Firework is a spooky, hidden horror gem from China, and if you don't have room for another 100+ hour game then does it have an offer for you

(Image credit: Gamera Games)

A pig�s head sits atop a birthday cake with the Chinese character for �libation� painted on its face.

The hidden gems of Game Pass(Image credit: Microsoft)We’re checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.

The hidden gems of Game Pass

(Image credit: Microsoft)We’re checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

We’re checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.

Did you know that, in China, November is the real spooky season? You probably didn’t, since I just made that up, but boy it’d be a convenient segue to talk aboutFirework, a creepy horror game from Chinese Shiying Studio, and one of the hidden gems squirrelled away in the depths of Game Pass.

There’s been a fire at a funeral in a remote mountain village somewhere in the Chinese hinterland, and you, rookie cop Li Lixun, are the man to crack the case. That’s not because of any Sherlock Holmes-like gift for cop-ery, mind you, but rather because officer Li was born on the right date and at the right time to become a sort of walkingthin place—those spots in the world where the fabric between the physical and spiritual worlds gets frayed, letting all sorts of spooks and spectres seep in.

In other words, officer Li sees dead people, and that’ll be handy for solving a case that revolves around a whole bunch of suspicious deaths that have racked the town’s recent history. The funeral that caught fire? The guy in the coffin was a local shopkeeper named Wang Jincai, and there sure are rumours floating around that his untimely death had something to do with him badmouthing one of the victims ofanother, slightly less recent massacre. Perhaps her vengeful spirit offence?

(Image credit: Gamera Games)

Li Lixun reads graffiti on the wall, reading “Believe in science, not superstition."

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(Image credit: Gamera Games)

Li Lixun looks in a mirror, his eyes obscured by darkness. The subtitles read “I rarely look in the mirror."

Those range from simple and speedy to proper brainteasers, but frankly, it’s the vibe of the whole thing that makes Firework feel compelling to me. It’s genuinely creepy, drawing on Chinese mythology to spin up a haunting that feels actually new to my horror-movie-addled brain. One sequence in particular—where poor Li has to hack through an ever-growing mass of thick, black hair to get to a corpse and a key—will stay with me for a while.

But at the root, Firework’s themes are universal: the corrupting influence of money, hollowness and dehumanisation, and the debts we owe to each other and the dead

But at the root, Firework’s themes are universal: the corrupting influence of money, hollowness and dehumanisation, and the debts we owe to each other and the dead. It’s about what happens when the creditors come to collect, whether they’re supernatural or, uh, natural, and the way that a certain kind of middle-class aspiration can fray the ties that bind even a small, close-knit community. The whole thing feels like a subtle exploration of the negative side-effects that accompany an increase in affluence.

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Just, you know, with ghosts. And paper dolls that bleed from the eyes. The whole thing really is very spooky, and it’s all the more impressive for how far it stretches itself despite its modest means.

(Image credit: Gamera Games)

Scratching off a lottery ticket, revealing text that reads “Do you really think you can change your fate?"

Which, as a bonus, isn’ttoofar. Firework clocks in at a brisk and reasonable 3-4 hours—a bitesize horror snack compared to the other 100+ (1000+?) hour behemoths you can dedicate entire percentage points of your life to these days. It’s a game that knows what it wants to accomplish and does it without overstaying its welcome, which feels increasingly rare in our bloated modern era.

PC Gamer created this content as part of a paid partnership with Microsoft and PC Game Pass. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of PC Gamer.

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