For fans of horror films and B-movie slashers from the 80s, there's no better puzzle series to play than the Lakeview Cabin indie games. There are three Lakeview Cabin entries with a fourth spin-off game also available. These titles perfectly capture the tone and feel of classic horror flicks, such as Friday The 13th and Halloween, with suspenseful moments and tense puzzle-solving scenarios. Lovers of slasher films, cosmic horror and survival-horror games should absolutely check out the Lakeview Cabin franchise.
The games follow the in-universe Lakeview Cabin films, which are a series of slasher flicks that prominently feature a dark storyline of demons and eldritch lake gods. The first title, Lakeview Cabin, introduces the central character of Red as well as many of the future events of the series. Lakeview Cabin is also the simplest of the bunch as later games introduce more complex mechanics.
The Lakeview Cabin titles are primarily puzzle games that challenge players to survive a slasher villain that's hunting them down. This usually involves figuring out how to bait the slasher while also setting up some sort of trap in order to kill them. The sequel to Lakeview Cabin, Lakeview Cabin Collection, features multiple episodes that put unique spins on this formula.
In some episodes, the killer may only be vulnerable to a certain weapon or type of damage. Other episodes require very specific steps to be performed in order for the killer to be defeated, though these scenarios tend to be far less open-ended than the rest. In general, the Lakeview Cabin franchise is best described as a puzzle-sandbox experience that gives players tons of different ways to take down their assailant.
One of the biggest additions in the Lakeview Cabin Collection is the fact that players are able to swap between multiple people. These characters don't have any AI when they aren't controlled by the player, so managing multiple at once becomes key to surviving, though the game does have local co-op as well. That being said, not everyone needs to survive for players to win, but it is sometimes required to get the best possible ending.
There's a loose narrative at play in the Lakeview Cabin games which mainly follows a series of movies that are based on murders that happened in the Lakeview Cabin universe. Lakeview Cabin 2, the early-access sequel to the Lakeview Cabin Collection, explores the murders that the films were based on and blends the line between reality and cinema. The story is ambiguous on purpose so that fans can piece together the plot on their own, adding to the experience.
The puzzle aspect of these games is about more than just surviving. Many of the episodes have multiple outcomes which leads to players being encouraged to experiment with different solutions. It isn't so much about beating each episode, as it is about trying to get every single character to survive. This does lead to a lot of trial and error, but slowly learning how to handle certain slashers or problems means that repeating those steps gets faster each time.
Much like classic slasher films, there's plenty of blood and gore in the Lakeview Cabin series. Plenty of players have found tons of enjoyment in finding the many different ways that their characters and the slashers can die, which in itself becomes its own puzzle game. Cults, demons and eldritch gods are all part of Lakeview Cabin's story, helping to build an incredibly eerie tone that feels straight out of a classic 80s horror film.
The spin-off Lakeview Valley is similar to the other Lakeview Cabin titles in the sense that players have to use trial and error often to learn its layouts. Lakeview Valley, though, is an open-world game where players are given a huge amount of freedom. They can try and integrate into the town of Lakeview Valley or they could become a slasher themselves.
Each episode in the Lakeview Cabin Collection and Lakeview Cabin 2 has unique gimmicks that players must experiment with and learn as part of that episode's puzzle. Episodes may have a killer who teleports between locations, while others may make death a requirement to kill the slasher. The biggest constant in the Lakeview Cabin series is that trial and error is essential to beating each game in the franchise.