Camp Sunshine

About Camp Sunshine

Camp Sunshine is a top-down pixel-art horror game made by Fossil Games and published by Hound Picked Games. It came out on Steam for Windows and Mac in October 2016 and was later released on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Its makers call it a 16-bit blood-soaked horror RPG and a tribute to 1980s horror films.

You play Jez, a boy dropped off at summer camp. He wakes in the middle of the night to find blood everywhere and a rampaging killer dressed in a mascot costume, and the screenshots show that killer: a grinning brown bear in a red shirt standing at the end of a lamplit corridor. From there it is a game of cat and mouse across the whole camp, its cabins, kitchens, an arcade and the woods outside.

The camp is dark, and you see only what your torch lights, so you have to keep its batteries topped up. The killer can turn up anywhere, and two hits from him end the game, so you avoid him rather than fight. Along the way you find diary pages that tell the history of Isaac Illerman and the summer camp slasher, and you solve the puzzles the camp puts in your way to put a stop to the night.

The pixel art is bright where the light falls and black everywhere else, and the screens we saw show a body on a blood-soaked kitchen floor and the words There are more written in blood on a cabin wall. The makers warn of pixelated gore and violence and promise scares and nods to famous horror franchises.

Camp Sunshine suits players who like slasher films and top-down pixel horror and want something more about evading a killer than about combat.

How to play Camp Sunshine

1. Start a new game: Jez wakes at night in his cabin at the summer camp.
2. Explore with your torch, and pick up batteries so the light does not go out.
3. Watch and listen for the killer in the mascot costume; keep away from him, since two hits end the game.
4. Collect diary pages to learn the history of Isaac Illerman and the camp.
5. Solve the puzzles you meet to open the way and end the night of terror.

Tips

• Keep spare batteries; the torch is your only way to see the camp.
• Never let the killer reach you twice: back off as soon as he appears.
• Read every diary page you find, since the story of the camp is told through them.
• Explore each building fully before moving on, so you do not have to come back past the killer.

Questions