Goosebumps HorrorLand - Review

Goosebumps HorrorLand
Ages: Everyone 10+

Well, the game business has finally discovered R.L Stine's Goosebumps. The game starts out ominously enough with a green horned monster delivering a free ticket to HorrorLand Theme Park. When the ticket is torn up and discarded into a trash can, it reassembles and floats out - the game has captured the players attention.

The theme park is populated by these green horned monsters and the whole color palate is a night time blue-green and it establishes a scary ambience. The carnival has five sections, each with six activities:

To advance to the next area, players have to earn an increasing number of "fright" points by playing and replaying games.

The games are pretty much the standard carnival fare but with macabre names - roller coaster rides, target shooting, mini golf, bumper cars, racing horses, throwing balls at various targets are given names like:
Dead Ringer, Bumper Carnage, Coffin Cruse, Putt Cemetery, Wheel of Misfortune. Although the rides ands activities get more macabre as the player advances, the number of fright points needed takes some of the fun out of the game, because replaying the games gets tedious. It becomes obvious that it's done just to extend the game. The game must be played through all the levels to be able to find all five pieces of your ticket to finally get out..

The controls are idiosyncratic; in some games they work well, in others you have to learn how to use them, but some others are truly frustrating. The monsters come out with some funny one-liners. The scares aren't so terrifying, which is probably good for the kids - but the terror for me would be to be trapped in the theme park.

Check the manual for which games have multiplayer capability for 2 controllers.


Fun Factor: Many many arcade type games
Female Factor: Your choice of main character
Player Friendly: Manual gives descriptions on all the games

Reviewed by: Editor - 11/08

  • Goosebumps HorrorLand
  • © Scholastic.Elastic
  • Platform(s): Wii GBDS PS2
  • To Order: WII http://www.amazon.com/ $36.99