In Scream Operator: Haunted House Manager, you become an architect of alarm. A draughtsman of dismay. A mechanic of panic. A… haunted house manager. It’s a “cosy-spooky” themepark strategy sim in which you attempt to maximise the chills and earn fat stacks by arranging your Grim Reapers just so.

By day, you supervise guests as they queue through the pre-show and board the cars, generating Immersion and Fear points as they witness the props and trigger the scares in each room. By night, you pick from randomised upgrades to squeeze more dread out of your setup. With patience and calculation, you can turn a mere Room 1408 into a full-blown Overlook Hotel. Or the other way around, depending on which Stephen King adaptation you think is scariest. I don’t want to alienate John Cusack fans, not this early in the week.

I find the game’s presentation quite appealing. It’s a little MicroProsaic in places. You’ve got a big slab of buttons, switches and dials along the bottom, allowing you to control the gates, music, ambient sounds, and special effects. There are also indicators for blocked rails, fuses, and other questions of maintenance.

The basis challenge appears to be keeping the power flowing consistently while you punish your grid with fresh injections of holographic ghosts. Oh, I went on a broken haunted house ride once as a kid! We spent 10 minutes looking at a plastic skeleton. Honestly, it was a relief. I do wonder if themepark attendants ever take pity and simulate breakdowns if the guests ever look too frantic.

The part of Scream Operator that interests me most is the queueing. It’s obvious in hindsight, but I haven’t really considered that the lobby areas for haunted house rides need to be designed for suspense. “In Scream Operator, a long line is great for business, but it is dangerous for your ratings,” comment developers Japhet Interactive. “If guests get bored while waiting, their patience drops, ruining their immersion before the ride even starts. You have to use everything at your disposal to keep them entertained and terrified while they wait in line.”

The full release is a ways off – early 2027, or thereabouts – but there’s a demo coming this Halloween. Read more on Steam. If you’re looking for a fright farming sim to tide you over, there’s always the venerable Ghost Master.