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.

This game is the exact same concept as the first one, except with four more games. They were perhaps a bit less scary, but it seems like more work was put into them, perhaps. The callback to the previous game, with the in-game Ryan Veeder finally having thought of a question for his favorite author, was the best part. At Veeder's suggestion, I opened the website Rainy Mood in another tab to get into the correct mindset while playing this anthology. At some point during the third game, under the sounds of rain and thunder, birds started chirping! At first I got angry, since this didn't inspire the right state of mind - but then I thought, on the contrary! It does. It's a perfect metaphor for Ryan Veeder's balance of darkness and light in these scary but funny stories. Also it's spring right now instead of Halloween, so the birds seem apropos.