Have you ever driven on one of those dark, misty nights where it feels like it's harder to see with your headlights on than off? The lights just catch the fog, obscuring the road ahead in a white haze. It's awful. Especially when some pale, faceless goons are trying to run you off the road and beat you to death.
Beware, which we first heard about in 2016, is a driving horror game. There's a free demo out now, and I took it for a spin. Beginning on a darkened road, I drove for a while, waiting for some horror to happen. None did. I slammed on the brakes when I thought I saw two glittering eyes staring at me from the gloom, but it turned out to just be some plastic roadside reflectors.
Then this crazy shit happened:
(If you don't see a video above, here it is on YouTube as well.)
Beware is in an early demo state, so while the visuals are startlingly polished, you can tell the sound effects aren't really all the way there, yet. I hope the weird movements of the pale ghouls chasing me doesn't change, though. It's bizarre and awkward and janky which makes it way more scary.
My second run went a little better, as I sped past their building and got a good lead on them. They caught up, and I thought my number was up as they began swarming over my car, but I managed to speed off, find a side road, pull behind some parked vehicles with my headlights off. It worked.
For a while.
Note: I wasn't trying to ram them at the end, I just thought if I sped past them in the other direction, while they were headed toward me at top speed, it would give me a good lead as they tried to slow down and turn around. It didn't quite work out.
I played a few more times, and while it's possible to lose the ghouls by being both speedy and stealthy, I've never managed to do it for very long. The driving is pretty difficult, for me at least. The roads are wet, it's difficult to see in the dark through the grimy windows of the car and the foggy atmosphere. The controls use the arrow keys for steering, rather than WASD, which makes it harder to use the handbrake (mapped to spacebar) effectively.
It's really fun, though, and spooky, and clever in that so much of the horror takes place in your tiny rearview mirror as you race along the slick pavement. In a way I'm glad I can't get out of the car because I think the only thing worse than being chased by these weird creeps in a car is to be chased by them on foot.
You can try the demo for yourself: it's downloadable at IndieDB. In addition to trying to outpace the ghoulish pursuers, there's a mysterious 'mission' hidden somewhere in the demo.
