The Holiday Story Review (PC)

It’s the eleventh hour, and the bright lights of the festive season are reminding me that Christmas is but a hop, skip, and an eerie vinyl store away. A wayward father; a child without a gift; a final stop en route to the door of a vacant home. There isn’t much time left, and soon the church bells will chime to embrace the arrival of the holiday season. I have one shot to make amends for my blissful ignorance—a single chance to right a few wrongs and help someone beam with joy. It’s The Holiday Story, and this, weirdly, is shaping up to be quite the Christmas cracker.

It’s late, and the only stop that stands between home and a faraway landmark is an old and seemingly eerie pop culture vinyl store. There’s a gift in the back—an item that should resemble the dedication of a trying father who just wants to make his son proud. But, the labyrinthine corridors of the store aren’t as merry as the exterior decorations and festive light fixtures. No, there’s something wrong with this place, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. A skittish doll; an elusive shopkeeper; a twisted storefront with a knack for keeping me high on my toes and the prickles on my neck at attention. Oh, something isn’t quite right here.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Season’s Greetings, Festive Beatings

The Holiday Story puts us in the shoes of a returning father who, after making a trip back from a business affair, finds himself at the foot of an old vinyl shop in search of a last-minute Christmas gift for his son. An ominous VHS eighties aesthetic obscures the lines between warm seasonal greetings and grotesque festive beatings, but to you, everything is ordinary. The flicker of a light entices you to cross the threshold and into the pits of a thematically appealing world, but keeps the veil of its true essence hidden behind a trove of seemingly harmless trinkets.

The game plays out like a traditional first-person thrill fest, with the players having to tiptoe and meander in a gloomy environment to explore various rooms and, with any luck, find the perfect fatherly gift to bring home to the family. Also like your bog-standard walk-and-creep horror, you have the daunting task of evading a plethora of toys with a few loose screws, and skirting around a dubious owner who dons a rather questionable front. There’s more to it than that, true. For the most part, though, The Holiday Story is a short, forty-minute walking simulator that leans into eighties aesthetics and all things that bring about some form of sensory overload.

While The Holiday Story isn’t the most detailed horror game on the cassette rack, it is one that taps into some great features, with its oddly cozy visual palette and throwback products providing a solid foundation for a graphically apt environment. There isn’t any dialogue, and the characters are a little, shall we say, wooden. However, there is still a good balance between a mediocre horror and a strong period piece here. It’s just a shame that it isn’t all that long, and that it plays its entire hand before it pulls out any worthy card combinations.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

In the forty or so minutes that you’re likely to spend in The Holiday Story, you’ll either find yourself smoking a cigarette out in a brisk wonderland, marveling at the multicolored trees and eighties-inspired seasonal decorations, or rummaging around in the back rooms of the ever-ominous store, completing simple fetch quests and touching gloves with a rather disturbing cast of characters. There isn’t much substance to any of this I’ll admit, and The Holiday Story doesn’t really do much to elevate the basic premise of a rather dull and predictable walking simulator. But then, at least it’s festive. That counts for a lot, I think?

With all of the above said, I will echo the remark that The Holiday Story has some genuinely great ideas of its own. Granted, it isn’t the scariest game of its kind, and a lot of its pivotal moments do fall on deaf ears, with some rather shallow storytelling and flat dialogue dampening its overall tone and ultimately sullying the immersion. Still, for as little as a few bucks, I’d say that it’s worth forking out some pocket change for. Again, it isn’t the crème de la crème of Christmas, but it is a good little stocking filler that should, with any luck, appeal to those with a heart for niche walking simulators and eighties VHS aesthetics.

Verdict

The Holiday Story bleeds eighties pulp and festive goodness in a spookily-wrapped romp-through-a-vinyl store indie thriller that feels as equally merry as it does oddly disturbing to tear apart. It isn’t the be all, end all of pompous Christmas crackers, and it isn’t with the gift of longevity, either. That said, where The Holiday Story fails to conceive a weighty present with all of the contents of a full-fledged video game, it does find various ways to add ribbons to its bite-sized array of stocking fillers.

Aesthetically, The Holiday Story establishes a good balance that touches base on the festive spirit of the eighties period and the general creepiness of its outdated aura. It’s still a small game at heart, and it doesn’t exceed the capacity of its blueprint by adding more environments to the schematic or nooks and crannies to its centerpiece. And yet, for the relatively small stage that it does bring to the mantle, it finds a good image that is, when all’s said and done, a lot of fun to gawk at for thirty or forty minutes, give or take.

Of course, if you have the time to spare and a hunger for festive thrillers over knitted sweaters, then you’ll probably enjoy unwrapping The Holiday Story the next time you’re in the “Christmas” spirit. It won’t keep you for long, but it ought to give you a good ol’ punch of nostalgia.