The Ferryman Is A Chilling Indie Horror Game About A Cursed Ship Captain
I'm in the lower decks of my ferry, lugging coal to the furnace to keep the engine running. It's pitch black and all I can see is a small area lit by the warm glow of my lantern. Then I spot it: a strange figure, grey skinned and thin limbed, scuttering away from the light into the darkness. I chase after it—because that's what you do in horror stories—and notice a hole clawed violently into the hull, rapidly letting in water. I hastily fix it, but then I hear a scraping sound coming from the distant engine room. Another creature, trying to sink my boat.
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In this free indie horror game from Brainloaf Studio you play as the titular ferryman, a sailor delivering goods to remote lighthouses in the middle of a raging, storm-battered sea. You're Plagued, which means you're constantly harassed by those uncanny hull-gnawing creatures. Luckily they're afraid of light, and so long as you have your trusty lantern to hand they can't hurt you. But they can hurt your boat, which brings an element of management to the game.
As you sail between lighthouses, you have to frantically dash around the ferry repairing the hull, keeping the furnace blazing with coal, and putting out fires on the deck. The uninvited seawater in the lower decks is constantly rising, and if it reaches the furnace you're done for. It's pretty stressful, not helped by seeing those strange grey things darting around in the shadows around you. When you hear the bell signalling your arrival at a lighthouse, the relief is palpable.
The Ferryman is wonderfully atmospheric. The storybook visuals have the feel of a creepy old cartoon from the 1970s. The sea feels cold and
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