Thick rain is pouring from the foreboding, black skies. The man in the suit pounds at the door. “Mara! Open up. It’s me. We’re going to be late.” He continues hammering away, his rage growing. “Did you change the locks on me?!” He’s demanding to see “the boy,” Fret. Inside, a woman sends him to go hide. The man retrieves a crowbar from his trunk, and as he smashes through a window we see Fret run up the stairs, and into his room. He grabs a guitar from his bed, and slips behind the bifold doors of his closet. Suddenly, everything is shaking, he looks at his hands, and it all disappears as the world fades to red, then black.

I’m barely two minutes into this demo, and already my heart is pounding. I love horror, but I’ll be the first to admit that scary games do, in fact, scare me, even on a bright and sunny day during Play Days at Summer Game Fest, where I went hands-on with Don’t Fret, the upcoming puzzle-infused survival horror game from Scary Kid Productions. I don’t need to know who these characters are to know that the “Jack from The Shining” energy from the man in the suit is bad news, and the intentional vagueness of who he is, and what is happening, has my brain filling in the spaces in frightening ways. It’s horror at its first-impression finest, and a sign of what was in store for me. Ok, deep breath, stay calm and, most of all, don’t fret.

Songs and Screams

As the game begins, we see through the eyes of Fret, the young boy from the intro. Light returns as he opens his eyes, and pushes up the velvet interior of a guitar case lid with a puffy white hand that looks taken straight from a classic Mickey Mouse cartoon. That’s odd. He looks down as he begins to stand up, his body now a wooden guitar – specifically, a six-string, though four of them are broken. OK, that’s even stranger. As I take in my surroundings, I see I’m in some sort of reception area, with a desk at the center, checkered tiles below, and music notes adorning the purple walls. Yep, this is going to be weird.

As the name suggests, music is at the thematic heart of Don’t Fret. That makes sense, given Scary Kid Productions’ origin, as it’s formed by the minds behind popular YouTube music channel Rockit Music, whose songs on everything from Skibidi Toilet to Five Nights at Freddy’s to Rainbow friends have been viewed millions of times. The soundtrack itself has contributions from a who’s-who of horror and internet culture-focused YouTube musicians and bands, like The Living Tombstones, The Stupendium, and JT Music. In addition to the classic survival-horror lore items, an entire 25-song album is scattered through the game, to be collected and played.

Exploring and solving puzzles form an important part of the experience in Don’t Fret.“

Your goal in Don’t Fret is to survive in this strange music school, piece together how you got there, and get out alive. The disheveled rooms, with scattered papers, stacked files, and broken windows, tell a story of a school that’s been abandoned – though a cigarette on the desk, still smouldering, tells me I’m not completely alone. I pick up a hat, journal, and radio off the ground. An unknown person over the radio knows my name, and warns me that I’m not safe, and that I need to find a way to the main hall. I find the door to the hall, but the keypad that controls it is offline. Heading the other way, I find an administrative office, with an old desktop computer inside. Booting it up enables the G-PAD, as the control is called, though rather than numbers or a code, it asks for cords. I enter requested notes, and the way to the main hall opens.

The voice on the radio returns, and tells me I need to retrieve a talent canister from one of the red doors scattered around the school. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I move forward, clearing a path to climb over a barrier blocking the hall by throwing a guitar into a broken light to create a path. Soon I come to a pedestal, though it looks more like a memorial. Surrounded by candles and flowers, it is covered in posters asking for information regarding the whereabouts of a missing girl, though the face on the picture is distorted and twisted. The pedestal is missing an item: a violin.

Exploring and solving puzzles form an important part of the experience in Don’t Fret. Cracking codes or finding key items are just some of the ways that Fret will need to think on his feet to survive. In one section you may be playing specific keys on a piano to open a secret lock, and in another you may be looking for boxes or other platforms to help reach high places or open new paths. This mission violin is in a locker at the end of the hall that’s partially covered in broken glass, past a weird ball of tape stuck to the wall, near a locked AV room. When I return to place the violin, a small drawer opens with the key to an AV room inside it.

This time, as I approach the amalgamation of tape, it begins to move. It pulses and undulates, and a figure emerges, falling to the floor with quiet thud. As it rose, so too did my pulse. My mind struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. It looked like a person, though… wrong. Bits of its flannel shirt poked out from under a criss-cross of cassette tape covering its body, head, and eyes. It seemed to have two sets of arms, though one pair is made up of a violin's neck and bow; one upper hand is normal, as is the lower on the opposite side, creating a disturbing asymmetry.

As it begins a chaotic, gyrating walk in my general direction, I realize it’s blind. With my destination on the other side I crouch and slowly stalk past, peeking around the edge of the creature. My heart is pounding, but I think I’m in the clear until… CRUNCH. I’d forgotten about the broken glass. The monster lunges toward me, and I mash the sprint button in my panic. There’s no hiding my heavy footfalls now, the pursuit is on. I speed back into the room with the violin, turning to place the pedestal between the monster and I. I slide back toward the rear of the room and wait. The creature races to the left, I sprint past the right. My stamina is dwindling, the footsteps are growing louder as I reach the AV room. It feels like the monster is right on top of me as I quickly unlock the door and slam it behind me. It’s only then, as my adrenaline releases, I notice I’m cold, I’d been sweating, and I hadn’t realized it.

Creature Discomforts

I’ve found a guitar tuner. Not only does it (presumably) help tune your instrument, but it has a meter to detect danger, and can be charged to release a sonic blast to temporarily stun enemies, though it operates on a very limited battery supply to do so. I find myself staring at the danger meter as I continue further into the school, though admittedly I take little comfort from it.

My next few encounters with whatever is living in this school aren’t much better than my time with the violin creature. There’s the Music Theory classroom, where I met a teacher with a black hole where their face should be, who stared at me as I played the assigned notes on the nearby piano. The silence is broken when I complete the song, and gaze in horror as the faceless figure bashes its head repeatedly into the desk, black blood spattering, before it collapses in a heap. Or there’s the figure that appears to be a young girl with a bag over her head that stalked me through a darkened, speaker-filled generator room, ambushing me from the shadows.

Its long, lanky, decayed-looking body is adorned in what looks like a filthy woman’s blouse, though any feminine charm was lost on me when it caught up and twisted my head off of my body. “

The worst, though, is that creature with a cassette tape for a head. I encountered this one when I finally came across one of the red doors as it burst through the walls like it was the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, and gave chase. As tall as the room, its head is a literal cassette tape, though as wide and tall as a door turned sideways. Its long, lanky, decayed-looking body is adorned in what looks like a filthy woman’s blouse, though any feminine charm was lost on me when it caught up and twisted my head off of my body.

If there’s a bridge between the unbridled horror of Resident Evil Requiem and the somewhat more accessible gateway horror of FNAF Security Breach, Don’t Fret might be it. It’s legitimately terrifying, but the fear I experienced was mostly couched in dread and anticipation. As a humanoid guitar, dying isn’t an exercise in gore and excessive violence, as there is no blood or entrails to be seen. That doesn’t mean I appreciated being ripped to pieces, but it looked cool enough that I couldn't be that mad either.

As my demo came to an end, I’ll admit to some relief. Not from the terror itself, which, according to my blood pressure, was expertly crafted, but from the chances of everyone around me hearing a scream from an octave I couldn’t recreate on purpose. This is the sort of game I look forward to playing at home (probably with all of the lights on). And it comes at just the right time; Don’t Fret brings music-infused terror to Steam on October 1st.