If you’re a little older, you might remember the early 90’s TV series “A Voice in the Night,” where a former police officer becomes an overnight talk show host on a San Francisco radio station after an accident. In a way, Killer Frequency kind of reminds me of this TV series.
Killer’s Frequency is a first-person horror adventure set in the 1980s on small radio station KFAM in the quiet town of Gallows Creek. You take on the role of DJ Forrest Nash, who was laid off from his big city radio job and is now a DJ and radio host on the nightly talk show ‘The Scream’ in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
But on this fateful night, a killer is on the loose in the small town and the evening turns into a night shift in Forest Nash. When the town’s sheriff dies under mysterious circumstances and no one in the area answers the phone, the killer’s victims radio the Whistling Man’s escape. Together with your producer, you must now find clues in their calls and explore the semi-blocked radio station to find out how you can help desperate callers.
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An example, taken from the beginning of the game, might be figuring out how to start a car without keys, because the victim has locked himself in a car and the killer is now on his way there. You can find clues by going to the office where the radio station car show hosts sit and review their paperwork thinking they need to know which wires need to be shorted in order for the car to start. Ask the listener to cut the wrong wires and the car will start honking loudly or playing loud music, revealing their hiding place.
All actions take place through phone calls and dialogues with callers. These range from the real victims, to a local pizza owner who sees an opportunity for some free advertising, to local teens pretending to be The Whistling Man. In between calls, you have to keep the radio program alive by chatting with the producer, playing music, and playing commercials.
It’s a completely different concept than I imagined. It is a game full of dialogue because by its very nature there is a lot of talking, so you have to be prepared for that. The tasks of helping victims are varied enough, but sometimes it can be a bit difficult to know how to help them. You have to find the right clues, otherwise things can get really tricky.
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The graphics are quite impressive for an indie game of this type and the soundtrack is really good. For a game where dialogue is so important, they’ve picked some really good voice actors who do an excellent job, and the recordings you can play on the radio give a great ’80s vibe to everything. The PC version can be played in VR with Oculus Quest 2, while PlayStation VR is not supported.
Overall, Killer Frequency is a fun little adventure game played mostly for short periods of time. There’s a lot of talking – sometimes too much, but then all of a sudden you get a call and you have to solve a task in very creative ways.
If you like adventure and puzzle games where you want to use small shades of gray a little bit, Killer Frequency is a fun and slightly different take on a game of this genre. But it is not a game for everyone.
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