Clocking In to a Haunted Assembly Line
There is something about the very idea of a cabin that evokes two completely different feelings.
On the one hand, you have the idyllic location that exists in our collective minds, perhaps a structure situated somewhere by a peaceful lake, deep in the woods. It has a warm, roaring fire, is impeccably clean, and represents the perfect, cosy autumn retreat from the world.
On the other, slightly darker hand, a cabin is a place of terror; a place where you are going to be hunted by a relentless man or monster, armed with an axe or claws, forcing you to defend the place with your life.
The Cabin Factory is a game that brilliantly plays with the idea of these two different states of mind. One state is safe, and the other is indeed dangerous… but not from monsters, from ghosts.
Inspecting the Supernatural
You start the game in a lift, looking at your own weary reflection in the mirror. You are an employee at a cabin-making factory, a place where fully-formed cabins come directly off a massive production line. Your specific job title is “Cabin Inspector.” The cabins that are being produced, you quickly learn, are horror-themed, presumably for attractions like fairgrounds or perhaps as elaborate film sets. Your job is to go into each cabin as it rolls off the line and work out whether it is really haunted or not. You have two buttons on a control panel to make your final judgement: one for “Safe,” which is green, and one for “Dangerous,” which is marked in red.
Elusive Fragments
There is a story here to be told, one that seeks to explain what is happening to these cabins. But it’s not a straightforward, linear narrative, and it’s delivered in elusive fragments as you inspect more and more of the structures. Some of this information is told purely through the environment of the cabin itself, where a detail might seem chillingly out of place. At one point, a radio in the factory chimes up, broadcasting a news report about a terrible event. Later, a phone rings unexpectedly… and maybe this is a clue?
By the end of the game, did I have a concrete idea of the story? I had bits and pieces, certainly. I had formed my own ideas about what it all meant, which is a narrative device I really liked, as it forces the player to engage their imagination. Some, however, might find this fragmented narrative approach a bit frustrating and would likely prefer a much more clearly defined, linear affair.
The Cabin Factory is played entirely in the first person. At the start of your shift, you are told you have to correctly identify eight cabins in a row to finish the day. Each cabin appears on the production line, and as you walk through its front porch, the atmosphere instantly changes from the industrial hum of the factory to something much more real. The layout of the cabins is generally consistent; a small reception area where there is a toy in the corner, a portrait of a stern-looking woman, a radio, and a rocking chair. Then there is a dining room area where a table is set for dinner, and a father figure sits frozen in time. Up a small flight of stairs, there is a boy with a blanket over his head, sitting in front of a TV.
Deducing a Haunting
So, when you go in, you are looking for anomalies. The game doesn’t tell you what these might be, and since it’s a haunted-themed place to begin with, it’s initially very hard to tell what has been intentionally designed by the production line and what is evidence of an actual haunting. The rule of thumb, you soon learn, is to work out what is fake, what is real, and, most importantly, what might want to kill you.
You begin to work out the rules after a while. You’ll notice that while something might be strange with the cabin – like, for example, the portrait of the stern lady now has a terrifying, Joker-like grin on it – this doesn’t necessarily mean the cabin isn’t “safe” to pass. It’s just a creepy, but static, anomaly. However, if you see something in the cabin that is actively moving, whether it’s a full-blown apparition you glimpse out of the corner of your eye or objects moving on their own, then it’s time to run and press that red button.
The core gameplay loop of inspecting, judging, and resetting is incredibly addictive and genuinely engaging. After you finish the main day (by successfully judging eight cabins), you can choose to keep playing with infinite cabins, just to see if you can spot all the anomalies the game has to offer.
Atmosphere and Artistry
Visually, The Cabin Factory is excellent. On its own, the factory design, with the cabins flying down the conveyor belt from the darkness of the production line, looks great and is a very strong, memorable image. Seeing your own reflection as you go into work is a small touch, but it shows the artistry in the character design and helps to ground you in this bizarre world. When the anomalies actually appear and the hauntings happen, it is quite scary, and I am not afraid to say that on a few occasions, I genuinely jumped.
The amazing sound design helps on all fronts as well, with the smallest, most insignificant creak becoming an instant trigger to make you want to flee and hit that red button. The audio-visual presentation is very impressive.
A Brilliant and Bizarre Concept
I think I use the phrase ‘original concept’ a bit too many times in my reviews, but The Cabin Factory is an original concept.
A horror-themed cabin production line where your job is to check if each unit is haunted is an amazing, weird, and brilliant idea, and the developers deliver on it perfectly. I loved the gameplay loop, the tension of trying to guess whether a cabin was safe or dangerous, and it was only after a long run that I started to see the same hauntings repeat a few times.
If you like your spot-the-difference games to be weird, and have a peculiar love for creepy cabins, then you should try a shift at The Cabin Factory.
Important Links
Welcome to the Creepy Cabin Factory – https://www.thexboxhub.com/welcome-to-the-creepy-cabin-factory/
Buy The Cabin Factory on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/the-cabin-factory/9NL6BB89092T
