14 DAY TRIAL // 
The Park is one of a limited number of video games that try to organically deliver a horror experience for those gamers who want to celebrate Halloween with something other than the classic pumpkin-themed events that most MMOs implement.
Because of their interactive nature, most video games have trouble delivering true horror experiences, mostly because, unlike movies, they cannot control the experience well enough to put the player at the center of an experience that's scary.
Funcom Park tries to solve this problem by delivering a walking simulator inspired by one of the locations from The Secret World, with the structure of the game designed to push the player towards those areas where the team can try to scare them while also pushing the story forward.
The hero of the narrative is a mother named Lorraine who needs to deal with the loss of her son, called Callum, in the middle of a theme park on Atlantic Island, located on the Savage Coast in the universe of the MMO.
She needs to walk and run through the environment to track down her boy, and in the process she can interact with a range of items, all of which are designed to offer context both for those who have played The Secret World and for newcomers.
The Park is a game about monologues, old evil forces and the way they can pervert reality in a disturbing and unique way.
The story that Funcom tells starts off slow and the writing is, at first, disappointing, but by the end I was happy that I spent less than two hours going through everything the game has to offer.
“The walking simulator mechanics mean that the opportunity for interaction is limited, but I liked how the rides are used to offer clues and to slowly introduce more scares and how they play on an almost universal fear of abandoned and dark amusement parks.”
Unfortunately, the final story beats of The Park do not offer a clear conclusion and fail to give gamers answers to some of the questions that they might have.
The game is also pretty short, and it could have used a few more locations and more ways to learn about the location and the forces that influence it rather than relying only on notes and the narration of the main character.
The Park uses the Unreal Engine 4 but fails to offer a visually impressive spectacle, with a relative lack of detail for both the characters and the park, although the fact that the graphics are not photorealistic does seem to help when it comes to the delivery of scary moments.
Funcom understands how important well-used sound is to the horror genre and has managed to use it effectively to create tension and to draw the attention of the player towards his objectives.
The voice acting for Lorraine manages to convey the increasing fear that grips the mother as she fails to understand what happened to her son.
The music and environmental sounds managed to make the world around her appear creepy but also weirdly welcoming, a mix of potential evil and hope for salvation.
The Good
- Some solid horror moments
- Interesting psychological exploration
The Bad
- Limited mechanics
- Short
Conclusion
Funcom has managed to create some solid scary moments, especially for those who play in a dark room and use headphones as advised, but the overall game is limited when it comes to its arsenal of terror, and by the easily reached end, it stops offering any kind of surprise.
The development team has not yet said whether it plans to offer other small experiences linked to The Secret World, but it might be intriguing to see how they built a similar horror experience focused on other locations.
