Goosebumps: Dead of Night headed to consoles and PC this summer

For a lot of people my age, the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine were a gateway into horror. Granted, I didn’t graduate to the likes of Freddy and Jason until I was much older. But series like Goosebumps and Courage the Cowardly Dog were pivotal in the early stages of my love for the genre. Goosebumps eventually spawned a live-action TV show, as well as two fairly successful recent live-action films. Its appearances in the realm of video games have been fairly infrequent, as well as fairly inconsistent in quality. Well, the franchise is looking to change that with its newest title, a first-person survival horror title called Goosebumps: Dead of Night.

Player beware…

Dead of Night takes heavy inspiration from the two recent live-action films, even having Jack Black reprise his role from the films as the author of the series, R.L. Stine. The headliner of the series, Slappy the Dummy, has unleashed a who’s who of creatures from the pages of the books including the Graveyard Ghoul, the Lawn Gnomes, the Annihilator 3000, Murder the Clown, and the Werewolf of Fever Swamp. As you make your way through several locales from the series in the game’s three chapters you will hide from monsters, collect clues, and solve puzzles to send Slappy back to the pages where he belongs.

The game is actually a reimagining of the mobile and VR game, Goosebumps: Night of Scares. This version however will include full 3D environments, new chapters, and new gameplay features, as well as HD Rumble support, touchscreen support, and gyroscopic controls on the Nintendo Switch version. The game also proudly declares that it is full of jump scares, so if that isn’t your thing, you’ve been warned.

…you’re in for a scare!

The game is definitely aimed more towards a younger audience who I imagine will have lots of fun with it. But I can see fans of the series like me getting some enjoyment out of it as well, if for nothing else than pure nostalgia. It will be hard though for the series to top its most crowning achievement — that being the dog from the TV intro barking the melody of the theme song. I mean, come on, that is gold right there.