The Haunted Carnival is a spooky new escape room-style puzzler, out now on Android

• The Haunted Carnival is an escape room-style puzzler out now on Android
• Explore (and hopefully escape from) the titular eerie carnival
• Five distinct rooms with five puzzles each block your path, however.

You know, for how much fun they are it seems like all you need to do is turn down the lights and throw in a murderous clown or two before the carnival becomes anything but a fun day out. Don’t believe me? Well, maybe getting locked in with The Haunted Carnival will change your mind.

This escape room-style puzzler sees you plopped into the titular carnival with only one objective: escape. Naturally, you’ll have plenty of obstacles in your way, and as with last week’s topic Legacy Reawakening despite having all the conventions of a point-and-click adventure you’ll be able to explore a fully rendered carnival at your leisure.

The carnival itself is not a single continuous world of course. The Haunted Carnival is split into five rooms, with five distinct puzzles each. As you might expect The Haunted Carnival promises not just intrigue but also a healthy dose of spookiness to boot, and if you’re afraid of clowns you may want to give this one a miss.

Admit one

I will say I was somewhat sceptical spotting the use of some AI art in the icon for The Haunted Carnival. But I was pleasantly surprised (and somewhat confused) to see the actual gameplay involving some nice, crunchy low-poly environments that actually look quite nice.

As for the gameplay itself, I’m not able to give my two cents, but if the puzzles in The Haunted Carnival are anything like the environment design then I’m confident that this is worth a shot.

In the meantime, if you’re a little sceptical about the idea that mobile can deliver on the scares why not take a chance on some of the absolute spookiest of releases that we’ve listed on our ranking of the top 25 best horror games for iOS and Android?