Creepshow Is Finally a Game, and Nobody Hid It in a Locker
- Niels Gys
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Creepshow is out now on PC, turning the horror anthology into a three-story point-and-click adventure built around exploration, puzzles and horror mini-games. Better still, this looks like an actual attempt to translate Creepshow's grotesque horror and black comedy into a game, rather than slapping the license onto a haunted corridor and waiting for Steam to open its wallet.
If you're wondering whether it's worth buying today, though, it's too early for a confident yes or no. The game only launched on August 13, and there isn't enough post-launch evidence yet to establish its technical condition, puzzle quality or whether those three stories remain entertaining once the novelty starts decomposing.
What we can establish is what you're actually buying.
And thankfully, it isn't another first-person game about hiding under furniture from an asthmatic demon.
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What Do You Actually Do in Creepshow?
Developed by PHL Collective and published by DreadXP, Creepshow is a single-player 3D point-and-click horror adventure inspired by the Shudder television series.
It contains three stories: one overarching narrative and two additional self-contained tales.
The main thread follows Danny and his friends after events at a mall lead into the mystery surrounding Danny's father and eventually toward a fortune-teller called The Reader.
Gameplay revolves around exploring 3D environments, interacting with characters and objects, solving puzzles and completing horror-themed mini-games scattered throughout the stories.
That's an important distinction.
Creepshow isn't presenting itself as survival horror where every cupboard contains ammunition and every corridor eventually requires shooting something in the forehead. It's closer to an interactive collection of nasty little stories, with puzzles and mini-games doing the work normally handled by combat.
For an anthology, that's potentially a very good fit.
Each new story should be an opportunity to change the rules, introduce another horrible situation and make you wonder what variety of cosmic punishment has been reserved for whichever idiot just ignored the obviously cursed object.
The unanswered question is how much those stories actually differ in practice.
Three stories mean very little if all three eventually become Find The Important Cupboard: Corpse Edition.
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Does It Actually Feel Like Creepshow?
At least structurally, yes.
The horror isn't just decoration pasted around an ordinary adventure game. Horror scenarios form the stories themselves, and horror-specific mini-games are part of the gameplay.
The content includes disturbing imagery, mental anguish, strong language and animal violence or death, so this isn't Scooby-Doo with slightly worse employment prospects.
More interesting is the black comedy.
Creepshow has always occupied that lovely patch of ground where horror stops being relentlessly miserable and starts enjoying itself. Horrible people meet horrible consequences. Grotesque situations escalate past reasonable human behaviour. Morality occasionally arrives carrying the subtlety of a piano dropped from a fourth-floor window.
The game is explicitly carrying that macabre humour into its stories.
That's arguably more important than simply making the player jump.
Plenty of horror games can put a monster behind a door. Creepshow needs personality. It needs stories where opening that door reveals something sufficiently horrible, ridiculous or karmically deserved that you don't just remember the monster. You remember the poor bastard whose afternoon has gone catastrophically wrong.
Whether the finished game consistently lands that balance is still the big question.
But at least it's chasing the right corpse.
Is Creepshow Worth Buying Right Now?
Wait if you need a confident verdict before spending your money.
Creepshow has only just launched, and there isn't yet a meaningful Steam user-review consensus. More importantly, several things that could completely change the buying recommendation aren't established.
We don't yet know whether the puzzles remain interesting across the whole game, whether the horror actually maintains its bite, how substantial the three stories feel, or whether technical problems emerge as more people play.
Those aren't microscopic disclaimers requiring legal counsel and a magnifying glass.
They're the game.
The anthology structure lives or dies on variety. The point-and-click format lives or dies on puzzle design. Horror lives or dies on execution. And none of those questions should be answered by simply repeating what the box says while nodding professionally.
If you already adore Creepshow and the idea of a playable horror anthology is enough to get you through the door, there's at least a genuine game concept here rather than a licensed reskin.
Everyone else can afford to wait until the body has been examined properly.
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What Creepshow Has Already Got Right
The encouraging part is that Creepshow hasn't taken the most painfully obvious adaptation route.
It isn't another generic horror game borrowing a recognizable name.
The anthology structure actually reflects the source material. Point-and-click exploration gives its stories room to focus on situations and characters rather than endless combat. Horror mini-games create the possibility of each nightmare having its own mechanical identity. And the black comedy gives it somewhere to go besides DARK CORRIDOR → LOUD NOISE → MAN WITH UNREASONABLY LONG ARMS.
That's a far more interesting foundation.
Now the game has to prove it can build something worthwhile on it.
Creepshow is worth watching closely, but not blindly buying on reputation alone.
The coffin is open.
Give the corpse a little time before deciding whether it smells funny.
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