awaken, locked in a padded room, and hearing banging on the door. Following this really effective tension building scene you are met with a jumpscare from Billy, from Feed Me Billy, and the game abruptly ends.
Although a simple narrative, I actually really think this is a creative way of presenting an anthology release. Most anthology games, even from AAA studios simply provide the player with a menu whereby you select the appropriate experience. It's refreshing to see an attempt to introduce an overarching narrative that connects these games together, presenting an additional horror experience. In a way, Scary Tales Vol 1 contains five games as a result of this.
I applaud Puppet Combo for displaying their variety once more. Choosing to explore themes of the guilt of animal abuse is an interesting choice considering none of these experiences are really focused on any animals other than the arachnids of Spiders. This anthology is a good introduction to the Puppet Combo experience, with each game exceedingly different. You get a lot of bang for your buck with the price point. I'd love to see even more anthology releases from the studio, and I'm eagerly awaiting a Scary Tales Vol 2, it would be cool to see each of these games connected as fictional stories within a shared overarching world that we see in Scary Tales Vol 1.
What's new to Scary Tales Vol 1 is a story mode, which provides reasoning as to why these experiences are in a bundle. I actually like this addition a lot, and it's an entirely optional experience. If the player wants to jump directly into a particular game they can do so on the main menu, but Puppet Combo put some extra care into the game and introduced a pretty fun narrative to neatly wrap this up in a nice package.
The following is going to cover this brief narrative and give some thoughts along the way. Woken abruptly to the sound of the doorbell, the player makes their way to the door to find an ominous box with four VHS tapes inside. Each tape represents one of the four aforementioned Puppet Combo games. You can play these tapes in any order you choose.
After finishing your first tape, strange things begin to occur throughout your home. Your kitty cat is missing, your refrigerator is open, crawling with bugs. In the bathroom you find a peephole, something is in the microwave but it appears jammed. The player can kill the bugs with bugspray, interact with these various changes throughout the house. This does a good job of building tension, it's not something you expected following the completion of the first tape, however, it now leads to this dread following the insertion of the second tape as you don't know what will be awaiting you after completion.
With the second tape completed things have taken a drastic turn, the infestation has gotten worse, the peep hole has turned into a vast tunnel, and the power is completely out which means no more tapes. Now comes one of the most heartbreaking moments in a Puppet Combo game. You receive a phonecall urging you to check the microwave. Upon opening it you find your kitty cat completely disfigured yet somehow still alive. I physically remember puckering my bottom lip with sadness, I'm a sucker for animals.
Equipped with a knife you can traverse through the peep hole and down into the basement to reignite the power. Throughout you'll see various references to cats, such as cat carriers littered throughout the area, pliers and cat claws are present on a table too. Upon restoring power and returning to your apartment you are met with three humanoid fleshless cat figures. After dispatching of them, they melt into a gooey mess. Just before you can put the third tape in, a knock at the door urges you to open, it's the police. However, too preoccupied with the contents of the tapes, you choose to enter the third experience.
Awakening from your third tape you appear in a police interrogation room. Choosing to recount your story the officer results in a beligerant attitude as he doesn't believe you. The interrogator, convinced by your desire to watch the fourth tape, allows you to do so. Upon completing the final tape you awaken, locked in a padded room, and hearing banging on the door. Following this really effective tension building scene you are met with a jumpscare from Billy, from Feed Me Billy, and the game abruptly ends.
Although a simple narrative, I actually really think this is a creative way of presenting an anthology release. Most anthology games, even from AAA studios simply provide the player with a menu whereby you select the appropriate experience. It's refreshing to see an attempt to introduce an overarching narrative that connects these games together, presenting an additional horror experience. In a way, Scary Tales Vol 1 contains five games as a result of this.
I applaud Puppet Combo for displaying their variety once more. Choosing to explore themes of the guilt of animal abuse is an interesting choice considering none of these experiences are really focused on any animals other than the arachnids of Spiders. This anthology is a good introduction to the Puppet Combo experience, with each game exceedingly different. You get a lot of bang for your buck with the price point. I'd love to see even more anthology releases from the studio, and I'm eagerly awaiting a Scary Tales Vol 2, it would be cool to see each of these games connected as fictional stories within a shared overarching world that we see in Scary Tales Vol 1.