The Blackout Club manages to wedge itself into a crowded cooperative space with the use of clever tricks and an approachable atmosphere. But unless the developers build off this initial offering with new content to slice through repetition, it will soon get lost in the dark.
The Blackout Club‘s prologue is a tantalizing appetizer. Once players begin to chew on this 30-minute morsel, they are introduced to a neighborhood-gone-wrong scenario that culls from the Hardy Boys, Stranger Things, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Lovecraftian sentiment. Our world is established in minutes. The town of Redacre is an island unto itself, there’s no cellular signal to the outside world. The adults are acting strange, especially at night. Upon closing their eyes, children can see hidden messages and entities bathed in red. Underneath the town is a labyrinthine network of tunnels and masked people who must belong to some cult.
Developer Question shovels these important details onto the player’s plate before quickly shifting the narrative and gameplay focus. You see, The Blackout Club starts as a single-player, first-person game that looks to terrify the player. The girl you control is attempting to take the information she has discovered about Redacre and get it to someone who can help. The plan cascades into a nightmare containing an invisible force and chilling scenery that sink their hooks into the player. Suffice it to say, the girl is captured inches from her goal.
What lies in wait is a cooperative game that blends stealth, horror, and procedurally-generated mission structure to a genre that is being increasingly capitalized upon. Taking elements from 4v1 titles like Evolve or Dead By Daylight, developer Question stitches together a game ripe with potential that can suffer from its own limitations.
As a newly inducted member of The Blackout Club, players are told that they need to find their missing friend and avoid the supernatural hazards of their neighborhood. The Club’s safehouse is a set of abandoned train cars which encapsulate the imagination of young children. After all, this team is comprised of young teens that are on the borders of puberty. Players walk around the car and pick an appearance from the limited and unattractive options (with further cosmetic options available with experience), investigate local newspaper clippings, examine online leaderboards, and choose their club member’s loadout. From there, players choose a mission and whether or not to opt in with friends or online strangers.
Hopefully anyone interested in The Blackout Club intends to play the game with a group of friends, otherwise its core concepts have diminished appeal. The Blackout Club is a game that anchors its entertainment on the idea that you are diving into missions with others and communicating with that team to accomplish objectives. Missions start above ground in Redacre as Club members are assigned a number of mundane tasks meant to unravel the mystery of the town and find out where missing friends have gone to. These objectives range from investigating break-ins in other homes, collecting evidence, or distributing recruitment posters around the neighborhood.
Impeding the progress of the Club are the adults who have been taken over by an unknown force and roam around the streets and buildings like zombies. During the prologue, players are taught that many “enemies” can’t see and chase after loud noises, only a choice few can see their direct surroundings. A chunk of missions involve Club members sneaking around adults and potential parents hoping not to attract any attention. Mechanical drones also hover around the streets and subterranean depths and will alert the powers that be to unwelcome presences. To assist the Club in carrying out their objectives, players choose a “Hero Tool” before leaving the Club’s hideout. These tools are a grappling hook, crossbow, and taser. The taser can temporarily stun adults or free a Club member after being grabbed, it’s also the most useful of the three. The grappling hook makes climbing up houses easier but feels extremely situational. The crossbow can shoot tranquilizer darts to put adults to sleep but is scarce on ammo unless more is found scattered in loot chests around the neighborhood. Club members can also choose and unlock perks over the course of playing. These perks include buffs like better stamina, starting the match with a lockpick, or scavenging more items when looting chests.
Scurrying around the neighborhood in hopes of not being victimized by sleepwalking adults vacillates between easy and difficult. The first batch of missions in The Blackout Club don’t require much on behalf of the player, only asking for a few minor break-ins and ground coverage. Items meant to distract from the attention of Club members can be used to cover tracks during a noisy lock-picking or window-smashing. But it wasn’t long before I ran into the issue of repetition. The pool of objectives and things to do in The Blackout Club feature very little change and would become stagnant if playing solo. Very rarely does the game evoke a sense of horror because the emphasis is on stealth and staying out of sight. A lack of enemy types means that players spend much of their time concocting scenarios in which to keep as much distance as possible between any action.
The Blackout Club also requires a large chunk of time to open up more playable spaces and skills. Before I could move past the first couple of missions, I had to repeat them multiple times with the same objectives (albeit randomized locations), to gain experience to unlock more skill points and sections of the game. After a point, more of the neighborhood opens up as does the The Maze, the underground area introduced in the prologue. It’s here where players can attempt to extract as much possible lore from the The Blackout Club in hopes of grasping a better understanding of this intriguing universe. The problem, unfortunately, is that the valuable storytelling done through collectibles and the environment requires such an investment that is already hampered by repeating the same handful of tasks.
What elevates The Blackout Club‘s monotony is that Question attempts to make the action more engaging with a few twists. First is the chief antagonizing force called The Shape (no relation to Michael Myers). Players who force their way into too many houses, get caught too many times, or make too much noise will draw the attention of The Shape, an invisible presence that can only be seen when closing your eyes. With closed eyes The Shape can be seen from a distance as a moving, red, humanoid shape. Without eyes closed, the presence of The Shape is only indicated by red outlines around the screen when it is too close for comfort. When summoned, The Shape will stick around until players complete the mission or they are all captured. Often The Shape hones in on one Club member for long periods of time and if caught, can possess them. The possessed Club member cannot be controlled by the player and will actively seek out others in hopes of downing them. When the full team is knocked out it’s game over but by stunning a possessed player, they can come to their senses a few times before ultimately succumbing to The Shape.
Other players can invade the game as Stalkers, another element that keeps The Blackout Club feeling fresher. Stalker players can enter the neighborhood and steal items from Club members and be an otherwise negative force that can cause The Shape to appear faster than usual. It’s up to other players to catch the Stalker. However, the job of a Stalker is granted to those who defeat one in their own game. It makes for tense encounters knowing that danger lurks from multiple angles but it also means that to become a Stalker, players have to be invaded by one in the first place. Instead, Question should give players a daily Stalker allowance to ensure that the community is always engaging in these features rather than hoping they come to fruition.
As an added twist, The Blackout Club features something called “Enhanced Horror” which is literally the developers injecting themselves into the game to taunt and inform players. By enabling Enhanced Horror, the game will listen for your voice on a microphone and pay attention to your actions. Players may mutter something to themselves or complete a specific task and once closing their eyes, a message may pop up directly referencing what was said. Though it may feel like something straight out of 1984, Question’s Big Brother approach is definitely a unique one. It makes for a good story for your friends but also helps eke out just a bit more interest in the game’s world. Players also have the ability to make sacrifices in the game and pose questions for unseen gods. Those questions are answered by disturbing voices which can only be seen as the developers responding to their community. It may seem cheap but it does enrich what The Blackout Club is attempting to do.
It is in these moments where I feel myself hoping for The Blackout Club to continue evolving with the same creativity Question has put into it so far. Without a doubt, the game is rough around the edges in terms of presentation and execution. User interfaces need polishing up, collision detection when jumping and climbing around can be improved. More importantly, the actual gameplay needs to be built up with more things to do and more ways to interact with its world. Players can have a great time hopping into The Blackout Club for a handful of missions and then putting it down until the next session. At it’s core, the universe created here is engaging and this genre has promise but it can only thrive when not left in the dark.
