Have You Played... Blair Witch Volume I: Rustin Parr

What the hell happened here?

You may remember a game called Nocturne. It was a middling horror game by Terminal Reality, who were probably most famous for BloodRayne. All fine, lovely.

And then came the film The Blair Witch Project. A properly spooky surprise, the beginning of the found footage movie movement, that had people tying bundles of sticks from trees and standing facing walls to excellent effect. Back then, in Space Year 2000, a game incarnation was inevitable.

What wasn't so inevitable was that it would somehow be a sequel to Nocturne, starring the main character from Nocturne, built in the Nocturne engine, but not called Nocturne. It was bonkers. (It was also one of three different Blair Witch games, each made by a different studio, none of them any good.)

Why so bonkers? It was set in 1941! You were an agent for an organisation called Spookhouse! You hunted monsters! You remember The Blair Witch Project, right?! The tangential connection is the reference in the film to Rustin Parr, a man who murdered seven children sixty years earlier. And from that point on it abandoned any attempt to have anything to do with anything.

I kind of love that it did this. That Terminal Reality, clearly dying to make a sequel to their game, just made one anyway despite the remit. And, in truth, despite being a pretty crap game, it managed to be a bit scary in places.