The Haunting of Billy

I'll be honest with you: I nearly scrolled past this one. Targon Studios released The Haunting of Billy in 2018 as a follow-up to their earlier Classic version, and it sits so quietly on Steam that you could blink and miss it entirely. That obscurity is its biggest problem, not its quality. What you get is a 2D side-scrolling action roguelite set inside a procedurally generated haunted mansion. Every run reshuffles the hallways, the enemy placements, the loot, and the boss encounters, which means the moment-to-moment loop stays unpredictable even after you've memorized the enemy roster. That roster is genuinely charming in a B-movie sort of way: zombies and ghosts sit alongside undead Vikings and mobster rats, and you're chasing down Death itself to rescue your missing girlfriend. The premise is silly on purpose, and the game earns it. The arsenal spans over 60 weapons across several classes, including swords, guns, magical staffs, and ranged options. None of them feel wildly different in the hand, and that's a real limitation for anyone expecting the depth of a Binding of Isaac or a Dead Cells. What partly compensates is the costume system. Costume pieces drop from defeated enemies and can be layered across your head, body, arms, and legs, with over a million theoretical combinations that carry real stat and ability changes. Hunting a particular loadout becomes its own quiet obsession, even if the combat underneath it stays fairly simple. Side rooms hold loot worth detour-ing for, shops let you top up health and mana between hallways, and boss fights close out each wing with a modest spike in tension. The honest caveats: playtime data suggests this is a short game, probably one to three hours for a standard run, and the 2018 release has barely accumulated any user reviews. There was some community friction around it being positioned as a separate product from the Classic version rather than a free update, which is worth knowing before you compare them. Bug reports surfaced at launch, including at least one player who couldn't progress past the opening cutscene, and it's unclear how thoroughly those were patched. Original art, audio, and music are credited as hand-crafted by the developer, and that original soundtrack carries the Halloween atmosphere in a way the sparse visuals alone couldn't. For someone who wants a low-stakes, short-session roguelite with a Halloween skin and genuine replay incentive through the costume grind, this scratches that itch. For players expecting mechanical depth or a polished production, the Classic version at a lower price point may actually be the smarter entry, since it carries a small but completely positive review score from the community.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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