The Collection Chamber: GAST: THE GREATEST LITTLE GHOST

Enter the dark amusement park and bring it back to life!

An exciting adventure!

The children have stopped laughing in the amusement park. Beleseblob, the evil clown, has stopped the magical clock and along with his henchmen has brought terror to the park. In this adventure, you are Gast, the little ghost, care taker of the amusement park. You must defeat the clown by solving puzzles and collect stars so that you can drive the nightmare away!

Will you escape the scary creatures?
Visit more than 75 spooky 3D locations but watch out for the traps!
Collect the stars and challenge the evil clown!

Key Features:
MIND-BOGGLING PUZZLES, all with multiple solutions to solve the game.
A NON-LINEAR adventure game where you never get stuck.
Mett and interact with MORE THAN 10 supernatural creatures!
Each ACTION INFLUENCES the rest of the GAME.
A fantastically eerie game with CREEPY SOUNDS and SPOOKY ATMOSPHERE.

~ from the back of the box

If you ask me, more games should adopt the spooky, off-kilter aesthetic dubbed "Burtonesque". You know the look; big eyes, scraggly hair, horrific yet family friendly - like a Tim Burton movie. Outside of those based on his actual movies, I can only think of a few games. Off the top of my head the only ones I can think of are the American McGee Alice games, Lost in Random and more recently I've been playing through the excellent point-and-clicker Prim. Then, I remembered a little adventure game from my past - 2002 to be exact. One that stars a big-eyed ghost in grim reaper garb on a mission to defeat an evil clown who has taken over an ghostly theme park. A game developed by the small Swedish development house Idol FX AB. A game called Gast: The Greatest Little Ghost.

I'd be lying if it wasn't the cute/macabre art design that let me to buy the DVD-sized keep case when I randomly saw it alone on the store shelf. The ashen-faced polygons of Gast himself sits well with the pre-rendered backgrounds whose Dutch-angled shot compositions accentuate the expressionist cinematic art style. Needless to say it looks fantastic. Gameplay-wise, however, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

Gast will clue you in to his way of thinking with though bubbles (left).
Though in-game clues will also help, such as these handy signposts (right).

Our grim reaper is controlled entirely with the mouse, but not in the traditional point-and-click sense. You have to click and hold the left mouse button and our floating phantom will glide towards the cursor. I'd would perhaps prefer a more traditional control scheme, but what's here isn't exactly broken. A single tap of that same button will have him interact with an object, though it's not exactly easy to decipher what you can and can't do by visuals alone. The deliberate darkness of the graphics do hide a lot of the objects you can pick up, but thankfully our spectre will alert you to anything interesting by tilting his head towards it and expelling a visual clue from his noggin by way of a thought bubble.

By clicking the right mouth button, you can see you inventory which limits you to a total of six items carried at any time. If you're full and really want that stick you just found, you can drop any of the junk you're carrying where you stand and it will remain there until you retrieve it later. Thankfully, the area isn't very large and you can easily return within minutes.

Every encounter will illicit an FMV jump scare, increasing Gast's fear gauge (left).
The gauge may stay up, but you'll soon befriend them like this fairy lady (right).

The aim is to gather enough soul stars earned by helping the monsters that have infested the park, or killing them. When you successfully interact with any of them, they might follow you at which point you can guide them to their doom of their desires. In a rather ingenious move both paths offer up multiple solutions and depending on which way you go, other paths get locked out. You literally cannot see everything in one go round making it highly re-playable. And that's probably a good thing too 'cos the game is hella short.

Let's rush through one of my playthroughs to give you an idea. Upon entering the park, Gast is met with an annoying fly who will follow you on the understanding that you'll help him find a new home. I then guided him to a caravan on a cliff to get my first star. A few good deeds later, I came across an equally annoying fairy who, when taken to the next screen, gets eaten by a hungry flesh-eating plant. Another star! After some encounters with a spider, a scarecrow and the crow it wishes to scare, I found myself at the entrance of a rollercoaster. It costs 3 stars to enter and when you do you are met with a mini-game where you have to dodge lights on the track. Your remaining stars act as lives, so you can take as many hits as you have stars but make sure you have plenty left; after this they'll be projectiles used to defeat Beleseblub the evil clown and complete the game.

Lead a follower to their doom or desires to earn silver soul stars (left).
They act as lives on the rollercoaster (right) or as projectiles when defeating evil Clown Beleseblob.

This all takes roughly thirty minutes to an hour depending on how many stars you aim to collect. Theoretically, you can enter the coaster at only 3, but you will then have none left to win and get the good ending. Fail, and it's game over - but these mini-games aren't the only way to fail. Gast has not a life meter, but a scare meter and if he jumps out of his non-existent skin too many times it's game over. You can replenish this gauge with consumable items, which are plentiful, but the more fearful you are when you enter the rollercoaster, the more difficult the mini-game sections will be.

Even so, Gast: The Greatest Little Ghost isn't exactly a difficult game. There is a reason why that ELSPA rating reads 3+ (this was before PEGI became standard) though I suspect many under the age of 8 might get a small amount of kindertrauma out of it. Even so, it's a quick, easy and highly atmospheric game that I do recommend.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses dgVoodoo to run on modern systems. The presence of a real or virtual CD drive may be required to play. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 232 Mb. Install Size: 315 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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