Dread X Collection 2

About Dread X Collection 2

Dread X Collection 2 was published by DreadXP in August 2020, following the first Dread X Collection and coming before the Halloween-themed Dread X Collection 3. Twelve indie developers were given ten days each to make a new horror game, this time on the prompt LOVECRAFTING, which the makers leave open: Lovecraft monsters, a crafting game, or crafting love in a romantic visual novel.

The games are framed by an interactive launcher from Lovely Hellplace, which you can play or skip. You find yourself locked in a small room lit by a single TV, with tapes locked in steel cases, a strange statue in the shadows and a voice telling you where to find a key. Each tape you unlock and play starts one of the games, and finding them all leads to a story of its own.

The entries differ in look and play. Squirrel Stapler by David Szymanski has you hunt squirrels and staple them to a corpse; Sucker for Love by Akabaka is about winning the heart of an eldritch horror; The Diving Bell is about surviving madness, failing machinery and the crushing deep; Solipsis by Daniel Mullins Games sends two astronauts beneath the surface of the Moon; Touched by an Outer God is about killing the Growth and eating their flesh. The rest are Another Late Night, Arcadletra, Charlotte's Exile, The Thing in the Lake, The Toy Shop, To the End of Days and Undiscovered.

Reviewers single out the hub. Rely on Horror, which scored the collection 7.5 of 10, wrote that exploring the PS1-style mansion to unlock the tapes was one of the best parts, with 12 puzzles in the house and its grounds, and almost counted it as a 13th game. After your first tape the voice sends you out of the VCR room to search the house for keys. A free play option opens every game without the puzzles, but then you cannot explore the house beyond the VCR room.

Because each game was made in ten days, expect short, rough-edged experiments rather than polished ones: some last a quarter of an hour, others much longer. HowLongToBeat puts the main run at about eight and a half hours. It suits players who like short, inventive indie horror and cosmic dread, and want to sample many makers in one place.

How to play Dread X Collection 2

1. Buy it on Steam, GOG or itch.io; it runs on Windows.
2. Start in the locked room and follow the voice: take the key from the top of the VCR.
3. Unlock a steel case, put the tape in the VCR and play the game it starts.
4. After your first tape, leave the VCR room and explore the mansion, solving its puzzles to find keys for the other tapes.
5. Or choose free play to open all twelve games without the puzzles, at the cost of the mansion.

Tips

• Try every game even if the first is not to your taste; each has a different style and length.
• Play the mansion rather than free play if you want the whole collection: free play keeps you in the VCR room.
• You can unlock all the tapes at once by solving the puzzles first, or come back to the house between games.
• Read the content warning first: it mentions suicide themes and violence against squirrels.

Questions