Indie Feature: Pumpkin Panic
by William Hernandez
It's that time of the year where spooky games just feel right to play. The cold, crisp air of autumn gives you less and less reason to be outside. The sun is starting to set earlier meaning long, dark nights. What better way to spend your time than just going with the flow and playing a bit of horror?
When it comes to video games, the horror genre is probably one of the most indie-friendly. Lots of small projects have amassed huge communities over the years. It's all about the feeling. The ability to scare. The ability to demonstrate that there might be something deeper in there. It certainly helps that these kinds of games are popular among influencers. While we could certainly cover some of the bigger names amongst those kinds of titles, I figured it would be a much greater service to put the spotlight on a slightly lesser known game that released fairly recently. That would be Pumpkin Panic, a survival-horror-farming game by indie developer, Bilalaika. From an outside perspective, it seems like a relatively simple game. You're just farming and slowly grinding upgrades. Yeah, okay, maybe it gets pretty dark at night in-game, but can it really be that scary? After all, it is just a random indie game you can get on itch.io...
Fear of the Unknown
The answer to that opening question is yes. Anyone can try and make a scary game, but you need to execute well on some things in particular to actually create an interesting experience. Pumpkin Panic makes a lot of great design choices that make it feel genuinely enthralling to play. It cleverly sets this all up within minutes of you playing the game. It instills a very basic fear in you of getting caught lacking. That introduces surface-level anxiety to the core gameplay loop, making your farming feel a whole lot less monotonous. All of the sudden you're faced with a system of risk vs reward. You need to make more money, but you also can't just get yourself killed. As you progress through the game, you're going to encounter more and more things that you're not so familiar with. You, the player, need to determine what's safe and what isn't safe. What is efficient and what isn't efficient. You can also just learn the hard way, but that'll be an unfortunate end to your journey. As the clock keeps ticking, the fear for your life will eventually become fear of losing. There's no save system and this isn't a rougelike. If you die, all your progress is lost (minus some customization options). Pumpkin Panic is a surprisingly deep game and if you want the full experience, you'll need to learn how to play better. But even if you only have 20 to 30 minutes to play, Pumpkin Panic has enough there to captivate you the entire time and leave you satisfied even if you don't get all that far.
Spooky, Scary Sounds
Horror games of this caliber depend greatly on the little things. For a game like this to stand out, it needs a captivating atmosphere. Being able to deliver scares is one thing, but actually creating an unsettling environment for the player is easier said than done. One area in which Pumpkin Panic succeeds very well is in its sound design. It is subtle and that's what makes it so good. It doesn't need to try very hard. It just needs to feel like what it is - a farming game at its core. The sounds of nature feel natural. All different kinds of birds chirping, the slow-moving waves of water, the grassland beneath your feet, the harvesting of crops. It is easy to feel like a part of this world. How much more vulnerable you are at night is also well-reflected by the background SFX. The chirping of the crickets just reinforces the idea that you're out in the middle of the seeming wilderness all by yourself. Or well, you're alone in the sense that these creatures aren't exactly anything you'd want to become friends with. The comforting sounds of the wild are instead replaced by eerie shrills at night. Every step one takes starts to feel more important. You need to get things done even in near complete darkness, but at the same time, you can't just leave yourself vulnerable to attack. With it being way harder to see and slightly harder to differentiate between certain sound prompts, Pumpkin Panic does a great job using the environment to its fullest. Things are scary enough in the day, but it's the nights that'll send you into a deeply concerned panic. The game scares you by building the tension up and it does so very well for an independent project.
Pumpkin Panic is a really interesting little game and it isn't too much of a time sink. It's absolutely worth checking out and playing for yourself even if only to admire the work that's been put into the game. The artstyle is really nice to just take in and there's just something real comfy about this horror game. I suppose it just fits the season so perfectly...You can download it for free on itch.io. But, of course, it never hurts to donate and help support creators like Bilalaika! I don't think the next indie feature will be as well themed as this one, but, hey, I don't even know myself what's coming next.
