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Search for a briefcase in the world’s creepiest warehouse
Platform: PC
By Ian Coppock, Originally Published on February 17, 2013
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Let me start this review out by apologizing for the missed content. This past week has been quite hellish, and I’ve been busy with other stuff. Now, though, I have time to embark upon a little project I’ve been wanting to do: Short Horror Week. Each day for the next week, I’m going to play and review a short horror game. These games are like the lives of the minor characters in slasher films: bleak, violent, and short. They’re also free.
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The Story
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I’ve decided to start this week of mini-reviews off with The Briefcase, a creepy indie game developed by Brandon Mattice. Players take control of a nameless, silent character who arrives to an eerie warehouse in the dead of night to retrieve a briefcase. Who your player is and how he/she knows the location of the briefcase are a mystery. Your goal is to get the briefcase and GET OUT. That’s the objective stated at the game’s beginning.
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As one might guess, there’s more to getting the briefcase and leaving than just… well, getting the briefcase and leaving. The game has a light puzzle element in the form of finding keys to unlock successions of doors, all of which will lead to the briefcase. The game’s atmosphere was quite creepy; it’s an old warehouse that gives off the pressure of unseen eyes (at one point, I saw a shadowy figure watching me before he/she noticed and escaped my field of vision). That’s pretty much all there is to the story. Mattice focused on atmosphere in his development. I won’t say what happens when you find the actual briefcase… but when you grab it, run. Run as fast as you can pound the shift key.
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The Artwork
The Briefcase‘s morbid atmosphere is made manifest in the environment. The game’s 5-20 minute entirety takes place in a closed down warehouse with dim lighting and many (so many) shelves. While playing, I obsessively checked the warehouse’s numerous corners and cubbyholes for monsters, to no avail. The design of the game reflects its independent origins, though; the warehouse is fairly sparse for its size, and a lot could have been done with that space to make it creepier (more shelves, flickering lights, and a supercharged, monster-proof forklift come to my mind) but I won’t fault Brandon Mattice too severely for this, because the game is still very unsettling.
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Should I get it?
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If you love horror games, especially free ones, I don’t see why not. The Briefcase is, well, brief. I finished it in about 10 minutes on my first go, so this isn’t exactly a time sink. It’s a short, bitter, and deliciously scary game.
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Leave a comment if there’s an indie horror game that you’d like to see me review!
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Art as Games 