Fear draws near, as AMC Games and Fictiorama revealed today that their upcoming pulp horror strategy game, The Fabulous Fear Machine, will launch October 4, 2023 on Steam, GOG.com, and the Epic Games Store. A chilling new gameplay trailer foretells the unsettling stories and tactical gameplay players can expect from the title. The game’s updated demo is also available now during Steam’s official Strategy Fest for those who want to get a head start on the spooky season.
The Fabulous Fear Machine is a single-player, narrative-focused game that welcomes the player as a newly minted “Master of the Machine,” an abettor to a dark power that can grant their deepest desires… for a price. Through the clever deployment of Legends—scary stories, grim folktales, and urban myths depicted as playing cards—players must spread fear across the globe with the help of creepy servants called Agents.
The new trailer is narrated by the first campaign’s protagonist, Jen Hammond, a scientist and industrialist turned evil mastermind. Jen guides players through the game’s basic mechanics, explaining how she expands her influence from the landfall of a “fear seed” to the far corners of the map. As Jen’s domain grows, so does the pressure to perform against Rival powers and randomly-occurring social events that may force a change of plans. It ends with glimpses of the other Masters in the game, who operate in newly-revealed regions of the Americas featuring advanced mechanics to contend with, like psychic locks and “Utopias” (basically, anti-Legends).
Horror fans may recall seeing The Fabulous Fear Machine at the IGN Awesome Indies showcase and Future Games Show during Gamescom 2022; since then, the demo has added localization in 4 languages, a streamlined tutorial, and more classic comic-style art. The Strategy Fest demo for The Fabulous Fear Machine is available now on Steam.
