Creepy Shift: Uncle Joe’s Motel, the third game in the series, offers a perfectly fine bite-sized horror experience with surprisingly good cleaning and tidying mechanics.
It’s spooky season, so it’s time to play the next game in the Creepy Shift series of horror games. Creepy Shift: Roadside Diner was fine enough, although it really tried to overwhelm you with tasks to complete in the late game. Creepy Shift: House for Sale was a really rather enjoyable house renovation game with a camp horror leaning. This third entry in the series keeps the strong renovation mechanics of the second game, but leans more into the traditional horror of the first game. Honestly, I liked the campness of House for Sale, but I’m more than happy to dip back into the addictive cleaning mechanics. There’s a new system revolving around the use of your mobile phone just to freshen things up, but if you were a fan of the previous entries, this is more of what you like.
You play as Sue, an actress who is struggling to find work. To earn some extra cash, she visits her Uncle Joe’s motel, offering to do some cleaning work since the previous cleaner left due to some spooky shenanigans. Obviously Sue pays no heed to this omen, nor the warnings of her Uncle Joe, and sets about completing her duties. As is the case with the other games in this series, the plot is based on a creepypasta of the same name, and it even includes a link to go and read it at the end if you’re so inclined.
Much like in the previous games, there are rules that have to be followed to prevent Sue from being attacked . These range from the simple, such as keeping the lights on and the TVs off, to the more elaborate like having to take photos of black cats. They feel less egregious than those that have come before, which I appreciate. Yes, the TVs teleport around, but they’re never too far away and tend to be easy to find.
The actual tasks are as satisfying as before as well. Scraping off gum, changing bed sheets, and replacing light bulbs will earn you additional money to get a better ranking at the end if that sort of thing interests you, but even then they feel quite good to do. It’s not Powerwash Simulator 2, but it still scratches that “post dad game” itch.
As you clean rooms, you’ll also solve puzzles related to what exactly is going on at this motel and what Sue has to do with it. Solving puzzles nets you the key to the next of six rooms that need to be seen to. These feel quite good to solve, although none of them are especially brain melting. I liked having to find the missing letters for a painting of the Hollywood sign as each one required solving a mini puzzle of its own. Each room has its own theme, and it becomes increasingly apparent that Sue recognises elements of them.
She’ll occasionally phone Uncle Joe to ask him what he knows about it for a little exposition. The phone comes into play here and there too, with its camera being a key element to some puzzles and secrets scattered around the area. It’s nothing revolutionary, but finding a secret is satisfying, even if it doesn’t add a huge amount to the gameplay.
Much like House for Sale, I played Uncle Joe’s Motel on PC using Xbox Play Anywhere. There’s been a significant improvement in terms of performance this time though, with everything running much more smoothly and very little in the way of stuttering or visual glitches. Whilst there are a couple of impressive moments, the visuals aren’t exactly incredible, so it’s good that the devs seem to have got this side of things sorted out. The voice performances are solid though, and there are plenty of good uses of sound and music throughout.
Being a horror game, you’d hope there are a few scares, and you’ll probably get a couple of good jumps out of this one. Being completely honest, the first one caught me completely unaware and I leapt out of my seat at it. There are a few more scattered throughout too, but those were less effective after that great early gotcha moment.
Creepy Shift: Uncle Joe’s Motel is another entry in a series of comfortable horror games. It’s not going to change the genre, but it also has no intention to do so. If you rate a game on how good it is at doing what it set out to do, then this is a pretty good game. Fans of the series will continue to get a kick out of them, whilst those who aren’t won’t have their mind changed. But if you’re looking for a quick bit of light horror for Halloween season, then this is a cheap and cheerful option for you.
Creepy Shift: Uncle Joe’s Motel is available now on Xbox, PC, and Playstation.
