Blood Mall is a short, low-poly/VHS style horror game that will give those traumatized by Jurassic Park as a kid some nasty flashbacks. Created by Ollie Hall for the Dinoshorror Jam, this faux video nasty has had a fair share of recognition for being a surprisingly intense chiller. With intentionally amateur dialogue and a few uses of fun horror clichés, Blood Mall was a delight.

Shop till you drop

In the morning of November 4th, 1988, the Dayton County Mall was under attack by an unusual mall patron. Blood Mall has the player take the role of a rookie cop going in solo. Armed with a level-action shotgun and some chunks of meat for bait, he is met with a grisly sight. Piled against the walls are piles of rotting flesh and debris. Stuck within them are bodies of the deceased. Even more daunting are the spear-like quills impaling them into the walls and ceilings. Bloody birthday balloons litter the courtyard. It’s a total massacre.

The first half of Blood Mall is an exploration into this macabre hell you wandered into. The low-poly graphics and VHS aesthetic goes a long way in having the player’s mind filling in the gaps. The page for Blood Mall lists Puppet Combo as a major inspiration, and it nails it, outside the sonar abuse that are the jump scares in those games. It’s eerily quiet, outside of one surviving patron who is dragged through a hole in the wall that you cannot save.

The hunt begins

After soaking in the uncomfortable atmosphere, Blood Mall begins proper when the player enters the court. The game instructs you to place the bait in the middle and hide in a nearby clothes rack. When the dinosaur approaches, the screen slowly turns red. Then, it attacks. Two shots will drive it away, but the player has to make it count, as the creature has a very short stun period and will one-shot you if its teeth get within grabbing distance.

Blood Mall’s game of cat-and-mouse is very thrilling. It has two of these sequences. I take some umbrage with them, mostly because of how slow and reflexive the shots needed are. In short, it feels a little too much like padding than if the dinosaur could just come out without the extra steps, but it’s just a minor nitpick. By comparison, I loved the final chase due to it being thrilling. Navigating through the mall, to quickly turn around in order to shoot at the creature to stun them just long enough to gain distance adds a lot of tension. If there ever were a continuation of Blood Mall, which the final scene implies there may be, I would love for more of these sequences.

Final Thoughts

Blood Mall has the makings of a fun new horror franchise. The game’s simple graphics that leave much to the imagination, the thrilling chase sequence, and the clichés such as “the rookie cop resolves the plot” and the exposition dump from the scientist character are a lovely affectionate parody of the monster outbreak genre. Blood Mall is a great game jam entry, and I look forward to more from its developer.

Blood Mall was released May 13th, 2025 on itch.io. The game is free.