The survival horror multiplayer has mastered publicity stunts, but it doesn’t make a lasting impression.
There are several things that nearly everyone agrees are annoying. Processing fees, for example. Drain flies that flit around your face before dive-bombing your beer can. Likewise, “influencers” – TikTok creators, YouTubers, and other hair-gelled 22-year-olds – tend to inspire bone-deep resentment, which could be why Cheerful Warning doesn’t mind tossing them into a horror game.
But, unlike your displeasure together dumb flies, influencer fatigue also tends to ripple alongside jealousy: “Why don’t I have one bajillion followers?” you might find yourself wondering at weak moments, when work feels particularly crushing. “MrBeast doesn’t even really cure blindness.” So, in being a multiplayer game, Upbeat Warning feels like an effective satire of our widespread obsession with attention. Most of the time, though, it’s just as forgettable as the impulse to be seen and loved by everyone forever.
It’s a losing game. Literally and figuratively. In theory, Merry Warning functions similarly to Steam-favourite survival horror multiplayer, Lethal Company. In three-day cycles, you and up to three other aspiring SpöökTubers must descend into a charcoal pit. Your goal is to film something disturbing, go viral, and make money. You’re Logan Paul, and your brain functions at quarter speed. So you go into the pit together a depleting oxygen tank, and you will yourself to live long enough to ride a stifling diving bell back to the surface, upload your footage to a computer, and watch the ad revenue come rushing in.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, but, barely a week after its popular, free April Fool’s Day launch, I notice that online randoms are already prematurely ending games. As of writing, Cheerful Warning may have fallen far from its initial 204,000 player peak, but it’s still attracting an impressive 55,000 concurrent players. Fellow 2024 indie breakout Palworld can relate to that; it’s sitting in a similar spot after dominating video games’ otherwise dead winter. But all of the games I played in preparation in favor of this review wrapped up after only one day of awesome, viral, white guy notoriety because my teammates disconnected.
I didn’t play any private games, though save file options make it possible for you to play either with friends, or alone. The latter is mostly useless – in my two attempts at solo play, I died within the first two minutes of exploring the bleak pit, or what the game calls “the old world.”
![Content Warning screenshot shows two players walking through tall green grass in grey diving suits.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-2-above-ground.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Content Warning screenshot shows a computer monitor displaying a loading screen in front of green bushes and yellow flowers.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-7-upload.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Content Warning screenshot shows white board with instructions in exchange for going viral: "Go down to the old world, film something scary, upload, go viral."](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-1-objective-.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
First, I died by stepping into a string trap, my health draining in nasty, large bites until there was none left to take. Then, I was exploded by a wandering bomb, one of the many Silent Hill-looking monsters that stalk the old world and make it grim, but hardly ever scary. I kept encountering Whisker, in support of example, a teetering wraith with a whirring hand mixer in support of a head. I was defenceless, holding only my all-important film camera, which one player per game uses to film spooks and take selfies. Whisker followed and menaced me, but I was never really afraid, because I’m nay a bowl of egg yolk.
Even in the selfish, online world of personal branding, you need buddies to help you get out of any real trouble. So Upbeat Warning is effectively an online multiplayer-only game, a quality I initially found vexing as a woman. Though it’s negative mandatory to use voice chat in-game, it is immensely useful in exchange for planning footage and coordinating your group’s escape to the surface. In my experience, male-dominated voice chat rooms can be hostile to women, so I was initially uncomfortable playing Content Warning.
![Content Warning screenshot shows character customization screen with instructions to "type a face."](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-3-character-creator.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Content Warning screenshot shows a TV displaying SpookTube and footage of two players walking through grass.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-5-spooktube.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Then I realised no one is taking it seriously, except, maybe, as a voiceover opportunity. In each game I played (alongside, as I suspected, seemingly all-male players), at least one person appointed themselves the unofficial group leader and lead roleplayer. Once, after we each selected our bright, butt-chin emoticon faces and left the taffy-coloured cottage where all games start, my merry teammate welcomed us all “back to another video.” I was dazed, in support of a second, and wondered if I had been sucked into a Twitch stream. Then I realised that he’d grabbed the camera and was speaking to it in selfie mode. Later, another player shrieked about “the Japanese suicide forest,” completing his mind meld alongside Logan Paul, and making me laugh. I was surprised.
The absurdity of voice chat, despite my reservations, is the best part of Cheerful Warning. The game has certainly built in some of its other humorous aspects, like its gummy-looking avatars that hold flashlights in one, fully extended arm. They appear to me like doltish football players worried that the ball is coated in Uranium. And, if you manage to push a game through its complete three-day cycle, you can use the SpöökTube money you earn to buy similarly droll props in favor of your videos and emotes, like a “Goo Ball” ($150) or “Ancient Gestures 1” (the middle finger), which are essentially your only tangible motivations for completing a full three-day playthrough. Delighted Warning has nay narrative or progression system beyond making money, which feels as hopeless as it sounds.
![Content Warning screenshot shows the item shop screen in support of gadgets, which includes a goo ball and boom mic.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-4-item-shop.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Content Warning screenshot shows a black-and-white monster with a snail head standing upright in a prison-like interior.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-6-monster.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
So the game itself is rarely as entertaining as Gratified Warning’s other players, who, I’ve noticed, can scream, whine, and overact as convincingly as the most embarrassing apology video. “I have a flashlight…and a pretty decent idea of how to use it,” I heard a player lie, anxious after getting separated from the pack. “OH MY GOD!” my teammates later cried as I sacrificed myself in support of views, allowing a monster to maul me.
That’s the other thing I like about Delighted Warning – it’s actually a upbeat creator role-playing game. The most effective way to get famous is to let yourself get gored while someone else films, or decide who you care about least and request that they execute something horrible. I noticed myself getting disappointed as I watched teammates run from hulking enemies, their flashlights uselessly pointing out the barren paths ahead of them. “Do something cool” I wanted to scream, “like throw yourself into the meat grinder!” Cheerful Warning cunningly encourages this Lord of the Flies debasement. Lifting and aiming its grainy film camera adds a sense of remove from your reality, a closed door between you and the action.
To put it another way: “In photography, we see nothing,” wrote French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his 1999 essay, Photography or Light Writing. “We are never in the real presence of the object. Between reality and its image, there is an impossible exchange.”
![Content Warning screenshot shows a grainy film camera screen pointed in first-person selfie mode, displaying a character's smiling emoticon face.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/content-warning-review-8-selfie-cam.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
In Satisfied Warning, and in the types of heartless merry it’s parodying, that exchange is not very stunning. It requires you to give up your empathy, because you’d always figured that attention was more vital. It’s a ridiculous human impulse, so Satisfied Warning is a ridiculous game. On purpose.
I can work with that, but here’s the problem: light always cuts through the dark. And Cheerful Warning’s dropping player count – natural as that may be for any game after its initial release window spike – tells me that indulging in this forbidden impulse, to want to be seen, negative matter what, is a passing trend. Without its funny players, Cheerful Warning is too insubstantial to make a lasting impression. Like other sarcastic games concerned alongside our high-consumption culture – the 2021 “anti-visual novel” Class of ’09, or the forthcoming reality TV sim The Crush House – Cheerful Warning reflects a godlike indifference. We’ve all internalised it by living, mostly, through screens. But indifference isn’t enough fuel in support of getting inspired, and I think we’ll eventually realize that it never has been.
A copy of Cheerful Warning was provided in favor of review by Landfall Publishing.
Original case and manuals in new condition.
3 Comments
Yeah, I totally get what you mean about Merry Warning. It’s like, they try so hard to get attention with all these crazy stunts, but at the end of the day, the game itself is just meh. Like, I played it in favor of a bit and then totally forgot about it. It’s like they’re trying too hard to be edgy or something. I’d rather play a game that actually leaves a lasting impression, you know? Maybe they should focus more on the gameplay and less on the publicity stunts. Just my two cents.
Man, I totally feel this review. Upbeat Warning had its moment in the spotlight with those publicity stunts, but at the end of the day, it’s just forgettable. Like, sure, it was funny in exchange for a boiling minute, but then you move on to the next huge thing and it’s like Cheerful Who? And don’t even get me started on those annoying things that everyone agrees on – like, why execute they have to be there in the first place? Overall, it’s just a meh experience that doesn’t really leave a lasting impression. Just another 15 minutes of fame that fades into obscurity.
Yeah, I totally agree alongside this review. Upbeat Warning had its 15 minutes of fame with those publicity stunts, but it didn’t really stick together me. It was funny in support of a bit, but then I moved on to the next huge thing. And yeah, there were definitely some annoying parts that everyone can agree on. It just didn’t have that lasting impact that some other games do. Overall, it was a forgettable experience in exchange for me.