The Park

A chilling story about simple horrors, strong art design, and voice acting help tie together this horror short into a package worth checking out for horror fans.

House of Horrors.

The trouble is, whilst The Park is indeed unsettling, it never reaches the levels of terror that P.T. taught us to expect of a modern day first-person horror title. It’s perhaps not even as scary as Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear. Additionally, over the course of the two hours it’ll take you to complete it, the lack of any substantial gameplay will mean you won’t have really gained anything from playing it: it may as well have been a movie. And there’s zero replay value too; once you’re done there’s no reason to go back apart from the pursuit of achievements. Despite these issues though, if you...

For all of my complaints, I'd like to see more. More explorations of the weird places that we scrap, shoot and claw our way through as we play games. More short stories. More horror. If Funcom want to flesh out their Secret World with a few more side projects, I'll be a the front of the queue, even if I'm not convinced I'll enjoy the ride.

A woman named Lorraine comes to in the parking lot of an amusement park, as if snapping out of a trance. Her young son has left his stuffed bear in the Atlantic Island Park, and she reluctantly trudges back to the grounds to retrieve it. Never mind the fact that the park is closed. And never mind the fact that it’s seemingly abandoned. In The Park, players are in for a short and disturbing psychological ride that deals with depression, loss, and the dark feelings that parents might not discuss in polite company.

The Park is a psychological horror-based narrative experience, and is actually a spinoff of Funcom’s The Secret World, an MMORPG. The controls are extremely simply, as all that you do is walk around, observe objects and shout for your son. The plot begins simply enough, you play as a young mother named Lorraine who’s following her son Callum into Atlantic City Park to look for his teddy bear. However, it becomes immediately apparent that things aren’t quite right.

The Park is a psychological horror title from the “walking simulator” genre. Originally released in 2015, this title was an experimental spin-off from Funco

I don’t want to give away too much as The Park is only an hour long, but I admire Funcom’s effort with this experimental take on the genre. It really does try something different, even if you can feel the core themes sneaking up on you a mile away.

The Park has solid atmosphere and pretty good scares, but it also has an unremarkable heroine and an inconsequential plot. It might be a decent curiosity if you’re looking purely for the video game equivalent of a haunted house, but its high price and short length make it difficult to recommend.

The Park is a grand thematic narrative adventure, or walking simulator, that blends point and click with the first person, letting you explore the world from a perspective that could be far more personal, interactive and well-suited to the horror motif at play here. The setting is certainly rife with the classic horror elements you’d want. A dark autumn evening while running through a theme park looking for your lost child, who seems to never quite be within reach.