Here’s a game that’s successfully innovative without losing you at the gate. Taking notes from the classic Bullfrog simulations of yesteryear, Ghost Master puts you in a diabolical gang of ghouls and ghosts commissioned to scare the collective pants off a small-town community. Along the way, lighthearted humor and creative story elements are unveiled at every turn, pushing this simulation to the head of its genre.

Each scenario is finely crafted to not only provide a challenge, but also to sneak in references to essential horror movies and legends. In one level, daring college students wander into the forest in search of a rumored “book of the dead.” Using my band of “Evil Dead,” I frightened the group into an empty cabin, where I unleashed wild imps and giant spiders to scare them into the cellar (where they’d find the tome). Each of your demons has specific talents, all deriving their powers from a pool of shared energy. The more victims you spook, the more “plasm” is allotted to be distributed among your team.

The strategic use of demons to progress the story is so finely tuned that each objective can be completed with only a little logical thinking, but is still open-ended enough to make levels worth playing over again to try different haunting combinations. For example, my weather witch is best used in the outdoors, and to call down scary lightning storms. She’s the obvious choice in one scene that requires leaves to be blown off a hidden cellar door. In later levels, you have to put more thought into ghoul placement to activate story scripts or win bonus awards.

In one occupied mansion, the previous owner lured visitors inside and murdered them, so your job is to both scare away the current residents and free the trapped souls of the condemned corpses. To rescue a dead plumber hidden behind a brick wall in the basement, I had one ghost invoke a low-powered “leaking pipe” spell to lure a child to investigate the sounds and discover the body. Freed souls become part of your arsenal, and bring along unique powers of their own to exploit. I really liked this method of recruiting forces, which was a nice break from pure haunting.

But the missions aren’t just fun to play — they’re great to look at and listen to as well. Colorful and flashy effects show off your ghosts’ various powers, which range from disturbing noises to breathing life into every inanimate object in a room. The goofy background music invokes a Scooby-Doo–ish atmosphere — amid the high-pitched screams and cries, of course. The locales range from sorority houses filled with scantily clad girls to rusty police stations in which to lay down your mischief, all designed with distinct looks and haunting potential.

There’s no multiplayer mode, although I really don’t see how the game could’ve facilitated cooperative play effectively. Moreover, some of the missions can become tiresome if the only goal is to empty a building of annoying frat boys and cheerleaders, and I would’ve loved to have seen some Ghostbuster-type opposition to combat my characters. But as it stands, this production will delight fans of all genres. It’s finally good to be evil again.
— Norman Chan