While at PAX East last week, I stopped by the Goldpact Goblins booth to play a couple of exciting-looking games – the chaotic multiplayer game Spook-a-Boo and the dark action roguelite Grim Trials. Though both technically revolve around the concept of the afterlife, these two disparate titles take entirely different paths, each an absolute blast for its own distinct reasons.
Spook-a-Boo
Catching ghosts has been done a fair bit in video games now, but doing so cooperatively with friends seems a bit less common. That’s the premise of Spook-a-Boo, which has you and up to three friends try to capture comical, colorful specters haunting objects at different stages. The focus on physics and cartoony ghost-catching makes it feel like a game with the potential to be something special that people of all ages can play together.
For a quick reference point, picture a more focused multiplayer version of Luigi’s Mansion. You and your pals have to detect apparitions in furniture from a top-down floor plan perspective. Once you’ve detected them with your scanner device, they’ll pop out and cause mayhem, meaning you have to drag them out towards one of your ghost traps. These traps need a set amount of space to open, but you can kick them around to quickly maneuver them. As you can tell, a lot has to happen pretty quickly, which makes for very chaotic fun when you’re trying to coordinate on the fly with friends.
Just running around and kicking each other, furniture, traps, and ghosts is fun in and of itself, but the real comedy and enjoyment come from the process of tackling these ghosts together within the limited time you have. I played alongside a couple of friends from Noisy Pixel and Iain Garner of Goldpact Goblins, and we were messing around and laughing almost immediately. It’s a super easy game to pick up and play, so I imagine it’ll be fantastic for friends and families to get into during hangouts and gatherings. The relative simplicity also makes it pretty accessible for people with less gaming experience, so it strikes a pretty perfect balance.
There’s no release date for Spook-a-Boo at the moment, but you can download a demo from Steam if you want to try hunting some ghoulies for yourself. When it does come out, it’ll be debuting on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
Grim Trials
Now Grim Trials takes a bit of a more serious approach to the afterlife, putting you in the role of a young woman named Avelin who recently died and wants nothing more than to return to her still-living partner. She’ll need to become a grim reaper to do that, which is the impetus for the whole game. It’s a roguelite hack-and-slasher not unlike Hades in its gameplay loop, as dying in combat is an essential part of both the narrative and the game itself.
Fighting is primarily composed of you using a scythe or scythe-adjacent weapon for close combat alongside a crossbow for ranged combat. It feels pretty seamless to swap between slashing and shooting as you tackle each enemy-filled room, and when you throw in how smooth dashing is, you become a slick and almost assassin-like fighter. It feels incredible, slashing and shooting foes in a fast-paced and tense little room, and I felt like a real pro once I got into the flow of things.
I was also impressed by Grim Trials’ gear and stat build systems. After a run, you can choose between all sorts of different paths on a Final Fantasy X-esque grid of spheres, letting you focus on going faster, parrying/deflecting attacks, doing better damage, etc. You can also respec at any time, which allows for impressive customization and freedom to experiment with all sorts of different builds. Similarly, the different weapons and gear that you can equip give you different attack styles and passive effects, so there’s a pretty wide range of ways to make Aveline match your own completely unique playstyle.
Like with Spook-a-Boo, there’s no release date for Grim Trials currently, but there’s a Steam demo. If that’s not enough for you, you can also request access to the game’s playtest on Steam to give it a deeper look.
Though they offer vastly different experiences, both Spook-a-Boo and Grim Trials seem primed to offer unique and exciting games for gamers of all different experience levels. I think I’ll be trying both out again when they release in full, with Spook-a-Boo being a game I’ll bring out for family gatherings, and Grim Trials seems like the perfect Steam Deck game. These were definitely two of the standout games I checked out at PAX, and I can’t wait to see more of them in the coming months.
