The Fridge Is Red Review – Indie Game
Is the Fridge is Red scary?
Let’s get started on this The Fridge Is Red review.
Table of Contents
What is The Fridge Is Red?
The Fridge Is Red is a survival horror adventure broken up into 6 different episodes. You play as Frank a repair man who fixes household appliances. You will guide Frank through 6 different spooky situations including liminal space hospitals and archive rooms, corrupted churches and cemeteries, evil elevators, snow-falling remote highways, and more.
Can you escape the evil fridge?
The Fridge Is Red is made by 5WORD Team. They are a small team of indie developers located in Montenegro. They released a previous game called Death Crown.
The Fridge is Red was originally made as a submission to Itchi.io 2020 Epic Mega Jam.
Which Platforms is The Fridge Is Red On?
The Fridge Is Red is available on Steam.
The Fridge Is Red Video Style
We really must start here. The Fridge Is Red has a pretty unique graphics style. The developers have stated that they wanted to recreate an early Playstation or analog horror game feel. What you get is a rather blocky graphics viewing with some VHS-type static overtop. I attempted to play this on a 1920 X 1080 Monitor at full screen and found things to be quite blurry and frequently very dark. I tried to play around with the settings a bit and noticed that if you played in a tiny window, things appear much well.. clearer. These are ultimately the settings I went with. Your mileage may vary.
Although I appreciate the analog horror graphic feel and it certainly created that retro and spooky feel – I would have preferred the developers give a little more tweaking settings here as these settings will be off-putting to many.
The Fridge Is Red Gameplay Review
Many people who are familiar with SCP or Control the video game will know about the “evil fridge”. This fridge must be stared at constantly by a person or bad things will happen. The developers took this concept and made an entire story branching out from this initial concept.
The Fridge Is Red is made up of 6 different episodes. As you play through the experience there will be certain items that you can collect that will allow you to open up the next episode. These are generally pretty easy to find. You will then start a game, open the fridge and select the episode you want to play. The themes of these episodes vary a fair amount from haunted elevators to corrupt priests to creepy hide and seek.
As you play through the episodes you will use a mix of basic key controls and mouse clicks. When you hover over an item you can interact with, it will have a white outline. Using your mouse button will allow you to pick it up. You can rotate the item (which I never found was needed) and then put it in your Inventory with another click. Unfortunately, there is no actual… inventory. If you have picked something up and it can interact with a white highlighted object it will do so automatically.
The Fridge Is Red is quite unlike any other game I’ve played. Each chapter is warped and twisted. One direction switches to another and you will frequently be puzzled and confused about what to do next. It gives you a real feel of ‘going crazy’. Eventually, if you stick with it you will crack whatever riddle or puzzle the game devs want you to learn to advance. I had some issues with the driving level(Goldi Vern) and I imagine most will. It by far took me the longest to get through. It felt like one of the weaker levels, with not much direction on the next steps, and with a wrong choice meaning driving for many minutes with nothing going on till you can choose again. Pretty Frustrating.
It should also be mentioned that there is no save point for each chapter. If you stop or exit in the middle of the chapter you will be required to start from the beginning of the level again.
One of the real highlights of this game is the use of sound effects, voice, and music. Each character that talks will use an automated computer-like robotic voice. Usually, these are altered a little bit for an even more twisted-sounding female and younger characters. They can even be somewhat frightening. There is a part where a baby is crying that sounds downright disturbing.
What also gets to you, is the random creepy noises you will hear behind doors or in one specific direction (like right behind your ear). Because the graphics are pretty blurry, these sound effects are really where a lot of the spooky element comes from. I also felt like I was listening to (heck and even watching) a David Lynch movie with its surreal soundtracks. Extremely well done on the sound.
The vocal text and the captions on the screen frequently also do not match up. There are sometimes completely different words put it. It doesn’t affect anything but it was definitely noticeable.
Is the Fridge Is Red Scary?
Although The Fridge Is Red is definitely filled with spooky themes and frequently gore-filled elements, the majority of the game feels more like a decent into madness than a jump scare filled horror game. There are many things that are squeamish or off-putting, but walking through endless backrooms hospital halls is more unnerving than outright scary. Although none of them were over-the-top screams out loud for me, I had quite a few, “well that’s gross or that’s creepy” moments.
Horror is one of those things that is very different for each person. Certain themes are more likely to scare you than others. That is one of the reasons that episodic horror like this can create great little genres of spooky that are more likely to get your neck hair standing up. There are several different types of experiences that you will have to work through.
Because the puzzles/next steps frequently will require much exploration, any spooky elements from these areas will die off pretty quickly as you need to visit them over and over again. There are a few chase sequences that will likely get your heart pumping and some jump scares that may catch you off guard too.
Overall, The Fridge Is Red is not a walk in the park. There are dark themes and a dark story to work through here but I found it to be more “madness” than scary themes.
Who Will Enjoy Playing The Fridge Is Red?
There is no official rating on The Fridge Is Red. There are horror themes and intense blood and gore. I would expect it would be M for Mature. If you like indie games, horror, adventure games, retro horror, and retro games then you will like The Fridge Is Red.
What Games are similar to The Fridge Is Red?
The Fridge Is Red is really a unique type of game but it reminded me of Control, Happy’s Humble Burger Farm, or Call of Cthulu. It also was similar to the VR game The Exorcist.
How long is The Fridge Is Red?
The entire game took me about 8 hours to play. I also frequently just left the game running while I went off for a bit, instead of exiting out of the game and having to restart the whole level. Some of the puzzles are pretty frustrating and will likely take a bit of thinking. I imagine there are about 3-6 actual hours of gameplay.