The Crimping
Gameplay
The Crimping is a first-person action-adventure game featuring campy humor, puzzle-solving, and a variety of combat and platforming challenges. You’ll meet an assortment of humorous and frightful characters set in a large, continuous world above and deep below the streets of Portland, Oregon. While a true-life ghost story is at the heart of the game, you’ll also find plenty of action and many Easter eggs to find, including a fully-functioning 1980s personal computer with Rogue and other classic games.
An indie charmer with carefully designed environments, hilarious AI voices, and a wide assortment of gameplay, The Crimping is a truly unique adventure!
The Story
- “Hidden beneath Portland, Oregon’s historical downtown buildings is a vast underground network of tunnels and cells that were used to capture and enslave tens of thousands of unsuspecting men and women. Many poor souls died in those so-called ‘Shanghai Tunnels,’ which are said to be one of the most haunted places in the world.”
In The Crimping, you experience a real-life haunted hotel that was once used to “crimp” or capture people. As you uncover the mysteries of the hotel’s otherworldly inhabitants, you may find yourself drawn into the dangerous horrors of the Shanghai Tunnels. Only your wits and reflexes can save you the world below.
Will you survive The Crimping or will your fate be to join the thousands haunting Portland’s darkest dungeons? Solve the mystery of Rose’s restless soul in this light-hearted action adventure game based on real-life ghosts and haunted locations!
Game Discussion
Steam User 11
Listen, this game was made by one person in one month and she never made a horror game before. So you need to cut her some slack! I played this on stream before it came out and my community and I definitely had a lot of fun over the campy humor in this. There where no game breaking glitches and I god spooked multiple times. As someone who plays MANY indie horror games, I appreciate not recognizing any of the props and at some parts the graphics had kind of a shell shading effect which I loved!
This is a game for when you feel like playing something horror but also super silly and fun.
Steam User 7
I including many others were able to beta test this game, and I have to say I loved working with Mama Makes Games. She is an absolute sweetheart, and she worked really hard on this horror game. It was interesting looking up online about the Shanghai Tunnels, and I recommend anyone that is interested about the past of the tunnels to definitely read about them. This horror story was fun to play, there was also some funny moments in it between the characters interacting with themselves. You learn about an interesting story here, and I believe it has the potential to go further beyond! I don't want to spoil too much but the bunny is precious, treat the bunny well.
Steam User 7
Alright so honest review time.
- Graphics, great. It's nice to see a different aesthetic, and it seems it's all original artwork. At least I haven't seen these characters or surroundings in any other indie games that I've played so far. It kind of gave me walking dead vibes for the characters with the black outline. The hotel looked great as well.
- Sounds and such, were all pretty good. Apart from the AI voice acting (and maybe the sounds the rabbit made), it was terrible. I know the reasoning behind it, I saw the tweet, but it would have been nice to have a toggle voices on or off. I think I would have had a much nicer experience just reading the lines out loud myself.
- Jumpscares were pretty decent. They got me good a few times at least.
- Story wise, I'm a little conflicted. I can see the direction where it was going, but the ending felt super hastened. The beginning and ending make sense and feel like one story (although not entirely either), but the in between was a bit "eh ok, makes perfect sense I guess". SPOILER DO NOT READ Especially the friend who just left with the pizza guy, I don't know why that was put in there. I think having done much more with the ghost story. More time/ puzzles in the hotel before the final room would open up already. More lore about the ghost haunting the hotel. The tunnels below the hotel I think it would have been awesome if it was more than just follow a ghost and eventually it pops up like that. I know it was directing us to an item, but the entire tunnel system felt a bit of a bummer . It was a bit too short in my opinion and could have done more expanded storywise.
- Puzzle wise I didn't really feel there were many puzzles in this game.
All in all I would still recommend it and just compare it to a super short story that doesn't have too much depth in it.
Feedback for the dev pure options wise:
- Mouse sensitivity
- Toggle voices on/ off
I will definitively keep an eye out on the dev and future projects. :)
Steam User 3
The Crimping was Made is Less then a month as a Challenge for one of my Videos.
The shear amount of work that was put into the game, in such a short space of time, is staggering.
Mama Makes Games Is a truly gifted developer!
The Crimping Is Campy story driven game, with bizarrely humorous characters, nice spooks and is short but sweet.
and with the NEW update the last section of the game features some truly challenging platforming, which i loved!
Steam User 2
Let me start off by saying, I had no idea that this was set in Portland going into it. Portland is my hometown so I kind of geeked out over that.
The fact that there's voice acting in a horror game is great and the fact that it's a campy horror game I think the AI adds to that level of it. With bad delivery making it seem like an 80 horror movie/porn? something lol.
Also thank you for brightness feature.
If you want a campy horror game that can make you jump and laugh at the same time it's for sure with a play through.
Steam User 1
I played this on stream and my community loved it! The campiness of this game is what truly makes it! Thank you for both the laughs and the scares, I enjoyed every second of this. I think you should make more campy horror games, the indie genre needs more of them.
Steam User 4
I just played through this game! The graphics were beautiful and I loved the sounds, especially the rain. The voices are definitely weird because they are AI voices. But it was super nice not having to read anything. While there were some jump scares, I actually found some of the walking around the most spooky. It is cool that this is a story based on a real hotel. It would be fun to figure out what hotel it is based on. I wish it was a little longer of a game and I hope the developer expands on this game at some point. Great bit of fun for the low price point!