With Scream finally coming out this week, excitement over the franchise has hit an all time high and in a killer marketing campaign that has celebrated director Wes Craven’s 25 year old franchise, there is a new bloody way to test your Ghostface knowledge. The film has released a new interactive point and click game where you navigate the original Scream house from the first film that was owned by one of the killers, Stu Macher.
The game sees you start at the entrance of the house with a stained glass window version of Ghostface staring down at you and making you feel like you are being watched from all sides. You get a suspicious text from the series’ final girl Sidney Prescott and this is a google maps type of experience where you go throughout each room of the house trying to avoid being this iconic villain's next victim. Once you enter the house it is revealed that Sidney is in fact Ghostface as you hear Roger L. Jackson’s infamous Ghostface voice as he asks you the series' now-famous line, “I want to play a game.”
There are two options from this point on. You can either play along and initiate Ghostface’s iconic trivia game or you can just ignore him and walk throughout the house hoping not to die. If you pick the former, the more fun version of the game, you get treated to trivia questions that test your knowledge of the Scream series. There are easier questions like, “who cameoed in the first Scream?” or “how did I kill Tatum Riley?”, but there are also more challenging questions like, “who met their demise in a fiery explosion that destroys Jennifer Jelle’s House in Scream 3?” All the questions are multiple choice, but it is still enough to make any Scream fan sweat and since you are being timed the tension naturally rises with each question.
Even if you get every question right it appears this is a game you simply cannot win as, no matter how long you last, Ghostface will eventually kill you. You can get killed in fun ways too like getting a chandelier dropped on you or having Ghostface hilariously hit you with a car. Another interesting thing about this game is if you choose to just walk around the house you will get texts from various characters from each of the films. Even the new film’s characters chime in like Dylan Minnette’s Wes Hicks who says, “I guess Ghostface is back. Make sure you have something to defend yourself just in case”.
Overall, this was a fun and simple interactive experience that made you feel like you were in the movie as it gives you the thrilling experience of being questioned by Ghostface. Especially given that the original house used in the film was real and not just shot on a soundstage, this gives this scary experience a more hauntingly authentic atmosphere. Going through each room is like going down a nostalgically traumatic and blood soaked yellow brick road. Seeing places like the kitchen, where the original‘s finale took place, is all sorts of chilling.
The only question remains, how long do you think you will last in the Scream house? You can find out at survivescreamhouse.com and you can watch the new Scream when it stabs its way into theaters on January 14.