14 DAY TRIAL // 
The last few weeks have brought two horror titles to my desk and, after playing through Outlast and the new Amnesia, I thought that I was pretty well immunized to the various tricks that the genre is using to deliver goose bumps to my arms and a sinking feeling somewhere between by heart and my stomach.
I only took the constant sound of ticking clocks pouring into my ears for about 3 minutes while I moved around in the darkness to understand that horror is not about being scared, but about feeling that anything could happen at any moment.
Huntsman is a title created by ShadowShifters, an indie team, that adopts the idea that the exploration of weird ideas coupled with an impending threat is more scary than blood spatter, high pitched screams and ugly monsters.
Gamers will have to investigate the Grimhaven Orphanage in Illinois, USA, using their wits, the light from a lamp and their cellphone in order to find out what has happened to a list of kids and how they can be liberated from the clutches of a dark creature with power over space and time.
The orphanage is a dark building dominated by objects used by kids that are no longer there and wooden doors that a player needs to navigate in order to find portraits for the various characters.
Each of them delivers a story and care is required while listening to them because they offer clues about what players need to do so that the children that haunt the location to find their peace.
His design is not too impressive, but the central idea of the game and the focus on children as candidates for salvation creates an interesting setup that has managed to keep me interested even if the actual mechanics of Huntsman are fairly limited.
The only big complain I have is that I need to constantly look at portraits in order to get the full story and cannot listen and move at the same time, which seems absurd given the normal restrictions of the video game world.
Huntsman: The Orphanage is clearly an indie project and there are times when the graphics betray its origins, mainly because of all the reused assets that litter the game’s world and the rather limited space that can be explored.
The game also suffers from a lack of interaction between the player and the environment and I would have liked for light and shadow to play a bigger role in the actual gameplay.
On the other hand, the title compensates in the sound department, delivering a constant stream of potentially unsettling creaks and rumbles that create the sensation that something is stalking the player even if nothing is moving in the vicinity.
The only problem with the overall concept is that some players might be unwilling to give up so much time in order to listen to voices, especially given the nuances that most of them are employing.
The full version of Huntsman: The Orphanage will be launched on Halloween and until then, the development team at ShadowShifters is continuing to listen to feedback from the community and then implement new mechanics and options in the game.
The experience at the moment is enjoyable and suitably dark and I love the way each individual story told manages to include details and information that piques my curiosity.
It remains to be seen how the Halloween version of the game will expand on its core ideas.
