Do you feel that? A somber mist hangs in the air. Birds are falling out of the sky. Cats are screeching on the fencepost. And something’s happened to the children. Fear has taken over these streets, and it’s all YOUR undoing! The Fabulous Fear Machine is your tool for corruption, implanting the seed of terror in the world’s most steadfast nations. Developed by Fictiorama Studios, The Fabulous Fear Machine will take you on a journey you may not soon forget. Do you dare make a wish?
The Fabulous Fear Machine is many things: a resource management game, a narrative game, a malevolent arcane fortune telling machine, a comic book series, the list goes on. The game is spread along three chapters segmented into individual horror comics. While it’s first assumed that each chapter is separate from the other, bits from each narrative are sprinkled into the next, creating a full story. After finishing the entire game, you realize that there has been a continuous narrative creeping underneath the gameplay the entire time. Besides Kirlian, the mischievous fortune teller who is a part of the fear machine, each main character of the story line is involved in the next. Each story has a devastating outcome (for the main character) and plays along with the greediness trope.
What is magical about The Fabulous Fear Machine is that every piece of gameplay has a story to tell. Even if the narrative isn’t long. Every legend card that you place on the map to spread fear is a four panel comic depicting spooky happenings. When leveling up the legend you play an interesting mini game of word association to help boost the power of the legend. Every assistant that shows up to do your bidding has a small story of their own. Both the legends and assistants reveal their story periodically as you upgrade them, building in natural cliffhangers for each narrative. Your rivals on each map you conquer also have a backstory, as well as conversate with you to try to dissuade your antics. A branching narrative comes about, where world events and enemy reactions affect the spread of your fear and power. The Fabulous Fear Machine isn’t afraid to use complex descriptive words in the choices you make, much like normal fiction will use its own series of metaphors.
The one dissonance I have with the storyline of The Fabulous Fear Machine is its failure to maintain an elongated story arc through all three chapters. While I did say there were parts of each comic that carried to the next comic, these parts are insignificant to what is happening to the game. What would’ve been more satisfying would be to have a continuous enemy that would appear to try to stop you from spreading fear. Each map/level has a new rival to take down, so it feels like a restart from the previous level. Perhaps if the fear from the previous location was still pouring into the new section, or there was an enemy that caused little problems that built up over time there would feel a greater sense of continuity. At the end of completing each map Kirlian goes over the progress the main character made, and decides upon two “evil-sounding” traits (like manipulation and anger), and gives bonuses based on which one of the two traits you decide to make. It would help thematically if these traits persisted in the story and branched it off. While there was so much excellent writing done, there needed just a tiny bit more to seal the deal.
The strategic gameplay comes into The Fabulous Fear Machine when you’re gathering resources and spreading fear. The main action is to drag your assistants around to different locations to perform certain actions (it would be called a “worker placement” game if it was a board game). Each action involves time for the assistant to perform it. It’s all a big balancing act. You could trigger events later to mine more resources, but you might not have the equipment to act upon the event for it to go the way you want. It’s a juicy dilemma. Moments can get really tight, where you barely squeeze out the right resources a couple of days before your enemy lays down the haymaker. While those times can feel like a great accomplishment as you unlock the puzzle, other times you are stranded with no motivating factors. I’ve found myself scratching my head on what to do next, because all I was waiting for was something to upgrade, but I couldn’t just have my assistants sitting around doing nothing. I should note that I was on easy mode most of the time, so the normal level may present a heftier challenge.
The art and audio are so on point with the theme that it’s scary. The art of The Fabulous Fear Machine expertly replicates old fashion gritty horror comics. With as many buttons and choices the game has, it’s simple to understand what is happening through just a quick glance. The audio provides great user feedback when performing actions, and also gives great alerts as to what’s happening in the world. So even if you weren’t focused on a certain part of the screen you know what is happening.
In summary: The Fabulous Fear Machine has easy to pick up gameplay, enthralling story, and superb graphics and audio.
Jordan played The Fabulous Fear Machine on PC with a code provided by the developer.
