Additional Tales from Castle Balderstone

Like the original Balderstone (which you don't have to play to understand this), you are at a gathering of horror writers who tell 'stories' which are minigames. The order of the stories is randomised.

The games are coded well, and the tone varies a lot, sometimes dramatic, sometimes silly, sometimes frightening, all sort of tongue in cheek. Many of them have twists, whether geographical or as a meta-narrative etc.

I came, I saw, I had fun, the stories aren't really related, so why don't you just go try it out and see for yourself?

An anthology of spooktacular short games, with charming interstitial material. Some classic Veeder themes are revisited - the (Spoiler - click to show)twist in (Spoiler - click to show)the last game is a gimmick first explored in (Spoiler - click to show)Craverly Heights, frex - but that is not a downside. This collection felt much meatier than the first Tales from Castle Balderstone, although that may be simply because I had adjusted my expectations.

Light in difficulty, if not always in content (although never shocking or mean), I found this a delightful hallowe'en feast.

Balderstone #2 introduces a fresh batch of terrifying tales:
- Look after your grand-child as an elderly invalid. Weird and nonsensical, with little interactivity but a lot of strangeness.
- Examine a monster in forensic detail. Simple and amusing.
- Live the spaghetti-western lifestyle: deserts, horses, guns and a love triangle (think Claudia Cardinale as Jill Mcbain). Exudes Mexican flavour. Like oregano and cumin.
- Survive an incident in a space laboratory. The regulation "meaty" chapter (each game seems to have one). The way this introduces who you are, where you are, and what you're doing with no infodumps at all is really neatly done. Has some tricky puzzles for the first time in this series (it will become more of a feature in later games). Managed to get stuck here for the first (and only) time too, unfortunately. Had to consult the "ClubFloyd transcript" to proceed.

Also includes some entertaining hidden content: try using the (Spoiler - click to show)safeword, or (Spoiler - click to show)quitting and restarting. If you enjoyed the first Balderstone, this is more of the same quality writing and expert pacing. But it's definitely the next game in the series where things really start to fly, as Veeder gets more ambitious with bigger and more complex scenarios, while also varying the storytelling voice more between the fictional authors.