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Sights & Sounds

Paper Mario goes to hell

3D worlds and 2D characters: name a better duo. I'll wait. Considering the combo, it's hard not to be reminded of games with a similar design motif like Tinykin, Paper Mario or some PS1 RPGs like Star Ocean: The Second Story or Grandia
Spookware takes that idea and sends it to the underworld. Except it's not your typical underworld. No, the land of the dead seems awfully similar to the land of the living, except everyone is a skeleton
With the lack of things like hair, skin, and facial features, the artists had to look elsewhere to differentiate the character designs, instead opting for things like clothes, glasses, and hats. Though I do wonder what the point of clothes is when no one has any flesh
The music in Spookware is a competent SNES-era-JRPG-like set of compositions, but there aren't many songs. Hope you don't mind hearing tracks on loop


Story & Vibes

Missing pages

Before describing the narrative, it's important to know that this game will probably never be finished. A huge bummer considering the quality
It seems that after 2 incommunicado years, Spookware is dead. In a Steam news post earlier this year, Beeswax Games announced that the last half of the game won't be released. Only the first two episodes had guaranteed funding from DreadXP, and after unfortunate sales performance in Early Access, both parties agreed that it didn't make financial sense to continue the project
That said, Beeswax has the IP and could continue development, so I suppose there's always an outside shot that this sees a full release someday. Not holding out hope on that, but fingers crossed
For consumers, this is a cautionary tale about Early Access. For developers, it's a cautionary tale about episodic release formats
Now that we've covered the narrative surrounding the game, we can talk about the narrative within it
Spookware sees you take control of three skeleton brothers: Lefti (blue clothes), Midi (green clothes), and Righti (red clothes). For the past several years, they've been rotting on the couch binging horror movies
Once they realize that they've been wasting their afterlife, they decide to start a self-fulfillment roadtrip. The two locations you visit are a high school (where they attempt to finish their education) and Bonehattan (where they begin their careers)
Unfortunately, after graduating and seeing some success at the restaurant they're given in a humorous exchange, the game abruptly ends at the close of the second episode
Such a shame that this game is unfinished. The writing is excellent, with humorous dialogue and comedic situations being rapid fired at you. I really enjoyed the snarky, irreverent vibes this game was giving me while it lasted


Playability & Replayability

Microgame mayhem

If you've ever booted up one of the million WarioWare titles, you'll be immediately familiar with the Spookware's core gameplay mechanic: beating rapid fire microgames without messing up too many times
Whether you're supposed to fend off a horde of Venus flytrap headed zombies, rhythmically toss hands and feet into a cauldron to make a macabre stew, or match variously sized mummies to their sarcophagi, you'll be challenged to assess the situation, figure out the controls, and succeed at the task in a span of about 5 seconds
As you can tell, most of these microgames are horror-themed and fairly creative. There are a few duds like card matching and slotting integers into a row of arithmetic operators to sum or difference a value, but they're mostly alright
Between each microgame session exists a some fairly straightforward adventure game mechanics. You'll mostly be walking around, having funny conversations with NPCs, and occasionally receiving an objective to go somewhere where you'll—you guessed it—play more microgames
I don't think I'll be back for a replay anytime soon. I beat the two episodes the game contains and got most of the achievements. There are some challenge modes available if you want to 100% the game, though


Overall Impressions & Performance

Sigh

The world is unfair. Good work and good ideas don't always get appropriately rewarded. Spookware is one of those cases. There was a clear vision here and you can see the effort and talent that went into the game, but it just didn't turn out
If I had to levy any criticisms unrelated to the unfinished status of the game, it would be the barebones nature of the adventure game segments. Some light puzzles, exploration, collectibles, or other flavor would have enhanced the experience
Hey, at least it played well on the Steam Deck


Final Verdict

5.0/10. I'm on the fence on whether to recommend this game. On one hand, it's a competent title that will scratch that WarioWare itch. On the other, it's a little dry outside of the microgames and will likely never be finished. I'll side with a very soft recommendation, but just know that it's only half a game