Skip to content
Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek is based on the RL Stine Goosebumps novels, with which I’ve not read, but I am aware of them.
You take the role of teen girl Sloane Spencer, solving puzzles whilst also stumbling across weird creatures who jump about and – since they sneak up on me – do actually do a good job of giving me a scare, especially when I’m playing it late, same as when I did the same with Thief II: The Metal Age, and the baddies would shout and come after me, while I was rather on the tired side, so that does heighten the effect.
However, it does generally centre around completing tasks and missions, and only once you’ve done that will later ones open up. But it’s not so open-world in that the areas you can’t get access are gated off by… well… gates, that need keys to open them up, and those will be revealed at the appropriate time.
That said, a lot of it is just running around the same areas, hoping you stumble onto the next clue that’ll open somewhere else up, and it doesn’t feel intuitive like it should, leading to it, instead, feeling quite directionless at times. I’m sure it could cut a lot of the running around out.
I don’t want a game to be too easy, but I also don’t want a game to either be too hard, or – more in the case of Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek – just confusing in that it’s not intuitive, and I’m spending most of the time walking around, with no idea where I should be going next.
One example of confusion was the puzzle with three coins on the gargoyle statue. I couldn’t work out any reason why the solution is what it is, since for example, one’s labelled Eye Medallion, but is placed nowhere near the eye! Just didn’t seem to make sense.
Similarly, you can generally kill the monsters who get in your way, but as for which projectiles from your slingshot will kill them, it’s more trial and error, rather than “Yes, that looks suitable”.
Maybe if you’re more familiar with the Goosebumps universe, that will carry you through all the ‘bumps’ in the road.
Thanks to our friends at GameMill Entertainment for the review code for this game.
Goosebumps: Terror in Little Creek is out now on Steam, and the respective online stores for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
Important info:
- Developer: PHL Collective
- Publisher: GameMill Entertainment
- Players: single-player
PC specs:
CPU: AMD RYZEN 9 7950X3D
Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E CARBON WIFI AMD X670 S AM5 DDR5 PCIe 5.0 4x M.2 2.5GbE AMD EXPO™ ATX
RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance RGB PC5-44800 (5600Mhz)
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ 24GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing RDNA3 6144 Streams
1st Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD TLC V-NAND 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s
2nd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
3rd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
4th Storage Drive: Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS 3.5″ SATA HDD/Hard Drive
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.