‘The Fridge Is Red’ Review: Indie Horror Gaming At Its Best And Worst

Games ‘The Fridge Is Red’ Review: Indie Horror Gaming At Its Best And Worst Matt Gardner Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. A British writer covering indie and retro gaming, esports, and more. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Oct 15, 2022, 07:38am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Indie horror ‘The Fridge is Red’ hits highs and lows during its brief tale. 5WORD There’s something so pure and genuinely scary about the original PlayStation’s line-up of horror games. Between obvious survival horrors like Resident Evil , Silent Hill , Parasite Eve , and Dino Crisis ( still waiting, Capcom ), plus overlooked classics like Clock Tower and Nightmare Creatures , the PS1 was a breeding ground for deep-seated fears among young gamers that continue to this day.

5WORD’s The Fridge is Red , a short, sharp psychological indie, aims to bring these past frights into the modern day. While The Fridge is Red is openly inspired by 32-bit audiovisual styles, it’s still much more akin to PS2-era first-person games, albeit with a restrictive color palette, artificial VHS grain, and a script largely processed with text-to-speech software to provide disjointed dialogue. While this might not sound like your cup of tea, it works remarkably well–to begin with, at least.

Unnerving and intimidating in equal measure, The Fridge is Red plays out across around two hours through six oddly-named chapters, which drill into deep fears including desperation, fear, loss, loneliness, grief, and helplessness: For Daddy to Work: You need to leave your office, but a troublesome lift soon transforms into a hellish debacle steeped in traditional gore horror; Seaside: Trapped in an Alchemilla Hospital -like maze of wards, you’re tasked with finding a loved one, but forced to deal with bureaucracy galore; Charleen Mufi: At a church with ominous inhabitants, dark humor and ghoulish storytelling see you try to save those around you; Goldi Vern: Behind the wheel, your trip to your chosen destination isn’t as easy as it seems; Chili Handled: Alone in your house with someone close to you, you come to terms with everything that came before in a particularly depressing way; and Fidgeted Sherri: Bookending the experience, the last pieces of the puzzle come together for a big reveal. Recommended For You 1 They Inherited Billions Upon Billions: Meet America’s Richest Heirs More stories like this Fewer stories like this 2 More iOS 16 Problems Reported For iPhone Owners More stories like this Fewer stories like this 3 Apple Leak Reveals New iPhone Release Shock More stories like this Fewer stories like this Each one of these sections plays out in a highly symbolic way before briefly being broken down in real-life terms at the end of each section. These quick snippets progress the story, preparing you to interpret the next chapter through its heavily emblematic lens.

It’s just a shame The Fridge is Red can’t maintain the pace of its strong start. There are more than a few vibes of games like ‘Silent Hill’. 5WORD From its first main chapter, For Daddy to Work –the real high point of the experience–you learn the game’s core puzzle mechanics, which are straightforward for the most part, though their ease is cleverly masked with an often brutal, heavy atmosphere.

While there are mercifully few jumpscares, you may still find yourself drenched in sweat at the sight of low-light corridors and guttural sounds. Strange and intimidating characters–and straight-up monsters–punctuate your journey to, say, collect severed hands, find the reason why a priest and his congregation have lost their minds, or find an alternator for your car. Everything is so consistently weird, but the intrigue of the story keeps you going.

However, with each revelation at the end of its first three chapters, the tale begins to slow down, losing momentum and intrigue in favor of over-the-top symbolism that increasingly disconnects from the tale it’s trying to tell. ‘The Fridge is Red’ is more than a little heavy with its symbolism. 5WORD Goldi Vern , in particular, is a truly dull and overlong section which, save for a couple of moments of intermittent fear, amounts to a series of behind-the-wheel fetch quests that don’t seem to tally with the development of the story.

By the time you get to the penultimate chapter Chili Handled , there’s a fair chance you’ll predict exactly how things play out–and wonder how certain elements of the game represented the overall tragedy that The Fridge is Red portrays. The Fridge is Red is a genuinely brilliant premise and, when the game hits its highs, it’s horror gaming at its finest: atmospheric, confusing, intimidating, and capable of getting deep under your skin. At its lows–which, sadly, get more frequent as this short tale unfolds–it feels tired and underdeveloped.

For $15, you may feel short-changed by The Fridge is Red ’s quick and inconsistent experience, but horror movie fans will get an interactive arthouse escapade worth checking out. While certain big moments will stay with you for days after you’ve blazed through it, you will likely come away knowing it could’ve offered so much more. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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