Improving on the concepts laid out in Creepy Shift: Roadside Diner, sequel Creepy Shift: House for Sale provides brief-but-fun haunted house shenanigans.
I quite enjoyed Creepy Shift: Roadside Diner when I played it last year. Light, creepypasta adjacent horror with a surprisingly satisfying gameplay loop that let itself down with obnoxious no-win situations. The second in the series Creepy Shift: House for Sale has come along, and I feel it does a lot of what the previous game did well but tightens up on the fairness and feels more fun as a result. Yes, this game came out on PC last year, but I’m giving the Xbox release a go, although I took screenshots using Xbox Play Anywhere, which is a feature that I wish more games made use of.
You play as one of two brothers who renovate and repair supposedly haunted houses. I say supposedly, but in reality it seems the places they work on actually are haunted, as some phone call banter between the pair has them comparing who has the most annoying ghost to deal with on their job. It’s pretty self-aware, and quite amusing, but it also does a good job of explaining why you wouldn’t run away the moment you realise there are real ghosts. Finding notes in the house will reveal some of the story behind what happened here. It’s pretty generic, but fun enough all the same as I don’t feel the devs are going for a story-writing Oscar here.
Anyway, you have duties to complete, such as packing up personal items in boxes, removing rugs, and repairing furniture. Much like the previous game, these are surprisingly satisfying tasks in the way that the likes of House Flipper often are. You work on the place room by room, with you needing to solve puzzles to find keys to open further sections of the house. These aren’t too taxing, with everything you need being right there, but they aren’t the usual moving boxes or navigating a maze thing you might get. You have to pay attention to the environment somewhat. An early one gives you a list of colours whilst a nearby monitor has coloured buttons that don’t match the ones on the list. You need to select pairs of colours that mix to match the list. It’s simple, but nicer than having to find a note with a 4-digit PIN on it.
As you progress, you’ll learn of specific rules in the house that keep the hauntings at bay. Make sure the TV stays turned off, throw any mysterious crystals down the well, and so forth. They’re far more reasonable this time around than in the previous game, and I felt I could keep on top of things and wasn’t getting put into impossible positions because of tasks stacking up too fast. Yes, there are jump scares, and yes you can die if you don’t keep on top of the rules, but they’re fun and tongue in cheek. Creepy Shift: House for Sale isn’t trying to terrify you, it’s going to make you jump and panic when things catch you off guard, and that’s fun!
There are a few complaints I have though, such as the save system being a bit broken. This is a short game which you can finish in one sitting, but if you reload a save you’ll find that a lot of jobs you’ve done are now incomplete. Rooms can still appear finished in your journal, but everything will be back where it was in all the rooms. The bugs are a bit more annoying, with my character clipping through scenery more than once, forcing a reload. Apparently moving a table when you’re on the wrong side of it is the most dangerous mistake you can make. Then the framerate issues from Creepy Shift: Roadside Diner are still present when certain vignettes come up on the screen. I ended up turning most of the visual effects off and found things much smoother without impacting the visuals.
Still, Creepy Shift: House for Sale is a fun horror-lite experience, with nice enough visuals and sound to wrap in with the satisfying gameplay look. The puzzles and scares are pitched at an enjoyable level, and if it weren’t for the bugs and fairly short runtime, I’d be giving this a strong recommendation. If you can overlook those issues though, this is fun, and I’m looking forward to the next releases over the next year.
Creepy Shift: House for Sale is available now on Xbox, PC, and PlayStation.
