Horror in Thirty Minutes or Less: Emily Wants to Play Review

Emily wants to play… TOO BAD I DON'T.

Picture this, you are a simple, innocent pizza delivery guy, it's almost midnight and all you want to do is deliver your last pizza so that you can go home, curl up in bed and maybe even Netflix and chill (alone). BUT when you go to knock on the door of that last house... no one answers. The door slowly creaks open and being the good delivery guy that you are, you enter the stranger’s house because that is the normal thing to do when no one answers the door. Then all of the sudden... the door slams shut and locks! You are trapped! The windows are boarded up and there's no way out! There are boxes everywhere; it's almost as if someone was trying to move out but something stopped them.

You search the house and find various drawings and clues including a white board stating, "Let's play at midnight” along with three dolls just lying around. When the clock strikes twelve, all hell breaks loose. For each hour until 6:00 AM, a new terror arises and it is up to you, the innocent pizza delivery guy, to survive until the break of dawn.

This game is without a doubt the most terrifying game I have ever played. In most horror games, there is a specific mechanic for the monster that you need to master in order to survive. Sometimes you have to hold completely still or sometimes you need to hide. Very often are these mechanics overdone within a horror game but it is rare that you come across a game that encompasses multiple techniques for evading the monsters. With each hour that you survive in Emily Wants to Play, a new doll appears with a new technique that you must use in order to survive and if you fail, the game hits you with one of the most sudden and up-close jump scare mechanics that I have ever witnessed.

What is important to realize is that just because a new doll appears does not mean that the last one will disappear, quite the opposite actually. Each hour adds a new doll to the onslaught of the last, making this a terrifying, difficult, and original indie horror game. Now the key to figuring out each dolls little quirk, is the white board in the kitchen. There's one important thing to remember: the whiteboard is a LIE.

This is yet another ingenious mechanic put in the game for it causes the player to die at least once when they fall for the whiteboard's hoax. For the first doll, Kiki, the whiteboard will tell you "don't look at her" which will make the player believe that when they hear Kiki's terrifying giggle, that they should avoid looking at her when in fact, it's the opposite - staring at Kiki is what makes her disappear. This is the case for each of the two other dolls throughout the night with the exception of Emily herself, who forces you into a game of hide and seek with dire consequences if you don't find her in time. This incorporated with flickering lights, noises, and sudden doors closing truly adds to the terrifying atmosphere of the game. Another very original factor in the game is the incorporation of four very different horror stereotypes where as most horror games settle for one. You have the grudge-like girl Kiki, the murderous clown Mr. Tatters, the pedophile-esque butler Chester, and the possessed child Emily.

The actually story behind this house of horrors is also vastly intriguing but leaves a fair bit for the player to imagine. It depicts the story (through tape recorded messages from Emily's mother, drawings and notes from Emily herself, and even the television within the master bedroom) of how Emily found the dolls within her house and began acting strange, how her parents decided that locking her in the basement was the best course of action, and how it eventually led to their murder and abandonment of the house.

Not only is there a challenging multitasking aspect to Emily Wants to Play, but there are some secrets to be discovered as well that the player must find in order to complete the game. With the challenge of multitasking all of the dolls as well as looking for Emily before time runs out, this game is truly a terrifying and challenging experience. With the variation but always unexpectedly sudden jump scares, the game will keep you on edge and horror struck until the clock strikes 6:00 AM. Also for those of you who would like a more extreme heart attack, the game is available in Virtual Reality. Enjoy!

#JordanStevens