A person with a pumpkin head wakes up in a cabin in the middle of the woods, and under the instruction of a talking crow learns to grow crops and earn money. From there, they can unlock new plots and crops, go fishing, and scavenge around the farm. Be careful though, as there's strange things going on in the woods...
Pumpkin Panic is a cozy Survival Horror game that has an average play time of an hour. As such, there will be unmarked spoilers below.
This game provides examples of:
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: One type of item the crow can drop are rainbow coins that can be exchanged for alternate color schemes for the player. These are the only upgrades that persist between playthroughs.
- Darkness Equals Death:
- The night is more dangerous than the day, with the clowns only visiting at night and the drastically reduced visibility making it easier for the deer to sneak up on you.
- If all the candles in the cabin blow out, the shadow demon comes out from under the bed and attacks the player.
- Disguised Horror Story: Downplayed as the art style is very Halloween-themed, but the game's Itch.io page presents it as a cozy farming game, and only hints at the monsters.
- Exposition Fairy: The crow at the beginning teaches the player the controls of the game, and then flys off. Throughout the rest of the game, it can drop off items that sold for coins.
- Foreshadowing: There are "Don't Feed the Deer" signs around the farm. The deer doesn't show up until the second day. The clowns also have a note on cabin telling you to follow the sound of their music, which is important to surviving the night.
- Implacable Man: The deer will slowly follow the player around while it's outside and unlike other enemies doesn't leave the farm. It can't follow the player inside the cabin though.
- Monster Clown: There are pair of clowns that visit each night. The red clown is friendly and will give the player a balloon if they find it. The blue clown is also friendly... if you can give it a balloon that is. If you don't, it will run into you and kill you once the sun rises.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: The clowns play music box music to help you find them, and you really want to find them before the tune ends.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Any close encounter with danger is fatal.
- Pumpkin Person: It's not clear whether the player character is wearing a pumpkin mask, or if the pumpkin is their head. It's an atmospheric way to keep the player a Featureless Protagonist.
- Shapeshifting: The deer is actually a wendigo, and if the player gets too close to it, it'll transform into its monstrous form, become really fast, and kill the player if they can't get inside the cabin before it catches them.
- Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: Audio cues are important to the game, informing the player when plants are ready to be harvested/collected, when the skinwalker enemy shows up and leaves, and the location of the clowns.
- Sprint Meter: The player can sprint for short distances, but once they start sprinting they can not stop sprinting until they run out of energy.
- Stalked by the Bell: The cabin is a safe spot from most enemies, but the shadow demon spawns if the player stays there too long, and the only way to escape it is to run outside. The upgrade station is also located inside the cabin.
- Starter Villain: The skinwalker appears at the end of the tutorial to introduce the horror elements of the game, and is the enemy the game gives the most direct hint on how to deal with.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The game teaches you the controls and the basics of farming, and then leaves you to figure out almost everything else, including what the win condition for the game is.
- Wendigo: The "Bipedal deer with skull for a face" variant appears as one of the game's main enemies. They disguise themselves as deer to throw you off, and reveal their true form and charge at you when you get too close to them.
