GamesPuzzleSpooky ’90s call centre sim Home Safety Hotline has wired up a direct line to my heartWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesPuzzleSpooky ’90s call centre sim Home Safety Hotline has wired up a direct line to my heartWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Night Signal Entertainment)
My last caller was host to a Boggart, a seven-foot-tall horror that haunts the home and watches you sleep, occasionally breaking out the odd house fire and respondingviolentlywhen seen. When your house has a Boggart, the only answer is to leave and never speak its name again. It knows when you talk about it. It responds accordingly.
I told her she had termites and she hasn’t called back yet, so maybe it’s fine. Or maybe I’m not cut out for the work of theHome Safety Hotline, an SCP Foundation-style retro horror game that tasks you with listening to callers' problems from in and around the home. Via a lovingly simulated ’90s CRT interface (between this andStonks-9800I feel like we have to come up with a name for this kind of thing), your sole task is to identify the problem they’re vaguely describing from a list and ping it over to them.
(Image credit: Night Signal Entertainment)
Please hold
It’s more gripping than it sounds—the game’s off-kilter banality is very well done. You’re a desk jockey working a phone line in the mid-’90s, but oddity creeps in round the edges and quickly ramps up. Your supervisor occasionally refers to you as “thee,” an email in your inbox implores you to quit before it’s too late, and before the week is out you’re telling people to vacate their homes to escape Fire Sprites and the Fae Flu, both of which are described in your documents in the same dry, pest control tones that are used to tell you how to deal with house flies.
(Image credit: Night Signal Entertainment)
Thing is, of course, your employer is something of a clandestine organisation, and the general public isn’t au fait with the world of Boggarts and Hobbs and the False Rose Bushes who hunt children in their gardens. They don’t always emphasise the most important details. You often find yourself teasing out theirrealproblems from their small asides.
Ah, well, what we have here is a classic False Beet situation: little terrors, identical to beets, that hide in among your root veg and wait for you to eat them, at which point they take root in your stomach and feast off your body for the rest of your life, with no possible cure. He probably would have preferred to hear he had a Pipe Hobb.
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(Image credit: Night Signal Entertainment)
What’s that you say, sir? A voice at night is tempting you with promises of unutterable wealth? It’s probably uh, bees.
I’m not sure where the overall plot is headed, although I suspect it will conclude with me losing my mind and taking up residence in a hole in the office walls much like my predecessor. After grabbing my attention as my favourite demo from last July’s Steam Next Fest, Home Safety Hotline is probably the first game to hit this year that’s properly pushed my buttons. It’s available now onSteam.
(Image credit: Night Signal Entertainment)
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Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11
Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12
Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12
Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11
Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11
LatestCruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you deadSee more latest►
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Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead
Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead
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