Intravenous 2 (Intravenous level expansion pack, basically)

looks the same. Maybe a little more high res? donno

PR: Sean, some dude of unknown past one day decides to become a killer-for-hire in order to pay for his dad's eye surgery. Could he had taken a loan from the bank? Maybe. But Sean wanted to kill people, regardless of what he claims.

 He says that he "only kills scumbags who'd be better off dead" but he does no investigation whatsoever on his targers and chooses to trust in whoever put the bounty hoping they're saying the truth, you know because the folks at the hitman black market are known for being truthful.

 With Steve we kinda get that he gets riled on the stupid "trust unknown suspicious guy" train, given he's not a hitman and is caught on a moment of emotional dismay, but Sean's got no excuse.

 Also, he didn't stop taking hits after paying for dad's surgery, that tells you something?

 As we predicted, Sean gets scammed and takes a hit to kill some "pedophile" politician that as it turns out might not be guilty (of that anyways). He bails mid-hit and the whole thing blows in the news, pissing the "interested party" who decides to kidnap Sean's dad and blackmail him into "working" for free.

 Guess there's room for that kind of thing to happen when you show barefaced to the killer club announcing to the whole bar who's your next target.

 Anyway, after taking a less than solid lead, he and Steve meet in the awkward moment of confronting the target. Steve, instead of shooting Sean in the face like he's done with literally everybody else, he engages in a conversation and they both form a party to uncover another 70's action-movie-like, vice city styled corrupted politician/sheriff.

 When Steve lets some of his backstory show a lot of incosistences show, like "I told my brother to take a cab" (he didn't) "We got in a fight with some crackheads" (they got mugged, no fight) "My brother took a swing at the wrong moment and end up in a coma" (He didn't, he got executed after being robbed so no coma), and other stuff like him not killing Empathic but yes killing the accomplice even though they're the same person, not having killed the baker when he did killed the baker and so on.

 Worse of all he behaves like a goody-two-shoes when we all know he's a bloodthirsty maniac. After a lot of "moral decisions" such as; other politician that claims to fight crime, kill or spare, spendthrift son of another so-called clean politician that you found in a brothel, kill or spare, detective that might have something on the guy that's blackmailing you or might not, kill or spare... and after the epic scene of Steve saving Sean's ass because the idiot got knocked out and kidnapped by a fat guy wearing a red Hawaiian shirt (I didn't saw him!), after Steve also saving Sean's dad (why we even want Sean again) and Steve killing a lot of bad guys, we get to the grand finale which is Sean and Steve killing the Big bad.

 That's literally just a regular crook with regular crook monologues about helping himself with the taxpayers money 'cause why not. He really says "I don't have any great motives or hidden reasons. I just want more money". Careful with that creativity man, you might accidentaly create an actual plot.

the crook

 Anyway, there's this "steve's trust"-o-meter that gets filled up through the game with zero logic or explanation, Steve gets mad if you kill your tagets even if they deserve it and basically pulls the goody-two-shoes, soooo unlike the cold blooded killer he is, and also was on the previous game. I got the (bad?) ending because the trust wasn't 100% and when we killed the crook, he walked away angry as if Sean had sucker-puch him in the nuts or something. 

Basically the whole game feels like an expansion pack of the previous, which would've been fine if the dev was ernest about it and didn't tried to jam this Sean guy into the story where he doesn't belong. 

Basically it felt like nostalgia, recalling the previous game all the time "Hey remember when the goons started to fear Steve?"  "Hey, remember the good enemy progression in the previous game? Emphatic's mansion was insane!" and so on. The dual night/day levels is interesting as proof of concept but it's only available in two levels and isn't gameplay-centric, so it requires more thought. 7/10 (maybe a six point five, donno)

Don't Look Outside. No wait, "Look Outside". (When the most original game of the year also uses engine from 1992)

Is that RPG maker? Why people even use this format for their games?? Update your dev engine, please!

 PR: One morning, the protagonist wakes up and feels "odd" with a "strange desire to look outside". After we players effectively look outside, since that seems to be the theme going on, he dies. The credits roll, cool art, not very original theme but overall great concept game.

The problems come shortly after when you figure out that you're meant to not look outside, and proceed to this micro-managing hell where you have to remember to shower, brush your teeth, eat regulary, time your expeditions so you don't take too long, all the while struggling against the RNG that keeps making you miss your attacks. Careful not to lose your progress, thing that can happen a lot since Look Outside thinks we're still in 1992 where games had save points instead of manual and auto saves. There's only one save point in the entire game, which is inside your appartment. What? You were expecting more from a person who develops on (cringe) RPGmaker? 

I had a problem figuring out what was I supposed to do and aimlessly wonder around, jiggling locked door after locked door, running out of time, and getting killed. At a certain point I gave up and decided to simply watch a walkthrough because the monster design is probably the best and only good thing about Look Outside. Let's try that again...

PR: Most people on earth begain to mutate in seemigly impossible ways when "the visitor", some ancient entity of proportions beyond imagination, orbits the earth. Or at least a part of him. As to why the gaze of an alien makes you turn into a Junji Ito monster, no idea. How does it even work to get your skull split in half by teeth growths and still manage to live and even form coherent thoughts? Good question. How you deal with the flies when all your organs are out in the open? Probably mosquito spry. You're still going to die due bleeding, so no need to bother protecting your exposed organs.

One of your possible companions, you may refer to him as "teeth guy". He's, uh, midly useful? 

There are a group of people inside your appartment called "the astronomers" which are surrounded by lots of plot holes, I mean, lots of mystery and questions, ranging all the way from "Where they came from", "How did they knew the visitor was coming", "why they didn't warn anyone", "why, knowing what the visitor's gaze does to people, they insist on communing with him", or most importantly "what on earth are they wearing? are those robes?" thought that last one can probably be answer by "they're fans of Terraria's cultist boss"

There are also unanswered questions about your neighbor, the one responsible for the saves, that according to the astronomers died and had her appartment way down on the first floor but you see is perfectly peachy and comfy right there next to your appartment. Until the ending, that is. Then she mysteriously dissapears. Lots and lots of mystery going about here...

There are minor subplots, such as the dude whose paintings come to life and try to replace him, or the landlord that demands "rent" you "owe" for crossing through doors, starting at 50 dollarydooes and keeps on adding to the point he demands 600 and more, making you wonder why didn't you got evicted already.

 Note that the building doesn't have hot water, is partly destroyed, there are leaks everywhere, unfathomable chasms at every turn and there's not even an elevator. Maybe "slumlord" would be a more appropiate way of refering to him.

"Six hundred dollars for this, mate? You real?" -The prota (if he wasn't such a pussy)

Naturally these sub-plots are not very interesting, and some, like the paintor one, are difficult to unravel.  While the game allows you to make questions to the other characters, maybe just coincidentally but none of them were the questions I wanted to ask them.

Finally, the game presents you with four endings, depending on whether you collected stuff for the astronomers or just sat on your couch playing videogames, which is probably what I'd do if going outside meant fighting mutant monsters. I'd be funny to play Fallout in that situation. 

Ending one: The fifteen days passed and you did nothing in the astronomer department, the earth is in ruins and the mutants overlords now reign over the ashes. I found it quite unfair that the protagonist looked outside and died but some people became unstoppable juggernauts of destruction instead.

Ending two: you present some of stuff, but not all, and at least one of them is a hamster. The hamster becomes and unstoppable juggernaut of destruction and assimilates everyone on earth. 

Ending three: You present some of the stuff, but they're counterfeits or otherwise defective. You have to fight the astronomers in their mutant form. Funny enough, you also have to do this for ending four but in this one you lose to them. They become unstoppable, etc, kill everyone on earth, whatever. I'm starting to see a pattern here. 

"true" ending: You present the stuff, the right stuff I mean, and defeat the mutant astronomers, then you commune with the visitor and select certain dialogue options careful not to accidently click on "seeing his true form" bcs that turns you into an unstoppable juggernaut, etc. The visitors throws in a couple of really underwhelming two-word answers to your questions, and then he leaves earth. More people survive, you become a benefic unstoppable juggernaut so this time you don't destroy all life on earth. Instead, you work as a blue collar, lifting stones and making buildings. Part time therapist too, apparently. I don't know about you but the "true ending" seems like one of the least desirebles for the person, imagine having to listen to millions of people bable about stuff you don't even care while also having to continue to work for eternity. 

Personally, I find both the story and the endings cliché and underwhelming taking in consideration that the game takes like, ten hours to beat or more. Is it really needed to clarify that lovecraftian entity turning people into monsters isn't original? There's even a Japanese VN about it from six years ago. Imagine.

And we're talking ten hours of tedious turn based, RNG-dependant combat with lots of googling around for secret allies that no one on their right mind would discover naturally, like the one that requires you to leave you backpack be filled with cockroaches purposely ignoring the prompts to remove them, ten hours of being surpised by the amount of graphic design and varieties for the monsters yet somehow always end up fighting the same mob at least five times... ten hours of what may have been a good game back in 2002 when pokemon ruby and sapphire where hot, but now is basically a worse powerpoint slideshow.

Locked (You kids like these things, eh?)

PR: We're shortly shown the life of Eddie (Or "Ethieh" like the antagonist calls him) which simply put, sucks. Now, everyone's life suck in some greater or lesser degree, but at least most of us don't owe two years of divorce alimony and child support of a child that's not even ours (educated guess), or, even if we do, we don't ALSO owe money to like, half the town. In the middle of this desperation for getting cash to fix the van to work as a... Uber eats? Some sort of delivery gig, he sees this sparkling custom luxury SUV in the middle of the public parking lot. Now, where I live, if you own a car that's worth even half of what that thing's worth, you get a private garage. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying how it is, and this is a good neighborhood I live in, not that Bronx thing like in the movie. Well, as anyone who's seen the cover knows, the car's a trap. I gotta say, I'm kind of underwhelmed by the trap car, it's basically just your typical bullet-proof, sound-proof prison with a nicer view and comfier bed. If anything, teaser shots aside (that I don't even know how they work with the leather sit covers) the trap car is a significant upgrade from whatever Eddie had going on. 

Well, the movie goes on what I can summarize as old man dude representing the wealthier people and Eddie representing the outcasts, homeless and otherwise exploited laborers. "We earned what we have and we deserve to feel safe" claims old man, "No, you're silver spoon scum, what would you know about the struggle" says Eddie, "Go collect you government issued social security check, you Jigga... Err, I mean, you Caucasian cis male!" says old man, etc, etc. It is a bit suspicious that Eddie is the only white in the entire zone, but I'm not commenting on that. 

For those of you that don't know, this is how the average bronx low-life looks like. Blonde, blue eyed, clean, shaved, light-skinned young man in a pink hoodie.

Other stuff comes up, such as higher education vs self taught/homeschooled, older generations vs the young, but you get the gist of it. At some point Old man remote pilots the car which to the point I had assumed without engine (because why would you put an engine to your trap car) and he runs over a couple gangsters, which was pretty fun. Then he almost runs over Eddie's step-daughter, which wasn't so fun. Mostly perplexing, like, weren't you all about not randomly murdering other's people family? But maybe its the eye for an eye kind of reasoning. 

The movie was hard to predict, it ends with old man on the car (he had to go in person due Eddie breaking the cameras) on his way to execute Eddie, but he pulls some switch that kills the power of the car in a so called "street-smarts" move, making them both fly out the cliff and crashing in the rocks way down. I think I prefer regular smarts, no street smarts for me, thanks. 

It is of note that the old man was already going to die in three months' time due to prostate cancer, so "eye for an eye" wouldn't apply here. Other thing I want to point out is the hypocrecy of the old man when he pulls a glock and ironically comments "you kids like these things, eh?" when his generation caused not one but two world wars and crimes against humanity too long to even be listed.

He survives, miraculously, and we move onto the happy ending. Now this happy ending leaves aside that the reason why Eddie ends up trying to rob the old man remain unresolved but to be fair we never cared too much about the guy. 

Despite the socio-economical debate not really being my thing, and the movie's budget having been completely drained after the custom SUV and hiring old dude, the movie is enjoyable. Forgettable, but entertaining. 

The Shadowland's Express, Mark Lynch (Maybe I'll just take a ferry company with a normal name next time)

 PR:When our non-descript protagonist (Simon. Cry of fear, maybe?) enters the "non-descript"  wagon of a late train of some "abandoned station" , he immediately falls asleep, which we know opens the possibility for the most dreadful of all things, which is the "it was all a dream" ending. Well, this creepypasta does a lot of things poorly, but at least that's not one of them. 

From the creators of "maybe don't chase after the weird noise" in horror movies, maybe don't take the train sailing from an abandoned station. Just a thought.

Obviously when he wakes up, he's on Silent Hill, minus the sirens. Well, I'm half-guessing he's on Silent Hill, because the author speaks of "horrors" beyond comprehension and visions of darkness but all he describes is a slum during a blackout, nasty, yes, but hardly otherworldly. 

Then, he dashes across the train meeting a bunch of 2D cardboard archetypes, including a black woman on a suit, a Kardashian wannabe, some dude with a belly pot, an angry businessman and, I quote "a tall and muscular man with short hair, firm eyes, and a steady smile. He spoke with some authority which gave me the impression he’d been in difficult situations before and knew how to keep his cool in a crisis." Later he's revealed to be an ex-soldier, what a shocker.

Army dude going undercover be like:

The protagonist claims that only he and black woman (because he's hot on her) are the sane ones on the train, because as the minutes go by, and the train goes nowhere and no one responds the businessman and the Kardashian complain a bit. In case you're wondering what's so insane about the military dude or belly pot, no idea. They're just chilling there, doing nothing. 

When businessman gets the idea of smashing one of the windows in order to escape the train, spoiler alert he's the only one with ideas on this story, some incorporeal voice tells him that "vandalism would not be tolerated" to which everyone takes dead serious as if Casper the overworked ghost could do anything other than driving the train, presumably. After Casper reveals that the Shadow ferry company pay is shit and that the train is "his home" which also means that the work hours must be hell, he proceeds to tell the group to calmly await orders. As to who is giving the orders or why, this question is never answered. 

The crew speculates that the train must be on another dimension, since it has been traveling for more than nine hours, which means that none of them considers that changing tracks or turning is a possibility.

 Then, the protagonist becomes "horrorized" by an old woman on a red dress and some dude with a dog, as he sees them briefly while the train speeds past the platforms they're on. He even gives them spooky nicknames, "The Hag" and "The Harbinger", going as far as to further speculate that the old woman is speaking hexes and death-cursing them while it's entirely possible that the hag is just pissed at the stupid train not stopping at the platforms as it should. The dude with the dog simply remains still so he gets less words in his mouth but more "ominous vibes". The dog isn't even that threatening, it's an American Eskimo or a white Husky, so when the prota calls him "A hell hound" with "razor sharp teeth" let's just say that we, the readers, don't take him much to heart.

Behold... "the harbinger"

 The scenery has changed from slum to forest, which is also maddening and flays the human mind while also being a perfectly normal forest with trees on it, not even dark trees or blood trees, just trees. Possibly evergreens or pinecones. 

"The trees! The treeeessss aghhh!" -Simon observing a common run-on-the-mill forest

The first "trial" arrives and the crew is left in the one platform the incompetent driver deigns stop at, and tasked with "gathering supplies" for their journey which basically means buy stuff at the vending machine, meaning, no food cart. Shadowlands ferry company really sucks, someone should leave a scathing yelp review. 

Businessman then gets the idea of leaving the platform, and he's ridiculed by the others for not following Casper's advice, to which he answers something on the lines of "Like hell I'm trusting the voice on the hell train that kidnapped us" which is in all honest fairness both an accurate and insightful comment, much better than the other 2Ds and the prota that literally do nothing.

 At first I was like "Businessman, you really walking hundreds of miles to get back in the city?" but then I thought that if there was a train platform then there most be some kind of settlement nearby, really nearby if an old woman on a dress can get there. Of course, since he's basically a redshirt since minute one, he dies to some conveniently unseen monster that prota swear is scary as fuck. Then again, he said the same about the slums and the literal forest so... Maybe it was just a squirrel? 

Squirrels according to Simon

Anyways, where were we... ah yes, death by squirrel. 

The train collects the crew and they move onto the next trials, not before author slams some "Bitchy Kardashian, who's caked with makeup and has luxury, designer clothes paired with military dude , probably because she needed a man to protect her". I'm not commenting on the sexism of that phrase, I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense that the character described as a bitchy spoiled rich girl behaves like that. Most likely, she would've isolated herself from the group or would've done what businessman did, which didn't made much sense with his archetype. 

Ok, so, characters get into non descript building and there are wooden doors with their names crudely scribbled with red chalk. Why someone would use red chalk at all, or specially on wood where it wouldn't contrast very well? Extra spookyness I guess. 

The characters face their underwhelming sins on the other side of the door, in an underwhelming fashion. Base on the description, basically just them watching "IHadAnAffair.mp4" or "ITextAndDrived.mkv", or worse of all "Goldiggin-bitchesss.png". The only notable sin is army dude shooting some kid, accidently of course. It's hard to believe that prota's wife had a suicide attempt and got tossed into some psych ward because of him doing the secretary, feels like something else may be going on there.

  Kardashian marrying some old dude because money hardly constitutes as a sin, convenience is the reason behind basically every wedding ever, outside of the dumb teen or the drunkard that got married on an impulse, so I'm guessing that the crew is choosing to believe Casper when he says "Yeah... She didn't truly regret her sin, that's why she got killed by a demon portal" but the demon portal may have already been there and it was actually just a one-in-four chance of getting eaten. 

The final trial (thanks for almost being overrr) constitutes on the crew running from the train, across the "eerily grey and sameish city" (not that you didn't want to actually write about it...), onto the next train. Things go sideways when army dude suggests getting weapons and pot belly stabs him in the gut, possible preventive strike since I would've hesitated to give a weapon to the dude so twitchy he off some kid mid operation. 

Pot belly passes then from being this overweight couch potato to become some mad beast of endless stamina, classic move when ordinary character "snaps", lucky for the protagonist unlike Jeff the killer he didn't gain the ability to stop people's heart with a punch. 

Dog guy shows in the nick if time and pot belly dies unceremoniously under the jaws of our favorite Husky, but then dog dude was cringed by the prota "selflessly" shoving black woman into the train and staying himself, when he could've just as easily enter the train WITH the black woman, so he didn't call doggie off. Prota stabs doggie, but Husky doesn't die, just retreats. Prota then gets on the other train and heads back to civilization, having realized he's so retarded he actually sent black woman further into hell. Kidding, he doesn't realize, he's too retarded to do two plus two equals "the train going in opposite direction to the real world goes further into hell " and just wonders where black woman may be.

Like I said on the beginning, shadowlands does a lot of things wrong, but my primary discomfort was with the characters. I could've endured either the complete lack of actual horror OR the complete lack of character depth, certainly not both. The story also seems like it doesn't really know where its going, so midway through we have this uncomfortable shift where the inescapable death train to hell is just a trail giver to punish sins like it's some BS straight from "Tales from the Hood 2" (haven't watched, just assuming). Overall, making a lot of considerations, I'd say the story is a four out of ten.

Realm of the Mad God (Realm of the Mad Grind)

  I'm a singleplayer person, I don't get along with others mainly because I don't agree with the with their way to play. Lets start by saying this:ROTMG is a hard game, in which you die a lot. This is normal for a bullet hell, a given. Dying and starting from absolute scratch is a pain, so you either rely on cameradery (other players helping to gear/level you up) or pay handsome amounts of premium currency (USDs) to catch up to speed.

"Don't know what they talking about, what's so hard about this game? Area five and still no prob"

"(sobbing) I wanna go back, I wanna go back..." 

The dungeons are quite limitated, especially the low-level ones, making the whole starting over particulary tedious, not to mention that level is capped at 20 which isn't nearly enough to feel comfortable at more advanced dungeons, which again forces you to grind couple of specific dungeons that might not even drop for a long time in order to gain stat potions equivalent to 1/10th of a level up that, again, might not even drop...

 All of this while being constantly crippled by health potions that barely heal 1\6 or 1/8 of your total hp bar, and of which even occupying your entire, limitated inventory can only heal you twice, maybe thrice but only if you find a healing window that might never arrive, and you should also take into consideration that the enemies attacks can be so devastatingly powerful that your character might just die before even getting the chance to use those potions, especially at higher difficulties, but it can happen even in mid level dungeons.

 Players have come out with a funny and accurate name: "instapoped".

 After getting instapoped a couple of times you start to wonder how to make it so that you can expedite the process of getting closer to where you were before, and Deca takes that advantage to sell you a bunch of different things.

This bad practice had even reach the point where one of the owning companies tried to make entrance to Oryx 2 (a common mid-difficulty boss) premium, poorly concealed with some low-level crap in the pack.

Want to use daily mission but have not enough marks? Purchase vault expansion. Want a second spare character to send scouting a difficult dungeon? Purchase character slot. Want that ST set that has only 0.00001 chance of having a piece drop by a boss (and a last part thats virtually impossible to get)? Going in five minutes at only 100 dollars. Want to unlock recipies at the forge? to get seasonal rewards without playing 20 hours a day? to get a portal to that one "common" dungeon that never drops? To level up your pets? Pay, pay, pay...

"It's only to keep up with server costs, we swear..." -All three of the companies that owned ROTMG

 This is quite to be expected at a "free to play" game and is also the reason why I tend to avoid them, it felt particulary frustrating at this one because if it wasn't for all the damn paywalls it could've easily been amongsblt my favorites. In fact, I was trying to ignore this problem and make few online friends so that we may back each other up, scout for dungeons more efficiently and cover for one that has died, but everyone I've meet is simply too self absorbed, each of them want to do their thing and quickly forget even the simplest commands, they're all so antsy they can't wait for me to explain the dangers of a certain place and get themselves kill or myself killed when i rush behind them tryin to preserve their stupid little lives. Additionally I'm yet to manage to team with the same person more than once.

I finally escaped the sunk cost loop when, after painstaking efforts translating to several weeks worth gaming, I managed to max a character and provide her (Cleopatra Priestess) with what's objectively the best available equipment outside of the literal end-game dungeon, only to die to some minor bee mob because I got distracted for maybe three seconds.

I'm not sure of how is it with other online multiplayers, but as far as I can tell ROTMG is basically the far-west of online gaming comunity. Not only did the executives take the decision to replace all new content updates with flurries of events that re-use past content made unavailable (each featuring their own tokens, available for premium purchase BTW), but they also decided to leave the players to their own devices, meaning that you have servers crashing down, progress being lost, cheaters running amok, all sorts of toxic players, even in-game scammers. 

I can understand a souls-like policy of no hand-holding. This is outright abandonment. It's an open secret that anything resembling new content is fan-made that DECA copy-pasted without even including them in the credits, which of course makes people less inclined to do their work for free, meaning no one will do it.

In conclusion: ROTMG is a game with difficulty spikes through the roof, extremely harsh on the players in general and the new players in particular, the people behind it are the sum of all malpractices (non-illegal) and most of it is supported by a couple of streamers and the veterans. Looks great, feels good at first but takes it all away shortly after. Would not recommend. 

Goosebumps 2023, aka Yet another reboot. chap 1-8 (They're aired monthly or bi-monthly)

 

Goosebumps, a popular series of horror books for children, has seen numerous adaptations, including games, spin-offs, movies, and series. I must preface that I haven't watched the 1995 series, nor did the Goosebumps books or games played a significant role in my childhood. Or, you know, none at all. I briefly read summaries of the first five books to familiarize myself with the series and provide some background. However, this proved to be a mistake, as the 2023 series is standalone and draws more inspiration from horror classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street, particularly in the main antagonist's backstory, than from the original Goosebumps series.

Although there are references to the original series, such as the "Say Cheese and Die" camera and the Haunted Mask, they feel more like free interpretations or homages rather than direct adaptations. Unlike the original series, the 2023 series attempts to unify the story, giving it a more serious tone, with moderate success – I'd say around 40%. While it's still somewhat teenage-oriented and reliant on slasher tropes, filled with cliffhangers that don't quite pay off, it's undoubtedly darker than some of the original stories, like "Monster Blood" or "The Girl Who Cried Monster."

The plot can be summarized as follows:

Harold Biddle, reminiscent of Freddy Krueger, obtains Slappy, the cursed doll, which was conveniently located in a marked loose brick spot in the basement. Slappy receives a vague backstory, implying he's bringing about the end of the world, but the reasons behind this are unclear. In fact, based on the evidence presented, Slappy spends thirty years simply cracking jokes in a theater, which doesn't seem particularly harmful. Biddle forms a bond with Slappy, enjoying the benefits of having a top-notch comedian by his side, which boosts his popularity. However, Slappy's antics eventually go too far, exposing the secrets of the "parents' group" in the story.

The parents, driven by pride, invade Biddle's home in an attempt to terrorize him and steal Slappy. However, their prank goes awry, and the house combusts in a demon-shaped fireball. The reason behind the demon-shaped flames remains unexplained, as Slappy was absent from the house at the time. While the parent group later attempts to justify their actions as a means to help Biddle, their true intentions are clear. As Biddle combusts into flames, he vows to exact revenge on the parent group's offspring, much like Freddy Krueger.

Biddle's appearance and abilities also draw inspiration from Freddy, including a sketchbook that allows him to trap people, similar to the Dreamworld. Throughout the series, the school-kid group discovers cursed items originating from Biddle's basement, which they conveniently destroy through the power of friendship. These cursed items are underwhelming, and the plot follows a repetitive pattern: romantic drama, rinse, and repeat.

From episode six onwards, the focus shifts to the group's pursuit of Slappy, who has limited screen time and proves to be a relatively weak foe. The group literally duct-tapes his mouth and disposes of him like common trash. The series concludes with a heartwarming reunion between Biddle and his parents, who forgive him for murdering them, and Biddle forgives the parent group for killing him. The final scene shows Slappy, still alive, at the end of the mountain, setting the stage for a potential sequel.

The first two episodes were dull, but the pace picks up later, particularly with the Grandfather Clock time-loop episode and the "Go Eat Worms" episode, before slowly declining. Visually, the series is refined, boasting a talented cast, especially Mr. Bratt. However, the plot is both basic and poorly executed.