1000 Heads Among the Trees (PC) review "Tourist trap(ped)"

My thoughts when beginning pretty much any Steam scary piece are thus: “Let me guess: my car will break down, I'll get out and investigate a nearby town, creepy stuff will happen, then it'll turn out that either 1) I was actually insane or in a coma the whole time, or 2) there was a secret experiment under the town that resulted in all of the horrific things I encountered.”

Steam's cheap horror library has left me cynical, as one could expect. Any time I decide to give a first-person job a shot, I go through the motions and experience the same content I've already been through a thousand times. However, there's one silver lining: now and then, a game surprises me. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's beautiful.

1000 Heads Among the Trees starts off on the right foot by dropping you into a lightly populated part of Peru. This proves a pleasant change of pace because it's an actual location on a map and not a generic locale in the middle of nowhere or a poorly designed house. It turns out the protagonist's car didn't break down, and he actually wants to be there. Someone in horror games finally made it to their destination. He came armed with only a camera and curiosity, and we all know what the latter gets you in offerings like this...



Your mission here is kind of vague. You wander around Cachiche, which is part of Ica, Peru, take pictures of things that looks suspicious or supernatural, then show them to the locals. They relate local ghost stories to you, dishing some of the town's interesting and rich lore. You see, Cachiche is said to have started as a witch colony. Historically, the Spanish Inquisition did indeed persecute women in Peru and accuse them of witchcraft. Those ladies fled eventually, settling in the aforementioned region. As it turns out, one famous witch there is said to have removed a boy's stammer, and that child grew up and commissioned a now famous statue to be erected in Cachiche, depicting the woman with outstretched arms, both a skull and an owl resting at her feet.

Yeah, that's your vacation spot: a place that sounds stuffed to the brim with magic and ghosts...

Action gets off to a lax start. Objectives aren't entirely clear, so you wander around and take shots of anything that looks weird. A random guy stands in the middle of the street, surrounded by an ominous red hue. Click! A shadowy figure lies on the floor of an abandoned house. Click! Ghostly lights appear all over a pathway that leads to a small house outside the village. Click! And there you find a dog guarding the place. Click! You examine the pooch's photo and see a shot of him bereft of flesh.

Sadly, showing these pictures to locals doesn't always drum up intriguing topics. Sometimes they start chatting about cool stuff, like the previously discussed witch or other bits of lore. Other times, folks say something like, “Oh yeah, that's a ghost alright.”



Honestly, lore is only half of what makes this title worthwhile, as noticing eerie details or witnessing outright strange occurrences adds graciously to the experience. At one point, you see a child standing next to a building, except you notice his shadow is that of a dog standing upright. You snap a pic and suddenly the building collapses, revealing a hellish portal inside. During another segment, you approach what appears to be a pub or restaurant with a devil mask resting on a window sill. You take a shot and the building magically turns into a pile of rubble. Passersby blame an earthquake, though it's odd that only this construct suffered.

After some time, you get the impression that some of the citizens you interview are just yanking your crank, as if some of the legends they offer are silly ghosts stories made to appease or insult tourists rather than cultural tales. In a way, 1000 Heads casts a light not only on cool, creepy Peruvian folklore, but also on paranormal claims contrived for tourist consumption. You can't really blame townsfolk for making stuff up, either, because they're probably tired of travelers treating their history and stories like they're fun vacation attractions.

For a while, the campaign hits you with further peculiar material, including tremendous visions playing on the skyline. However, things begin to peter out while you attempt to follow the vague objectives left by the protagonist in his journal. One of them tells you to return to a place you forgot about, wherever the hell that is. After a while, you figure out where it is you're supposed to go, and what you can only assume is a bleak ending plays out. It's difficult to say because the closing cutscene is quite surreal, almost like you're watching a nightmare.



You know what? I'll take it! I'll take “I don't know what's going on, but it feels like I'm in some artsy corner of hell now” over “Actually, our hero is in an institution and everything you've seen is a hallucination.” Endings like this call back to certain Italian horror movies of the '70s and '80s and their unwillingness to make sense. Granted, both scenarios I described above fall under the umbrella of using madness as a scary device, but one example handles the concept with more creativity, flare, and grace than the other.

And that's what's great about 1000 Heads. It's not your standard cheapo horror adventure where all the same nonsense occurs and you feel like you just wasted an hour of your life. You don't run away from ominous beings or break into abandoned asylums or wander through empty towns. You examine a region's stories, and perhaps unwittingly become part of the tales yourself, with citizens telling future vacationers about the curious wanna-be journo who went snooping and vanished mysteriously. Somehow, that's more terrifying than being chased by the same skinless character model for the 80th time.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 01, 2025) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.