Killer Frequency review: single setting, dialogue-driven suspense

How’s this for an entertaining premise? In Killer Frequency we play a radio host manning the graveyard shift in a crummy small town, during the 1980s, where a serial killer is on the loose and….cue dramatic music….all calls to 911 have been rerouted to the studio! There’s a (somewhat spurious) narrative logic for this: the cop who orchestrated the rerouting is driving to get help, and the only locals with experience operating a phone line are our character—a bigshot from Chicago named Forrest Nash—and his producer colleague. 

Throughout the night calls roll in from locals targeted by the “Whistling Man,” an intemperate, very stabby fellow who announces his arrival by whistling an eerie tune. We can’t deploy any police, but we can provide advice that might save the lives of the poor sods calling us—selected by simple point-and-click dialogue trees.

The format of this 4-5 hour experience, which was originally released on console machines before being ported into VR, is simple. Somebody calls up in a real dilly of a pickle, targeted by the “Whistling Man,” and lives or dies depending on what we tell them. Our advice is informed by elements conveniently located in the studio around us. When one panicked caller for instance needs to know how to hotwire a car, because they’re hiding in it and that whistling fiend is approaching, we can consult a car magazine on a desk in the studio. 

This straightforward structure delivers a potentially endless array of characters and circumstances but keeps us at arm’s length from the drama. While our choices shape the destiny of the callers, we remain detached from them, without an emotional investment in their lives. Recurring characters are fleshed out over time (the most developed being our aforementioned producer Peggy, who’s in an adjoining room) and various backstories emerge, detailing the killer’s motivations and the town’s sordid history.

The dialogue is quite well written but the blandness of the central setting, where we spend hours with nothing interesting to look at, takes its toll. It just isn’t an interesting use of space. Killer Frequency does a reasonably good job extending this space over time, however, usually with Peggy providing keys to open locked rooms in the studio. But spending so much time in the same spot is a grind. The developers seem to acknowledge this by including, on the desk in front of us, a replenishing supply of scrunched up pieces of paper to throw in a trash can with a basketball hoop above it; I did this 252 times over the course of the game.

The challenge of keeping things interesting in a radio station setting was also confronted in Area Man Lives—another single setting VR production with a DJ protagonist. In that game a strange caller is convinced the radio station is broadcasting signals directing him to do particular things at particular times. This wacky premise is frustratingly executed, the rules governing the experience nebulously defined, resulting in lots of guesswork. In Killer Frequency we get the format; we understand the structure. It’s always clear how to progress. And the narrative continues irrespective of whether our advice is right (the victim survives) or wrong (they cark it). 

More satisfying than both these productions, narratively and experientially, is the VR port of Not For Broadcast. Based in a TV broadcast room, we’re similarly exposed to drama while remaining an arm’s length from it, our job being to choose which cameras to cut to during live broadcasts. Gameplay-wise it’s basic but effective.

By contrast, even basic objection interaction in Killer Frequency is clunky. Sifting through records feels unnaturally fidgety and that old school, point-and-click method for picking up objects reduces immersion; perhaps this is a leftover from the game’s non-VR versions. It’s a shame the developers couldn’t get basic object interactions right, given the gameplay is so simple. The dialogue and plotting is what keeps the experience interesting until the end. A couple of hours in I found the pace started to drag, but thankfully it picks up during the game’s second half, when the twists pack on and real drama arrives at the station.