Lakeview Cabin Collection

About Lakeview Cabin Collection

Lakeview Cabin Collection is a horror game by the solo developer Roope Tamminen, released on Steam, itch.io and Humble in March 2015. It follows his free 2013 flash game Lakeview Cabin and asks a simple question: what would you do if you found yourself in a slasher film? Each of its four episodes drops a group of friends into the setup of a different 70s or 80s horror film and leaves you to work out the rest.

You start in a cinema that works as a hub, and each film on its screens is an episode. In Episode III a new group of counsellors at Camp Lakeview are hunted by a baby-faced killer. In Episode IV a girl band whose tour bus has run out of gas fights through the traps, mutant rats and cannibal family of Lakeview Manor. Episode V asks a suburban street to survive Halloween night against an evil that cannot be killed, and Episode VI sets a handful of janitors on a space station against aliens that multiply. It borrows from films such as Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien and The Thing.

It is drawn in chunky pixel art and played from the side. You switch between the characters, pick up whatever you find and use it to set traps, make weapons or open a way out. The characters can also swim, drink and sleep with each other, and you can get them killed in many ways of your own. Tamminen has said he filled the cabin with ordinary items and gave each at least three uses: the obvious one, a self-harming one and a weapon. Nothing tells you what to do, so most players learn each episode by failing it, and failure means a bloody death on screen. The maker notes that it includes low-resolution nudity and sex scenes to recreate the feel of trashy horror films of the period.

Critics praised its humour, its sandbox and its hidden secrets, and faulted its lack of a tutorial and its fiddly controls. GameSpew called it obscure to a fault but full of fun interactions to discover. Finishing every episode unlocks an epilogue and a minigame for each film, and a separate Christmas minigame, Last Christmas, was added in 2017.

In July 2024 it came to PlayStation 4 and 5 and Xbox, published by Puppet Combo, and in October 2024 to Switch; the console versions add French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese text. Its sequel, Lakeview Cabin 2, carries the idea on with new episodes and adds local co-op. The Collection suits players who like slasher films and enjoy working out a plan by trial and error.

How to play Lakeview Cabin Collection

1. Pick an episode and look around the area before anything happens.
2. Switch between the members of your group and pick up the objects you find.
3. Work out which items make weapons or traps, or open a way out.
4. When the killer arrives, use what you prepared to survive or escape.
5. If everyone dies, start again with what you learned about the episode.

Tips

• Peek into a room before you walk a character in: entering blind is the easiest way to get cornered by a killer.
• Explore every room first; many useful items are tucked away in corners.
• Treat early deaths as lessons: each attempt shows a little more of how the episode works.
• Keep useful items apart: when several lie close together on the floor, it is easy to pick up the wrong one under pressure.
• Traps set before the killer turns up are often worth more than a weapon in your hand.

Questions