Don’t Scream Together Review (PC)

I distinctly remember whispering to a stranger a little after the eleventh hour, telling them that so much as shedding a single cough would be like ringing the death knell. He told me he was feeling a little under the weather. I told him he was going to be the reason we’d never make it till morning. We quietly chuckled, and we bolted out into the brush, bound for the safety of a wooded haven with our tails between our legs and the batteries of our camcorders dropping breadcrumb trails for our stalkers. It was going so well. Dawn, thankfully, was approaching a lot faster than we anticipated, and time was doubling down to ensure that we would reach morning. That was, until that same “friend” allowed their sickness to put us in a chokehold.

To cut a long story short, a sniffle and a rabid splutter later, and that same ill companion finally met a rather grizzly fate at the hand of a prowling monstrosity. I, bewildered by their lack of control, gawped at their withered corpse, and I opened my eyes to the most important rule of Don’t Scream Together: the ill are a liability, as are those known to fart, cough, or giggle without a cue. Basically, everyone who owns a mic. And some say Dark Souls is unfair. Go figure.

Don’t Scream Together presents you with a simple setup: players enter a dimly lit forest with a battery-operated camcorder, and then spend the length of an evening prancing around in silence until the clock hits eight. If there wasn’t a microphone involved, then this would, in all fairness, be a rather simple co-op affair. But, herein lies the caveat: talking kills, as does being loud or exercising your vocal cords in a manner that doesn’t benefit your squad. You can whisper, and you can make timid gestures to help your teammates as they relentlessly search for batteries to keep their camcorders operational. But a scream? Absolutely not. No pressure there, then.

Silence Is Bliss

Remember the saying, ‘you don’t need to be the fastest person in the room, only faster than the person next to you’? Well, it’s the same basic concept here, only you don’t need to outrun anyone, but simply keep to your wits and, under no circumstances, alarm your friends by “accidentally” benching down the mic. See, in Don’t Scream Together, progress isn’t made by outmaneuvering enemies or pulling off slick combat strategies; it’s made by remaining quiet and running aimlessly through a woodland with a camcorder. The downside to this is that, even when you do keep to your brief vow of silence, time only advances when you’re actively moving across the field. A bad hand to be dealt, all things considered.

With all of the above said, the goal itself is all rather straightforward here: keep quiet, and keep moving until the sun pops up from behind the tree line. If someone on your team does something to give away your position, then the entire squad either has to start from the beginning, or the player who rocked the apple cart, so to speak, must take on the role of the hunter and reverse the tide. There are a couple of modes to work with here, though the idea more or less remains the same, regardless of the options that you choose or tweak. Again, simple, but effective.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

In the brief bouts against the forest and its vast habitat of supernatural beings and jack-in-the-box jump scares, you will either spend your time aimlessly bolting between the nooks and crannies of a densely packed world, or mindlessly rummaging around in an effort to obtain batteries for you camcorder—the sole source of light, annoyingly—as well as relics, secrets, and hidden paths that provide you with a little extra breathing room to help you calculate future events. The hunters, on the other hand, will tap into your proximity chat to unearth your whereabouts and bring you to a rather morbid conclusion. Think Dead by Daylight, but with a harsher emphasis on silence, and you’ll have a good idea of what we’re getting at.

While Don’t Scream Together isn’t in possession of the cleanest visual palette in the world, it does make a good effort to counteract its lack of creativity with a lot of great features, including randomly generated jump scares and traps, as well as two separate modes that allow you to explore both sides of the fence, so to speak. Again, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but for what it does bring, it certainly comes up with plenty of decent ways to keep you immersed for the long haul. A high praise, but a fitting one, at that.

Verdict

Don’t Scream Together amplifies the importance of teamwork and muted collaboration with its simple yet high-octave woodland horror pantomime. Again, the game itself harbors an entry-level premise—an idea that, frankly, isn’t all that uncommon in the realm of mic-centric co-op horrors that foster proximity chat systems. Even still, for what it’s worth, it works well with the woodland setting and time-based design. It isn’t a concept that’s on the cusp of revolutionizing the framework of the genre, and yet — it just works. I guess it doesn’t need to strive to be anything more than that.

If you’re all for the idea of tagging along for a silent joyride with a ragtag crew of rampant mines with belching problems, then you should definitely take the opportunity to slip into this noisy pair of shoes. It isn’t a perfect co-op game, and these shoes won’t take you anywhere important. Heck, Don’t Scream Together won’t even give you much to write home about, much less sing at the top of your lungs about. But, in spite of all its shortcomings, it still a manages to deliver a fun and mindlessly compelling experience that knuckles in on all the right departments. Jump scares? Check. Terror? Check. Frustration? Check. Irritating teams that don’t understand how to keep their volume dials down and their passive-aggressive tendencies at bay? Ugh — check. We’ll let you decide whether or not that’s worth talking about.