Spooky Games: Or1gins

July 2022 update: I’m back to finish this series off! I’ll aim to get at least one review here revised and posted a week until the only one left is Alien: Isolation…that one will be a project in and of itself.

Before Gold-Plated Games was any sort of thing, I posted reviews on the storied SomethingAwful forums. I started back in 2014 with a rundown of horror titles in my swiftly-growing Steam library for the month of October, an impromptu event to help me curb my volume of unplayed titles. Obviously it didn’t work, but it began a tradition that has lasted more than five years; my Spooky Games review series. The last three years of these roundups are collected here on this site, but the first two series have been all but lost to time. Until now.

My reviews from 2015 and earlier were more brief impressions than full-fledged reviews, and came in very different styles from my current work. They can still be found on Steam and I occasionally link them in the Weeklongs but I’ve never brought these old reviews to the website, as I can’t be certain they reflect my current views or writing skills. This series is my attempt to revive a big chunk of those reviews, to revisit the games and pen new, modern reviews that close this ominous rift in my body of work.

So, how is this going to work? Every Friday night at 11pm PDT, at the end of our usual indie variety streams on Twitch, I’ll stream one or more of the games below. Sometime during the following week, possibly after playing more of the game in my own time, I’ll post an updated review to the website and Steam and link it here. These reviews may come on any off day, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday, and I’ll try to average one a week. There are also a few details to be aware of:

One of the original titles, F.E.A.R. Online, no longer exists (a small mercy, really). Fortunately, I still have 31 games to cover besides that one.
Two games have been delisted from Steam. I’ll still be covering them, but brace for the disappointment of never being able to play them.
I already revised my review of Hell Yeah! last year, so its inclusion is a bit of a freebie.
Alien Isolation is way, way longer than the other games on the list, so it’s on hold until I have a good stretch of time to play it (and possibly stream it).

This all means this series will run long, probably past our actual Spooky Games series in October, and posts will be irregular. But it also means a fresh look at 31 horror games from the olden days of Steam, and even more reviews to peruse every week! So get comfy and keep an eye on the website for any oddities that appear, because Spooktober is starting early this year.