The Cabin Factory is not a game that was meant to be played, it was meant to be streamed. Youâre not meant to enjoy it, youâre meant to react to it, and thatâs what I did. But how do I review a game I simply reacted to?
Iâll start by reacting to the gameâs premise. As a new employee of the Cabin Factory, youâve been hired to inspect cabins to make sure theyâre not haunted. Apparently, there have been issues with some previous models. This is explained as youâre in an elevator riding up to the 8th floor of the factory.
How this company gets a prefabricated cabin down from the 8th floor of a building to the ground floor docking bay for transportation is not of your concern. Maybe you started eight floors underground in HR or something?
Anyway, the cabins. They roll out on an assembly line, and your job is to wander through to see if theyâre haunted. The problem is that these cabins are made specifically for the âhorror industryâ (movies, theme parks, that no-outlet road down the street from me that runs alongside the railroad tracks, most likely). So, they already look haunted. There should be no movement, however, according to a note on the âdangerâ console. If you detect movement, youâre supposed to run back and hit the danger button. If not, you hit clear.
Next, Iâll react to the gameplay. The moment you step into a cabin, the bright, fluorescent lights of the factory floor are replaced by the dim glow of lanterns and what I assume is simulated moonlight through windows. Gotta test the product in the environment in which theyâre used, I suppose, complete with howling wind. Itâs kind of funny, really. I imagine The Organization is a loyal customer.
As with any job, really, your first day at the office is the creepiest (and I say this as a guy who once started a new job in a NYC office building to find naked dolls on everyoneâs monitor). Youâll find an impossibly lit painting that seemingly stares at you, a seemingly angry fellow hunched over a dinner table, a kid sitting on the floor with a towel over his head. Are these supposed to be here? Are they props for the cabinâs ultimate use? Theyâre not moving, so keep exploring.
When youâre satisfied youâve searched everything, you go outside and hit clear. Next cabin.
Cabin two has the same internal props and lighting/audio effects, making the gameplay apparent. Youâre searching for differences now. Is anything behaving in a way that it didnât previously? A quick investigation reveals that yes, it is, so you run outside and hit danger. Next cabin.
That, then, is your gameplay, although it does, of course, become more involved. Youâre not simply detecting movement and then running outsideâŠactually, you kind of are. A story surfaces for you to follow. You discover that the prop cabins are based on a real cabin in which things didnât go well, and the props are pulled from those events. This takes place over the course of eight cabins. If you properly identify whether itâs haunted, you move on. If youâre wrong, it resetsâŠwhich means someone at the factory already knows if theyâre haunted! What are they even paying you for?!
Now, itâs time to react to a few problems. You can imagine all of this would grow tiresome after a while. It does, especially when you hit the wrong button and reset. Thankfully, The Cabin Factory does throw some narrative and gameplay curveballs at you. Trust me when I say it often goes in directions you wouldnât expect. It also ends within an hour and a half. This is a short game that doesnât wear out its welcome.
However, itâs also never particularly scary. Walking into the same location over and over again knowing that something could change at any minuteâeither subtly or as a full-on jump scareâis quite unsettling, but by the end youâll be begging for something to change. And after taking the same steps over and over, I started getting lazy and wouldnât fully enter a room; wouldnât fully go up the stairs. This likely led to situations where the haunting wasnât triggered, making me think things were OK. To me, the scariest part was the fear of being wrong when indicating âclear.â
It doesnât help that the game is so dark. The graphics are fine, but some of the hauntings are so hard to detect that you may need to jack up the brightness to see them. You also wonât want to play this in handheld mode, which makes detection even harder. Itâs best to play it docked with the lights off in the room. Even better if you have a couple others on hand to help you suss out the situation.
And thatâs my final reaction. The Cabin Factory is not a gaming session, itâs a movie night. It doesnât replace Fatal Frame or Cronos, it replaces Longlegs or The Evil Dead. Like most horror movies worth seeing, it blends creepiness with a few jump scares and a few laughs to keep you on edge for an hour or two. It also only costs $3.00, cheaper than renting a movie youâve already seen.
So, donât worry that Halloween is behind us. Spend a little, react for a while, then take comfort in knowing thatâcomparatively speakingâmaybe your job isnât so bad after all.
