The Blackout Club is a first-person co-op horror game centered around a group of teenage friends investigating a monstrous secret beneath the skin of their small town. Every night, everyone in town gets out of bed and sleepwalks. In the morning, they wake up with no recollection of what happened or where they were.
Some teenagers in this town woke up during a few of these "Blackouts" themselves, finding themselves in the woods or on train tracks with no idea how they got there. When they tell their parents, their teachers, the police… no one believes them. Taking matters into their own hands, they formed a club -- The Blackout Club PC -- to get to the bottom of it.
Unfortunately, the recent disappearance of a close friend means that the sleepwalking isn't just strange - it could be deadly. You and your friends must team up to overcome the powerful forces that are arrayed against you. Using tools such as drones, noisemakers, and grappling hooks, you will outwit and outmaneuver the adults while attempting to obtain and record evidence that will prove what is happening to the rest of the world.
With procedural elements that change goals, enemies, loot and more, no two nights in the neighborhood will be the same.
Pace yourself in the Blackout Club and it can be a fantastic game for a long time. From its various enemies and threats to its sinister suburban setting, the game feels great to play with friends, just as long as you don't spend too much time with it at once.
The Blackout Club isn’t really a horror game. Essentially, it’s a non-lethal stealth game with horror elements. Co-operative and antagonistic multiplayer elements keep it from getting stale too quickly, although the true measure of its longevity lies in content updates post-launch. Eventually, the game will need more locations, enemy types and objectives. Greater focus on co-op would be a huge bonus, too.
The Blackout Club is an often brilliant evolution of the co-op multiplayer experience that is weakened by the repetitive nature of its core gameplay along with a discouraging grind.
Moments of stealth-flavored enjoyment in The Blackout Club are often overshadowed by the game's unpolished state, with bugs and repetition robbing the game's mysteries with growing frustration.
An absorbing thriller with a splash of They Live and The Goonies, this spooky multiplayer game has you investigating paranormal goings-on in suburbia.
The prologue is an amazing experience and the game itself, while drastically different, still kept my friends and I coming back. But it's not a good game. There are too many bugs and mishandled mechanics holding it back, in addition to a huge bait-and-switch on story and lore. I do think there is a lot of potential here, as The Blackout Club fills an empty void in the market, but dang it's just so disappointing in its current state.
The multiplayer focus makes it difficult to form an emotional attachment, detracting from what could have been a uniquely unnerving experience. In the current state this game is worth trying if you’ve got a few friends on board, but I’d love to see a more thorough exploration of the mechanics in a well-crafted, single-player story.
August 27, 2018
The Blackout Club reveals first gameplay footage in new video. Read more
