Security Booth is like a spooky PS1 version of Papers Please
They're killing to get in and I'm dying to get out
Oh dear, it appears that someone's ripped a whole chunk of days out of my calendar. Today may be August 30th, but tomorrow appears to be October 31st in my book. How spooky. If Halloween haunts your heart earlier every year as it does mine, how about more PS1-style spooks? Security Booth is a bit like Papers Please in that you're in charge of sorting out who's allowed through your gate. Here though, you're guarding a questionable corporation campus and things get a bit cursed quite quickly.
The year is 1996 and you're the nighttime security guard at a company called Nova Nexus. You've got five pages of license plates and employee names to flip through and naturally you're only meant to press the big red button to allow actual employees in. You've got to leave your booth to take a peep at each car's plate, which made me fear that one of them would simply run me over or honk at me or some other unfair jump scare. Not to worry, no sudden scares here aside from the phone in your booth ringing. That eventually becomes frightening enough.
I'll not spoil how things play out for you, as Security Booth is short enough that it's worth playing for yourself if you're into these creepy throwback games. The expected play time is about ten minutes, says developer Kyle Horwood, which is about what I spent with it aside from a bit of fiddling around.
Do keep your eyes peeled for things appearing around you that weren't there before. There are two endings as well. I happened to get ending two, Security Booth tells me, after dilligently only allowing in everyone on the list. I think I got them all right, at least.
I have a suspicion that the alternate ending may involve sussing out an imposter in the ranks. Do let me know if you happen to stumble into that ending number one. I'm simply dying to find out what happens. A free tip for you: "GUD BOI" up there is in fact on the list of employees.
You can download Security Booth over on Itch for the price of pay what you want. I recommend my fellow spook lovers do so. It's worth warming up your jump scare feelers a month early, isn't it?
If you're hunting for more in the same vein, don't miss the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc from this year.