Monster-filming horror game Content Warning is free to download for the next few hours
Launch your SpookTube career for nada, 2nd April only
If you're partial to the grim delights of Phasmophobia and not averse to the sicko enjoyments of Lethal Company, you might like new horror game Content Warning, which kind of blends the two and has the additional virtue of being free on Steam till 9am PT/5pm UK on 2nd April.
In this spooky co-op treat from Landfall Publishing, you play a bunch of amateur filmmakers - or tubers, as the kids possibly still insist on calling them - who must board a spaceship, travel to another planet and film anything monstrous they stumble on.
Content Warning is an obvious commentary on the fact that jumpscares always go down well among streamers (consider the addition of the Reaper to Subnautica, which made waves on the Tube back in the day and contributed significantly to the game's early access success). Framing the game as an open exercise in content-gathering would seem to numb the appeal, but I do like the cut of Content Warning's monsters, which come in all shapes and sizes, from angry mushrooms to very tall dudes, each wrapped in a nasty grey skin of cross-hatching that looks like an etching sprung to life.
The presentation is a pleasantly even ratio of cute and chilling. The planet you start off on looks like a Sokpop Collective comfort game, and you can customise your astronaut's ASCII face. Once you're done filming creepy aliens, and providing you're not dead, you can also host a fright night and play back your own footage in the living room at base. The scarier and more substantial the capture, the higher your SpookTube fame, which can be traded for upgrades.
Content Warning presently rejoices in the accolade of an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, which probably has a bit to do with it being currently free. It does seem good, though. I'm always interested in how the streamer/content creator economy has fed back into the design of horror games specifically - consider the recent bodycam horror craze.