I have quite a history with the Lakeview Cabin series by Roope Tammanin aka Hypnohustler, and I'm gonna talk about it right here!
The original Flash game was released in 2013 and comes out swinging. The story is a solid one but sets the stage for how far this series goes. You play a red-haired fellow in a plaid shirt and jeans having what looks on the surface to be a relaxing day at his lakeview cabin. Right away, you can see the sheer mass of tools at your disposal that can either save or kill you if used incorrectly.
This is the point in the series that really got my attention, not just for the sheer amount of things you could do in this game, but the absolute density of the story details and references that makes this series such a complex ball of riddles that I can't get enough of. Your hub world is a city block including a video store, a residence with a...noise complaint, and a theatre which shows all of the Lakeview Cabin movies. Movies? That's right, there are four 'levels' in Lakeview Cabin Collection and they all build off of each other with premises built off of classic movies, with the hub world itself being a love letter to movies like C.H.U.D and Street Trash. But let's start with 'first' things first:
Lakeview Cabin III is the closest to what one could call the 'template' of the series - you play as four camp counselors who have to deal with several killers or die trying. Every item has some kind of function and reason for being there - doing things like having sex and drinking beer aren't ideal decisions but it does make the situation more fun! Much as this 'movie' references the classic slasher movie template, the player characters who die are pasted up onto the walls and ceilings in the manner of the first Friday the 13th. They'll even kill your dog and wear it like a toupee!
Full disclosure: there's not a bad level in the bunch of these as far as I'm concerned, but this one is the prime cut. I could earnestly gush about this level in particular all day long. The theming is directly out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but that's not the core reason this level is special because a lot of games do this - what Roope has done here is make a level so immaculately filthy and hopeless that I've spent an unreasonable amount of time coming back to it over and over. His pixel art strengths are on full display here, as the lighting effects make every little pixel look weathered and aged, and that's just from the outside. Going inside the house is where the real nightmare begins, much like the level's movie inspiration, as you deal with homicidal cannibals and booby traps galore. What's more, the placement and number of rooms in the house is dependent on RNG, which means you can't plan around static buildings and items the way you could in III. What's worse is the alarm mechanic, the fire alarm in practically every room that puts everyone on high alert, including the ones in the attic. Incautious players will find themselves chewed up and spit back out, and if you hadn't already gotten accustomed to this series' trademark door-peeking game mechanic, a few bad moves inside the slaughterhouse will remedy that. It's a toughie, but not unbeatable. As you go through the house in more playthroughs, you start to notice very specific patterns, like the way the grandma's room is not only the only part of the house displaying basic housekeeping sense but also always the room leading up to the attic, and the basement in turn always being preceded by the shower room. Not only is there a precursor to the sanity meter that would make its reappearance in Lakeview Cabin 2, but
There's something deliciously ironic in the most difficult level of the game being the one where you can't actually die! A neat sendup of movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser, the basic premise is that Red's kid is all grown up and fully ready to take up the mantle left behind by his father. He's immortal, he's unstoppable, and he even comes with a theme song that sounds remarkably close to Michael Myers' chase music in Dead by Daylight. So, what can these four teens do? To put it plainly, you have to summon three demons to slap him around, and you have to commit some fairly vile acts to do so. The game doesn't make it easy, either - there are plenty of hints in the game for what to do but they all involve having a level of cultural and media literacy to get what the game is asking of you. It even has three endings depending on how you finish the level! Pay special attention to the jock character, because he becomes really important in the sequel!
What self-respecting slasher film series would be complete without a trip to the stars? A fairly direct reference to Aliens this go-around, a typical day onboard the USG Ishimura unnamed ship full of artifacts related to the past three levels suddenly goes up in flames when one of the staff gets very sick and their 'bug' starts spreading. This level pulls out all the stops for the game's 'finale' as you're given a litany of problems and ways to deal with them, particularly explosives. Robots that shortcircuit if you expose them to water, military personnel with itchy trigger fingers, face huggers, crawling bits of offal that used to be people, vengeful spirits - the works! If you're quick and crafty, you can even head the alien threat off at the pass before it even has an opportunity to put the crewmembers in harm's way, but the level is far from unbeatable even in the most dire of circumstances. One interesting aspect that would eventually make it into future titles is how it was becoming clear that players were having issues with moving items around the game world, and how the world's size wasn't getting any smaller. And so, Roope introduces LSD into the environment - a system of peumatic chutes that put in one item at a time and any other character with access to a chute can get ahold of the item for use. It's an inventive solution but the sequel would go on to introduce more robust solutions to this gameplay problem.
The Tape, for a lack of a proper name, is what is technically the second 'movie' in the series. But, you can tell immediately that something is clearly off. This is one of the most effective pieces of work in the whole series for how the game toys with the player's sense of agency before introducing the elements that allow them to draw to the level's conclusion. More importantly to the series, this level introduces a degree of detail that feels out of place in the rest of the game, but would come to be Roope's signature style of pixel art for the sequel. You play a bit of a sad-sack man with a very familiar wife, as they get settled in to their lakefront property. But something's amiss...you're besieged every night by terrible nightmares, and all your answers seem to be in the lake...this is a level I cannot stress enough to play after the preceding four levels, as I can't stress enough how much this one crystalizes what make this series special and meaningful in a single bound.
Lakeview Valley is probably the closest thing to a 'spinoff' that this series has, introducing an entirely seperate mythos that has seemingly nothing to do with the series so far, but it's easily one of the most engaging pieces of Tammanin's work as he takes the formula set by games like Stardew Valley, but with less farming and more serial killing. Of course, much like games like Undertale Postal 2, the serial killing is entirely optional, but Roope has proven in the tape from the earlier Collection that he's got a real knack for incentivising a dark turn in the player, and it's really delicious.
This one is a REAL treat! Not only does it continue the premise of all the events happening outside of the movies in the real world a la Wes Craven's New Nightmare, it also acts as a continuation of the story of the actors who played the roles in the movies from the Collection: the two male leads and Babyface from Lakeview Cabin III, the redhead from III and CABIN 6, the band member with the hat from Lakeview Cabin IV, the Ellen Ripley & Parker reference characters from CABIN 6, and who I'm reasonably sure is the blond teen from Lakeview Cabin V.