My favorite part of this stunning PS1-style indie inspired by Silent Hill and PT isn't that it takes after the all-time horror greats, it's that it only lasts as long as a movie

Roost, a new first-person horror game inspired by PT and Silent Hill, promises a short, impactful experience, refreshing in an industry dominated by lengthy titles, and features a Northern England setting and atmosphere reminiscent of classic horror games.

Roost is a newly announced first-person horror game inspired by PT and Silent Hill, and as much as I love that sort of thing, I'm positively giddy that I'll be able to play through it in a single sitting. 

Let me quickly run through my reaction to seeing Roost's announcement trailer.* Oh, hey, this game looks a lot like PT if it released on PS1, that's pretty cool. Lemme check out the Steam page. Oh, yup, "heavily inspired by PT, Paratopic, and Silent Hill", that checks out. I'll go ahead and add it to my wishlist and privately await its release. Oh wait, it's "brief" and only lasts as long as a "feature film"?! I have to tell everyone about this.*

We've been through this before. Games are too long. I have a job and other things going on like most people do, and I'm tired of having to constantly come face to face with my own mortality when I realize I simply will never have enough time in my whole existence to play everything I want to play. It's partly a product of my having a lot of interest in a lot of different video game genres, but there's no denying that the average video game length has grown exponentially over the last decade or so. 

I mean, the latest Assassin's Creed game, Mirage, was billed as a more compact, linear alternative to the series' open-world behemoths, and even that campaign takes about 20 hours. Go back to 2009 and that year's mainline entry, Assassin's Creed 2, could be beaten in less time. In that same year we got Uncharted 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum, two of the biggest games of the year, both with roughly 10-hour campaigns. Today, pretty much every new game I want to play demands three work weeks worth of my time to beat, and by the time I'm done I have games like Stalker 2 threatening me with yet another 100-hour commitment. It's exhausting.

Anyway, that's why when I find out about games like Roost I get all warm and fuzzy inside, like, I could play this game a whole bunch of times before I die! Of course, it isn't just its classic horror inspirations and short duration I'm excited about. I'm really quite enamored by the Northern England setting and overall atmosphere both visually and auditorily; it's so thick you could slice through it with Pyramid Head's Great Knife. I want this game's atmosphere to materialize into bathwater so that I may bathe in it eternally... or more realistically, for the two hours or so it'll take to beat the game.

The story seems fairly boilerplate, if not a tad derivative at first blush. The player character is a bloke named Declan Harker, a paranormal investigator on a bad luck streak who's drawn to a mysterious poltergeist in the fictional town of Mournborough. That said, I'm only going off the relatively barebones Steam page description, and I am curious to learn more about how it's "inspired by the stories, perceptions and tales of the area," so I'll reserve any judgment on that front for the game's release date, which has not been set just yet.

Kick off the spooky season with a pick from our list of the best horror games.