Killer Frequency

The year is 1987. It's a chilly September night in the town of Gallows Creek, and you're alone with your producer at KFAM 189.16, broadcasting your late-night show to an audience of about 35. It's a slow night, nothing in particular stands out. You throw on some tunes, toss a couple crumpled papers into your trash bin - then, you get a phone call. The mysterious killer known as the Whistling Man, long thought to have been dead after disappearing over a cliff in the 50s, has returned. The sheriff is dead, the only other cop in town has been brutally beaten into unconsciousness, any calls outside of the area code aren't going through, and the town's only 911 operator has to make the trip out of town to get help. It'll take hours for backup to arrive, and in the meantime, you've been tasked with taking and handling any emergency calls that come through. There [i]will[/i] be calls. There's a killer on the loose, after all. This is [i]Killer Frequency[/i], and this game is awesome. [i]Killer Frequency[/i] is many things. It's dripping with a slick, retro-neon atmosphere, it's packed with memorable characters and set in a town with a surprisingly rich history. It's got a great soundtrack, voice acting, and sound design in general, and it's legitimately creepy at times while also being one of the most genuinely funny games I've played in the past while. This is on top of having a fairly compelling murder mystery that I actually did manage to solve before the game revealed it - which is a huge plus to me when it comes to something of this genre. [i]Killer Frequency[/i] is, at its core, a single-player horror/mystery/comedy take on [i]Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes[/i]. You'll get a call from a desperate individual stalked by the killer, and you have to walk them through an escape plan using whatever you have on hand. Find a manual to give someone instructions on hotwiring a car, use some faxed blueprints to plot a route out of there while distracting the killer with phone calls to various extensions, and much, much more. There's a map of the town on the wall you can use to facilitate some of this, complete with post-its and pins - and you always have to pay attention. What seem like throwaway details can be crucial, and even street names, road closures, and the movements of the killer from place-to-place can be key to saving people and solving this mystery. It's really quite an engaging formula, made even more so when the radio station itself and the surrounding back alleys open up for exploration and a host of [i]Resident Evil[/i]-esque puzzles to learn more information that can potentially solve the mystery or save lives. This is all, of course, when you're not dealing with prank callers and other assorted weirdos like Brian Ponty, owner of Ponty's Pizza - the best character in modern fiction. The town of Gallows Creek is essentially one big slasher-movie homage, and the game as a whole runs on slasher movie logic more than anything else. The tropes are there, and the tropes are plentiful - but this really works for the game. While protagonist Forrest Nash and his producer Peggy take some of the deaths a little less seriously than you'd expect, complete with dialogue options to just be a ♥♥♥♥ live on air and make some radio-show-esque pun, the actual sequences of events leading up to said deaths and the overall mystery maintain a good deal of gravity. Your choices [i]do[/i] matter here, more than in most games of this sort, and each character you save ends up giving you a different piece of the mystery that would be forever lost if they were killed - making this a great incentive for any would-be detectives to try and save everyone you can. Then, of course, there's the Whistling Man. The presence of the Whistling Man is always felt, and though you're rarely in proper danger, you're always looking over your shoulder when you have to leave your booth and venture out into the station. As a fair warning, a lot of this game is dialogue. Sitting around in the recording room talking to people. I can see how someone might call it boring in this sense, and that'd be a fair assessment, but the game does a good job of splicing in callers, exploration segments, puzzles, and other elements that keep it relatively fresh throughout. Even with this in mind though, you are still going to be spending a lot of time listening to people talk. If that's not for you, I would understand - but you'll definitely figure out whether you're hooked or not by the time the refund period rolls around. There's also the issue of price. I got this on sale for $5, and this game took me around 5 hours to beat. Absolutely a great deal. But the regular price is $25 and while I have definitely paid more for less, I can understand if someone would want something more gameplay-heavy and longer at that price point. That being said, it goes on sale pretty often and is actually on sale right now at the time of writing this, so if you can, wishlist it and buy it for cheap whenever the next sale goes up. This game really surprised me, and was a breath of fresh air when it comes to horror and mystery and especially horror/mystery games. Very unique take on the subject, with some very unique storytelling and narrative devices. I'm not about to clamor for a sequel, I think the plot is pretty wrapped-up here, but I'd love to see a spiritual successor or something along the same vein. The "outside-looking-in" approach to the horror scenarios and mysteries here was really something special, and I'd love to see it done again.