YMMV / Silver Falls: Ghoul Busters

• Funny Moments: In a case of Black Comedy, if you get killed and land on any item or enemy with spring-like functions, the corpse will bounce a couple of times before the checkpoint kicks in.
• Goddamned Bats: There are a couple of enemies who exist solely to fire projectiles, which will send you flying backwards and likely into Bottomless Pits or a Death Trap.
• Good Bad Bugs: There's a random glitch that will cause Starlin's hockey stick sprite to be frozen in its maxed swing position even after the attack has ended. It serves no purpose and will reset once you reach a checkpoint or goal, but it still looks like Starlin is wielding a massive hook.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Honard cares a lot about the kids, and it's mentioned in passing that they visit him whenever they want to hear old stories and get some candy. In Atticus's ending, he notes that even though the boy's father barely talks to him, but Honard says that he's proud of him. Given that Honard focuses on training Atticus to become an archer, he clearly becomes a Parental Substitute for Atticus after the game.
  • Bull Brandish is the Kid Hero All Grown-Up from Undertakers, and he's developed into a badass but abrasive hero in the last 20 years. He's dismissive of the kids, and acts an Aloof Ally. When Starlin asks him for food, he makes a comment about being self-sufficient. But when he hears that the kids watched Cap die, he immediately drops the attitude and tells the kids to stay close so he can protect them. Given that Bull has been killing monsters since he was a child, he wants to make sure these two don't have to suffer the way he did.
  • Starlin has a brief moment of reflection at the end where he reaffirms his friendship with Atticus.
    Starlin: Hey, Atticus. The stars are really pretty tonight, don't you think? How many stars do you think are up there? I've always been looking down at the ground for rocks... I never noticed how beautiful and bright the stars are. Do you think the stars look different on the other side of the Earth? What do you think the sky looks like for other people who live far away? ...Atticus? Was I brave? You and me. We'll be best friends forever, won't we? We'll be the best Ghoul Busters in the world.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Some players may have this reaction, given that there are only 9 regular levels and 3 bosses. The bosses are basically the same, but with more aggressive and monstrous forms, and with more obstacles present. But despite fighting the same bosses, Starlin and Atticus have different story scenes, and can access different paths in the levels.
• Moment of Awesome: Starlin and Atticus are a couple of elementary school kids, yet they can kill Eldritch Abominations alongside experienced adults. This culminates with them killing a creature that is imitating a fully-grown grizzly bear, but has a spiky skull and a mass of writhing tentacles where its back torso should be. The adults are shocked that a couple of kids are able to pull this off. Granted, Fred had nearly killed the thing already, but ran out of bullets and go injured, but the kids definitely earned the win.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Cap is mauled to death in the first scene. He survives long enough to give the Atticus the Gotchamon and mention that he saw a face in woods. Honard later mentions that he can hear his sister's voice in the woods. This shouldn't be possible, given that his sister died in the infamous blizzard in 1964. If you play Deathly Delusion Destroyers, you know these scenes were hinting at the existence of the Facestealer, which steals the faces and voices of people to lure their loved ones into the forest. It killed Cap, and now it's going after Honard.
  • Just because the protagonists are kids doesn't meant they can't gruesomely die. Depending on what obstacle or enemy they hit, they can be instantly skewered, have their blood and entrails explode out of them (even at the camera), or even randomly have a fountain of blood gush out.
  • The bosses are all creatures imitating grizzly bears, but get progressively more monstrous with each encounter. The final one looks like something straight out of The Thing (1982), with massive spikes where its eyes should be, extra bones just out from its legs, and a mass of wriggling and writhing tentacles where its back should be. They can also jump, which will make you think twice about trying to hop over them.
  • One enemy is something that resembles a human body, but looks like it's somehow twisted. It's not until you hit it that you realize that its entire body is made up individual strands of living entrails, which will fall off and writhe on the ground.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Paranormal events are so common that Bull can rattle off a whole list of monsters as casually as someone would read their grocery list. Fred has seen so much that he starts griping about the situation instead of showing fear. It makes you wonder how many nightmarish things the people of Silver Falls don't see, and the people in power try to keep covered up.
  • The Mechanic from Silver Falls: 3 Down Stars shows up at the beginning of Starlin's story. Not only does he know who Starlin is, but he encourages him to keep taking "the course of actions which you were intending to take. Make no deviations." He cryptically adds that the "required entities are where they need to be" and asks Starlin to return any Starglass Shards he finds. He also implies that there's some kind of "Groundhog Day" Loop in effect, asking Starlin how many bottle caps he's collected this time. It's never explained how The Mechanic knows Starlin, why the kid's actions are important, or what kind of grander plan is involved.
  • The Facestealer can steal the faces and voices of anyone to lure you into the woods. Just imagine running around an Eldritch Location like Silver Falls, relieved to have found a friend and ally... Only for that familiar face to mangle you.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Some of the levels make you use snakes as makeshift ropes. It's visually reminiscent of those found in Donkey Kong Country. Unlike in that game, however, you don't automatically stay connected to the snakes when they move. This means you have to constantly input a forward or backward direction while desperately trying to dodge obstacles that will instantly kill you. The controls tend to be slippery as well. It's doable, but requires some luck and is far harder than it should've been.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Cap is hallucinating as he dies, believing Atticus to be his son, Brad. Thanks to the monsters that roam the forest, there will be yet another child orphan living in Silver Falls.
  • Honard is clearly haunted by the death of his sister, who died nearly 30 years ago. He specifically tells the kids to get out of there so they won't see something that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
  • Atticus is revealed to have a turbulent home life. He's determined to get back home, and says that he doesn't even care if his mom and dad fight anymore. Honard mentions in passing that Atticus's dad doesn't talk to his son much, and that Atticus's great-grandfather would forbid the boy from learning archery.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Starlin and Atticus use different weapons and can access different areas of the levels, but that's the extent of their differences. It would have been interesting to see them have slightly altered jump physics. Or they could have gotten power-ups for the weapons, or had unlockable skill. For example, Starlin could've been able to reflect projectiles as if he were shooting a hockey puck, and Atticus could have had a wider range of projectiles with different properties. It would've also been interesting to see the levels further expanded with more places and items to explore using their respective abilities.
  • The Gotchamon's screechy sound effect is used to make just one type of enemy retract its spikes. It would have been more interesting if the game incorporated more sounds with different effects. In fact, the game could have implemented a full-blown Virtual Pet mini-game as a way to develop and level up new abilities to use in the game.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As a nod to the game being set in the early '90s, the game's color palette mimics that of the original Game Boy. However, this simple combination of green, black, and white is used extremely well, creating a forest that actually looks foreboding. The gnarled and twisted shapes of trees, the outlines of mountains in the background, and the stars hanging ominously in the sky are interesting to look at. It's also one of the few games that utilizes the Nintendo 3DS's stereoscopic 3D to augment the visuals in a noticeable way.