It’s spooky season and that means people everywhere are clamoring for a good scare to accompany the chill in the air. The Fridge is Red is a retro horror adventure from the 5WORD Team. Its art style evokes the pixelated blurriness of PlayStation One games that defined the horror genre. Served up as a horror anthology, The Fridge is Red has some great ideas backed by a menacing tone but dig deeper and you’ll soon discover there isn’t much else to eat in the fridge.
Consisting of six standalone scenarios, The Fridge is Red follows a single protagonist as he goes through significant moments in his life. Exploring themes of monotony, death, and grief, the early scenarios do an amazing job of introducing players to the drab and mysterious world, with ‘For Daddy to Work’ being the standout example. For Daddy to Work follows the protagonist as he tries to leave the office in the late hours of the night. Heading down the empty hallway on the ninth floor of your office building, you get the feeling of isolation. Dread creeps up as you get on the elevator and descend straight into the pits of hell. What ensues is an adventure to get the elevator working, filled with blood spouting pipes, dismembered hands, and the titular fridge. This scenario is the game at its finest. The perfect balance of walking around a creepy environment, mixed with jump scares, collecting items, and solving puzzles. This balance dissipates as you enter the later scenarios.
One of The Fridge is Red’s scenarios has players wander endlessly through a hospital in search of a sick family member. It’s a scenario that fits the themes of the anthology. Health care and receiving medical care are a labyrinth that many face every day. It’s made even worse when you realize you are on your own in navigating this system. This scenario drills those ideas into players’ heads with endless hallways and file rooms and little guidance from workers. Here in lies my biggest gripe with The Fridge is Red, it’s way more interested in exploring its themes and ideas and less interested in giving players a fun experience. A moment in the hospital scenario has players wait in line for their turn to go through a door. It adds to the theme of getting lost in the healthcare labyrinth, but I’m not playing games to stand in line.
I did appreciate the ease of unlocking additional scenarios. At the start of the game players open the fridge to find gross dishes that represent the scenarios. To unlock more, you find dishes out in the world. These are never hard to find and give you the option to hop around, especially if you find yourself stuck in the hospital (or any of the other scenarios.)
The Fridge is Red is not here to hold your hand. In game there is no interface and no UI. There is nothing on screen but your current objective. I believe this decision was made to not take away focus from the blurry visuals, but the tradeoff is that it’s easier to get lost when exploring or seeking your objective. You’re given objectives by characters in the world or the protagonist interjecting, but this is done through a hilarious out of place robotic voice. The blurry visuals are a treat and give the game a Silent Hill vibe, especially when entering nightmarish areas. That immersion is lost when entering darker rooms. I struggled finding my way a handful of times because I couldn’t tell where I was. Some scenarios do have a flashlight, but it can be missed, leaving some players to wander in the dark. If you do get lost there is no save feature. The scenarios aren’t long, but this is still a minor annoyance no matter how you look at it.
The Fridge is Red is just not that scary. It’s perfect at setting the mood. Blood trails, creepy noises, and low lighting build the creepy atmosphere, but when the lights come on you realize there’s really nothing to be afraid of. The game throws a few jump scares at you but once those have played out, you’re left wondering what you have to lose. There are a few fail states in the game stemming from chase scenes in some scenarios. They’re not hard, and death results in you loading back into a recent area. With a not well-defined checkpoint system (and a lack of a save feature) it’s hard to build stakes with each death. Facing death in games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, your mind instantly starts to think about your progress and the last time you saved. Coming to the realization that it’s been thirty-plus minutes since your last save adds to the fear factor and makes your choices pivotal. With The Fridge is Red I felt like I was playing a walking simulator that also wanted to be a horror game with chase scenes. By the end of the game, I was much more interested in the aesthetic created by its mundane environments and less by the ‘boogeymen’ it was trying to throw at me.
If there’s one thing I’ll remember about The Fridge is Red, is its low poly art style and 5WORD Team’s ability to create an eerie tone in mundane spaces. I really wanted to come away in love with this. With their previous game, DEATH CROWN, a pixelated, hard-rock strategy game, 5WORD Team showed they’re more than capable of creating worlds and evoking a mood, all while delivering a fun experience. Horror heads looking for something on the spooky side may find some things to love in The Fridge is Red, but I fear it may leave others hungry.
