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"Ya know, Horrorland may SEEM like a scary, foreboding place... BECAUSE IT IS!!!"

Escape From Horrorland is a 1996 computer game based on the Goosebumps book One Day at HorrorLand. It was one of the first games made by Dreamworks Interactive.

Set as a sort-of sequel to the book, you are the friend of Lizzie, a bossy young girl who was babysitting her brother, Luke, and his friend, Clay, for the night. Suddenly cosmic forces transport all of you into a bizarre place called Horrorland. You need to rescue Luke and Clay and then escape from Horrorland.

Rather infamous among children of the 1990s for being scary in a variety of ways. It used a combination of 3D graphics, miniature sets, live-action video, and animated puppets to create a pretty impressive setting.

Not to be confused with the 2008 Goosebumps game Horrorland for the Nintendo DS, Wii, and PlayStation 2.

See also Attack of the Mutant, another PC Goosebumps game released in 1997.


This game provides examples of:

  • Adaptation Expansion: The Horrorland of the original novel was simply meant to be an evil theme park. The game expands it into a nightmarish realm full of monster towns, ancient pyramids and vampire castles, full of monsters drawn from all over the universe.
  • Amusement Park of Doom: Natch, being a kinda sequel to One Day in Horrorland this is a given.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Luke
  • Bound and Gagged: Happens to all the protogonists (though not the player) near the end.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Inevitable. Either you defeat the big bad but let Lizzie and Luke's parents turn into monsters, or you save the parents but Madison Storm survives and moves into Lizzie and Luke's neighborhood.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Luke and Clay, and Lizzie to an extent.
  • Canon Foreigner: Main villain Madison Storm, founder of the park, did not appear in the original book, and the park's creator would later be named Kit Katzman in Goosebumps Horrorland.
  • Celebrity Star: Both Isabella Rossellini as Lady Cadaver and Jeff Goldblum as Dracula.
    • Also Judy Tenuta as Hannah Black, your Horrorland hostess.
  • Claustrophobia: Two unavoidable instances of this. One is where you are crawling through incredibly cramped wooden tunnels while being chased by a mummy at high speed directly behind you, and it is very easy to get lost in the tunnels. The other time is when you have to shut yourself inside a coffin and use it as a boat down a sewer, while spiders enter the coffin and try to bite you.
  • Combat Tentacles: The giant evil octopus that grabs Clay and tries to strangle him.
  • Damsel out of Distress: Lizzie gets captured twice, but is still one of the bravest of the characters and is the one devising and setting all the traps and leading the way in the game.
  • Featureless Protagonist: Even more so than in Attack of the Mutant, which shows its protagonist's clearly white hands and shows her/him in costume at the end. The player character in Horrorland is never shown at all, leaving her/his gender, race and age completely up to the player. All that is known is that s/he is a kid, is Lizzie's friend and is "good at chemistry".
  • Forced Transformation: Lizzie, who is captured and transformed into some kind of creepy worm-thing. In the process of curing her, you can accidentally give her a worse form.
  • Freudian Excuse: Madison Storm, the creator of the park, was bullied as a kid and eventually decided if he can't be happy, no one will be. He grew up, build Horrorland and created a machine to attract monsters to it fill it and terrorize humans that came across it.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: The coins and the cards. What do they accomplish? Well, the coins you can use to get hints from "the riddle wall", but the cards...nothing, really.
  • Here We Go Again!: Considering this is considered a sequel of the book, its not surprising. Lizzie even outright says it once you arrive in Horrorland.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: After Lizzie is unknowingly turned into a jack o'lantern, "Um.. let me put it this way, you know how Dad always likes to call you pumpkin?
  • Large Ham: Madison Storm "WHO STOLE ALL MY CHOCOLATE?!" Along with the video tour guide lady.
  • Locked in a Freezer: After Lizzie suddenly goes missing soon after the two of you land in Werewolf Village, you find her in the butcher shop, locked inside the freezer, covered in frost and too numb with cold and fear to panic.
  • Madness Mantra: The scarecrow.
  • Mad Scientist: Madison Storm, the creator and founder of Horrorland (least in this rendition). He managed to do so by making a machine that attracted monsters from all over the world and made it into a theme park to terrorize any unfortunate humans that came across it.
  • Monster Town: Horrorland. Werewolf Village and Vampire Village in particular.
  • Mummy: The mummy that attacks/stalks you in the valley of the lost kings.
  • One Hundred Per Cent Completion: Infamously, this is practically (if not completely) impossible. The game has 777 tokens scattered throughout Horrorland and keeps track of how many the player has collected. Most of these are located in the underground tunnels, which can be tough (especially for the target audience) but are not impossible. What makes getting a perfect score difficult is that you lose tokens every time you sustain damage. Once you lose a token it is gone forever, and there are certain instances where getting hurt is very difficult to avoid:
    • After springing a trap for the werewolf, the wolf lashes out at you while dangling from a rope. The rate at which it hits you is random and incredibly fast, and the slow turning speed means that it's not easy to turn around and grab the item from the werewolf before it hits you, and if you get hit you have to load from before the lengthy chase scene.
    • During the fight with the Mummy, you have to burn him with a torch to force him across the room towards a pillar. Once again, the turning speed makes it difficult to grab the torch before the Mummy hits you, and to make matters worse the Mummy can put out the torch and force you to do it again. This is also preceded by a lengthy chase scene.
    • When Dracula is chasing you through the tunnels under his castle there are lots of tokens to collect, all of which must be clicked on in the time that it takes him to catch up with you. It is unclear whether this is even possible due to (once again) the slow turning time.
    • The coffin minigame features spiders descending towards you at a lightning fast speed, and you have to click on all of them before they hit you.
  • Parents in Distress: Revealed when you enter the final level.
  • Point of No Return: Once you enter Dracula's Castle, you won't be able to go back to the previous areas you explored throughout the game.
  • Pungeon Master: Pretty much everything that comes out of Luke's mouth is a terrible pun, usually at the expense of his sister or best friend.
  • Punny Name: According to this advert, the name of the trash can tunnel monsters are Recyclops'.
  • Revenge: It's eventually revealed Madison Storm kidnapped the Morris and Clay because they actually managed to escape Horrorland the first time which damaged his reputation with the monsters there. So he wants to prove to them otherwise by offing the family and Clay in a grand spectacle. You getting dragged along was just collateral though ironically you turn out to be a Spanner in the Works to his plans.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: The hints given to you by the Riddle Wall in exchange for coins:
Trash cans lead to tunnels below. Beware of what lurks there...red eyes aglow!
The greenery's dense...so are you! Meat treats make sense it you hope to get through!
On the werewolf's neck, there's the hand of a mummy. Trap him! Grab it! Or you're a big dummy.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: When you explore the tunnels, the tunnels are 3D, and the monsters that chase you are 2D sprites. Polygons are only used in those segments.
  • Third-Person Person: Stump
  • Unwinnable by Design: Averted. There's really no way you can lose. The only thing that happens when you get damaged is that you lose coins, and those aren't really used for anything.
  • Wolf Man: You encounter one not long after you rescue Lizzie from the freezer who chases you through the woods where you have to follow Lizzie's voice to pick the right path to go on so you can lead it into a trap she set up.


 
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G:EfH [Luke & Clay in Pillory]

Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland (1996): In this PC sequel to "One Day In Horrorland", you play as an unseen protagonist who unwittingly gets dragged along with Lizzie back to Horrorland thanks to some enchanted tickets. Here, you and Lizzie finds her brother Luke and his friend, Clay, locked in stocks in the werewolf area of the park and have to find a way to free them.

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Main / StockPunishment

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