Horror Tale 2: Samantha

I went in expecting another forgettable mobile port dressed up for Steam and came out mildly surprised. Horror Tale 2: Samantha is the second chapter in Euphoria Games' serialised horror about the cursed town of Lakewitch, where children vanish and a figure in a rabbit mask turns them into wooden dolls. You play as Tom, picking up exactly where the first game left off, waking in a cold prison cell before crossing paths with Samantha, a fellow captive whose friends have already suffered that awful transformation. The setup is lean and deliberate, and there is something quietly effective about how the world-building drip-feeds through diary scraps, tattered notes, and environmental detail rather than long exposition dumps. The core loop is first-person stealth puzzle-solving spread across five locations, including a mine and a railway station that give the setting a bit more breathing room than the original. You hunt for keys and items, string together object-based puzzles, and stay out of the kidnapper's line of sight. When he spots you, instinct kicks in: sprint, find a bin or a hidden alcove, and wait out the alert. The difficulty selector is a thoughtful touch. On easy the antagonist is slow and half-blind with five lives to spare; on hard he moves fast, hears everything, and gives you just two chances. That range does a lot for replayability, even if the underlying chase-and-hide mechanic itself hasn't evolved much from part one. The visual style lands somewhere between a Telltale adventure and a stylised mobile game, which is exactly what it is in origin. It reads as cartoony yet grim, and the level geometry is more considered than you might expect from a sub-five-dollar release. What genuinely impresses me is the sound design. The ambient tension underneath normal exploration is careful and understated, and the moment the kidnapper locks onto you, the music shifts into something that genuinely raises your pulse. A retrowave-inflected soundtrack was a bold choice for a 1990s horror setting, but it works, threading an odd, dreamy unease through the whole runtime. The honest caveats: this is short. Players who move deliberately through the puzzles might stretch it past two hours, but brisk runs exist. It also carries the unmistakable DNA of its mobile roots, meaning the puzzle complexity ceiling is low and the jump-scare vocabulary is limited. If you burned out on hide-and-seek horror after Hello Neighbor or the first Horror Tale, nothing here will change your mind. There are also reported bug issues on some console versions, though the PC build appears stable. Steam player counts are slim and the community is quiet, which is a shame because the serialised storytelling has a scrappy charm that deserves a wider audience. For the right kind of player, specifically someone who wants a short, atmospheric, low-cost horror vignette with a genuine sense of narrative continuity across episodes, this little game earns its place. Play the first chapter before starting here, both for context and because the story genuinely carries over in ways that matter.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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