I hate scary games but love a good story. So, when I saw the viral sensation ‘The Cabin Factory’, developed by International Cat Studios, was making the rounds all over my feed, I was conflicted about checking it out. Alas, I lost a bet and had to play a horror game, and this was my choice. That was on Steam a year ago now, but I enjoyed it enough to snatch it up again the moment it was released on Xbox.

The story and premise of The Cabin Factory are 100 per cent the drawcard to this title. The objective seems simple: you are a newly hired staff member at an unknown warehouse, tasked with inspecting cabins on a factory line to determine if they are suitable for release into the world. Seems simple, right? But what are you inspecting them for? Well, to see if they are haunted, of course. You must enter the cabin and look for any anomalies, and then click clear or danger, and the cabin moves on along the conveyor belt and on its merry way.

I can say that confidently, not many cabins are clear, and while there are jump scares, weird incidents, and ghost chases, these do actually convey quite a heartbreaking narrative in its very short playtime. As an adjacent story, it also follows a family of four, who do, in fact, haunt most of the cabins.

There are real subtle signs of trauma amongst them, to full-blown terror as it progresses, without spoiling too much. I loved this way of drip-feeding information amongst the scares, albeit how short the narrative actually is. It was such a successful and innovative way of pulling it all together through the inspection of cabins.

There isn’t really much to the gameplay, and what is there is very simple. You walk around the warehouse, enter a cabin, look around for anything unusual, not always scary, sometimes just bizarre and then press a button for it to move on and a new cabin to arrive.

There are instances you may need to actually leg it from a ghost, but it is very much a passive walking around and looking game than any action. There is no fighting back, and not much you need to do on your controller.

Graphically, it’s average. I mean, it’s not back in any sense, but there is also nothing about it that particularly stands out either. Fire does impressively cinder away, and the distorted faces of the family when they smile at you as a statue do bore into your soul.

The cabin itself is also interesting to look at. It has a few rooms, and each has items in it that you get used to quickly checking for disturbances. If it wasn’t so haunted, I actually wouldn’t mind staying there the night, it’s that charming.

The effects and sound design are definitely eerie, setting the scene for some fear-inducing creeping around of cabins and checkings of every corner. When entering the cabin itself, it is like entering a vacuum seal; it’s silent and skin-crawling, almost in a choking sense.

This adds to the effect that the creaking of the floorboards and the clunk of footsteps really build the tension and atmosphere. You certainly get chills whenever a sound creeps through your headphones.

Overall, The Cabin Factory is a very good narrative-driven story, and while the gameplay isn’t the most exciting, the twists and turns make up for it. This is definitely a tale perfect for any horror fan and a must-try for this Halloween season.

Written by: Stacey