Halloween Monster Hunter

YOUR PHONE IS THE LENS. Point it into a dark room and the lens turns the camera, the compass, the light sensor and the step counter into a hunting kit. It reads the room you are actually standing in. It will not work in a lit one, and it says so. WALKING IS WHAT BRINGS THEM Steps in the dark are counted off the phone's own accelerometer. Twenty paces for the first one, twenty more for each after it. Stand still in a bright room and nothing comes, because nothing should. THREE WEAPONS, AND EACH THING ANSWERS TO ONE OF THEM Holy salt is what kills a ghost, and you never run out of it — but it is a handful thrown by hand, and a ghost drifts. Holy water reaches any distance. It burns, the thing screams and stops where it stands, and for five seconds it is open — a stake into that window goes twice as deep. The flask holds three throws and holy water can never finish a vampire. The stake is arm's length only. At some point you have to let it come all the way in. Bring the wrong one and the kit tells you why it did nothing. A stake passes through a ghost. Salt does not trouble a vampire. FIFTEEN NIGHTS, FIFTEEN THINGS A swarm of bats first. Then the ghosts — a residual echo, a cold wisp, a knocker, a shade, a poltergeist — and two demons that answer to salt and holy water together. Then the coven, one vampire a night: a thrall walking somebody else's errand, a newly risen fledgling, a moroi out of the wet earth, a strigoi in black velvet, a nosferatu that moves in bursts between the shadows, an elder who has kept the same house for four hundred years. And then the Count. He does not die when his blood runs out. He tears his wings out of his own back and comes at you again, stronger, and that is the fight that counts. Each of them is a different body with its own walk, its own scream, its own way of dying — in its own voice. THE CASE LOG Every kill writes a page. Who it was before it was turned, the village, the year, what turned it, what it wanted, and what it said at the end. Every escape writes one too, and an escape costs you points. WHAT IT USES Camera, accelerometer, compass, light sensor, microphone, torch. Everything stays on the device. Nothing is uploaded, no account, no sign-in. FREE, AND WHAT IS NOT The field meter, the crypt radio, the night scan, the UV lamp and the case log are free forever. The lens is free for six minutes of hunting — counted only while the lens is open — and then a subscription of €6.99 a month keeps it open. It renews until you cancel, and you cancel in Google Play. BEST PLAYED In the dark, with headphones, alone, in a house you know. Not while driving, not near stairs, not anywhere you would not walk with your eyes half on a screen. It is a game. The monsters are not real. The dark is.