“123 Slaughter Me Street” has a kind of interesting premise. It seems to promise to do for Sesame Street what “Five Nights at Freddy’s” did for Chuck E. Cheese’s. Admittedly, I had never heard of this game until its sequel came out. I figured that like with the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” series there would be a lot of innovation going on here, exploiting the weirdness of the subject matter and examination of the clash between childish perception of the subject matter and an adult evaluation of it. Let’s see how well that holds up.
In “123 Slaughter Me Street” the player takes on the role of a criminal on the run from the police. During a chase, the player character falls through the skylight of a tenement building in a crowded metro area. Then, it turns out that this tenement was once home to a man who designed puppets for a Sesame Street-like show. And as the player attempts to travel from the top floor of this building to the ground floor, they are pursued by three of these puppets, who represent areas of the player character’s past and current predicament.
The graphics of “123 Slaughter Me Street” are nothing to write home about. They fit in at roughly the base level of what to expect from a solo project. I’ll be honest, I did not look up whether or not this game was actually a one-man endeavor or not. It has the feeling of one, though, so I will be giving it that much slack. While the graphics themselves aren’t anything to write home about, the monster design is pretty interesting. The creatures really do look like things that could have been removed from “Sesame Street” or “The Muppet Show” at the last minute for being a little too creepy. I want to give special praise to The Follower, who legitimately looks like the sort of creature that would have been a generic “monster” on the aforementioned shows.
I do not remember anything about the sound design of “123 Slaughter Me Street.” This is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, a truly great score ought to blend in so well with the scene it is in that it becomes an inseparable part of the experience of that scene. On the other hand, if I can’t remember anything about the sound it was obviously a lot of wasted effort. I don’t remember it being a nice complement to the game, however, and I feel that’s where the real problem is. It’s not like “Oh, hey, I was so into the game I forgot it,” instead it’s “Wait, how was the sound? It left literally zero impression on me…” So I think that says everything that needs to be said.
This game boasts on Steam about its unique control system. Unfortunately, what that control system amounts to is that you are only able to move in one direction. You can turn around to face other directions, but you can only move one way. You have a flashlight which stuns the monsters, however you need to reactivate it every few seconds. All of the other problems that this game has could be easily forgotten if the gameplay were better. Sadly, however, it is not. It is the cheapest, easiest kind of horror gameplay.
Ultimately, “123 Slaughter Me Street” is just a shoddy game designed as nothing more than a jump-scare delivery system. The idea of a criminal on the run who accidentally stumbles on a “Sesame Street”-style monster ghetto is a truly brilliant one. Unfortunately, “Slaughter Me Street” fails to live up to that potential at every conceivable opportunity.
