Though the game recommends a gamepad controller, it's perfectly playable with the keyboard. The [arrow] keys move you, while [Z] picks up and drops items, and [X] interacts with certain stationary things like lightswitches. If you're carrying something, hit [X] to use it, and [spacebar] will swap your control between the available characters. Hold the up [arrow] in front of a door to peek inside without entering. Don't know what to do? Well, that's sort of the point. In Lakeview Cabin, you're not given a direction or goal, so the whole point is to explore and make discoveries on your own. What happens when you leave the stove on? How do you get into that locked room? You'll need to experiment to figure it out on your own, and sometimes that can lead to deadly (and morbidly hilarious) results. There's no way to save your game, so you'll need to hit [ESC] to open a menu and restart the chapter if you want a clean slate or, um, less dead campers. Important items you pick up will be accompanied by a little piano trill, and you can view any notes you find by holding the [spacebar] and pressing the down [arrow].

Because Lakeview Cabin III is so much bigger in terms of its location than the original browser version, it's a lot more complex, and the completely different plot and set pieces means you won't know what to do even if you played the first game. While you can inflict a fair amount of bloodthirsty mayhem on your poor characters, most of it is extremely tongue in cheek. They'll gape in horror at the demise of a friend, then go right back to wandering around aimlessly, and even losing a limb won't set them back too much. It's comedic in a very dark way, so if you're looking for a serious horror adventure, you'll need to keep looking for something that doesn't involve poop, fornication, drug and alcohol use, and the tragedy of tiny dogs and maniacs. Which isn't to say there aren't any startling moments... there are a surprising amount of very effective scary moments, often when you least expect them. Figuring out how all objects (and creatures) interact with one another takes some doing, and as you might expect, some of it is more intuitive than others. It's the same trial-and-error gameplay of the original as you encounter certain events that you'll need planning and intuition to get around and stay alive.

Like the original game, Lakeview Cabin III isn't actually that long once you figure out what to do, but part of the fun comes from experimenting and playing around with everything you can find, including different ways to "win". While some might find it too goofy and crass, others will embrace the gleeful weirdness of its sandbox gameplay and over-the-top violence and horror movie tropes. Time will tell what the rest of the planned episodes bring, though hopefully it's a different setting or two, and as of this writing there appears to be no planned release schedule for them, which may factor into your purchasing plans. As it stands, however, Lakeview Cabin Collection shows a ton of promise and keeps the macabre mayhem of the original intact while expanding on the variety in creative, horrifying ways. If you haven't played the original, there's no time like the present to discover why players were so taken with its unique take on horror adventure gameplay, and if you enjoy trying to outwit death and evil in a world where you can zipline naked and unclog toilets to solve puzzles, it's probably well worth checking out.
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