===== Fright Night =====

{{ :shows:frightnight.png?nolink&500 |}}

==== History ====

Fright Night is a messy game show by {zchannel:forth} based around the theme of a haunted castle. The host is a grey caracal called {zchar:ven} who plays a character called Doctor Payne, and wears a white lab coat with stains of unknown origin throughout the show. Games are set in the castle's array of laboratories, dungeons and habitats of strange creatures.

==== Format ====

Two teams of two players, coloured green and yellow, compete against each other in a series of three Halloween-themed games as they move through the castle to the Dragon Den in the centre. The castle is said to change shape every time it's explored, so the route to the den is different each time - therefore the games played are different in each episode. The route is shown between rounds on a slot machine-like display, with the players pulling a lever to stop the next reel and reveal the next game.

In each game, the players have the aim of amassing eyeballs to add to their collection - the green team collect goat-like green eyes and the yellow team's eyes are oval-slitted and snakelike. After the first two games, the players have the opportunity to gamble their collected eyes in a game called Eyeball Roulette, where each team can offer up to three eyeballs to spin on a wheel. If an eyeball lands in a slot the same colour as itself, then the team get that eyeball back plus two bonus ones - if an eyeball lands in the opposite colour then it is given to the other team.

After three games have been played, the final round takes place outside the Dragon Den. The team's collected eyeballs are now represented by balloons of similar eye-like appearance filled with white gunge, and the objective for each team is to destroy as many of the other team's eyeballs as possible.

The winning team is the one with the most eyeballs left over at the end of the final round - they get a chance to compete for a set of prizes either by going by themselves into the show's infamous Dragon Den located at the back of the set, or sending the losing team in in their place.

==== Games ====

=== Snake Pit ===

One player from each team is seated in the centre of a large coiled snake prop, with the snake's mouth arching over their head. The other players have to hunt among steam, vines and pools of slime in the rest of the room for eggs, and throw them to their trapped partner. With each egg successfully caught, the opposing team's trapped player gets a burst of gunge from their snake's mouth overhead.

=== Haunted Halls ===

A player from each team has to run back and forth down a hall among glowing balloon ghosts to collect items and put them in their own bucket. At the back of the stage, their teammates are each seated beneath much larger ghost props - if a balloon is touched by one of the running players, a payload of slimy "ectoplasm" is dropped on their partner.

=== Pie-ron Maidens ===

A player from each team stands in an upright coffin-shaped chamber, with a lid on the ground in front of them piled with coloured shaving foam. The free team members have to construct winches by finding the pieces around the room and piecing them together, then pull on the rope to swing the lid shut on the opposing team's player, splattering them with a full body size pie.

The top of the coffins have a few openings so that when the lid is pressed on to them the shaving foam is forced up out of the holes, producing a fountain of gungy foam - though the effect is enhanced with some sprayers built into the coffins.

=== Test Tubes ===

All four players sit in round clear vertical tubes that are arranged in a square "rack" that can rotate around, with the teammates sitting diagonally opposite one another. Two players at a time are rotated to the front two positions, beneath a pair of gunge pods. The two of them have to use hand buzzers to answer a question from the host - if a player gets the question wrong, or is beaten to the correct answer by the other player, they're gunged and their tube fills up a little.

The tubes then rotate a quarter turn to send the winner of the round off to the back, with the loser of the round being kept on to answer a question against their other neighbour. On each gunging the tubes fill first to calf height, then tummy height, then chest height - after being gunged three times, that player is out of the game.

=== Monster Meals ===

This game takes place in the castle kitchen, with pans and buckets of multi-coloured slime strewn around the messy game area. One player from each team is seated in a gunge tank at the front of the kitchen, with the others on the raised area behind them.

The trapped players are shown 'recipes' of two or three ingredients at a time - the ingredients can be identified by colours, names or textures. They have to communicate the ingredients up to the player on the top, who has to find the given types of gunge and pour them into the big bowl-like container above the opposing team's tank. Once a recipe is complete the player can pull a lever to drop the mixed gunge on to their opponent below.

=== The Ducking Stools ===

All four players are seated on chairs with five-point harnesses, side by side and dangling above a moat of murky slime in front of a rough stony wall background. The chairs are mounted to vertical rails that can shift them up and down.

One after another, the players are spotlit and have to answer a question correctly to pass it on to the next player. While their light is on, their team mate’s seat will slowly descend, submerging them gradually into the gunge moat - with bursts of extra slime from overhead gargoyle heads at certain points. Once they're up to their knees, their chair drops to the bottom of the moat and then hauls them back up again, dunking them in for a complete gunge submersion and taking them out of the game.

=== Hydra Hygiene ===

In this game, the game area is dominated by three snake-like heads side by side with their fangs bared. The teams are armed with giant toothbrushes, and they have to dip them into a bucket of their team color gunge and paint it on to the fangs. The game is judged on how much of an area they’ve colored when time expires.

Common tactics for this game include players painting over the opponents’ color with their own, or chasing after the other team to smear gunge on them instead. In addition, the area surrounding the heads is a shallow pool of green slime with gunge oozing down into it from between the hydra’s fangs, so slipping is common if players try to go too fast.

==== Finale: Dragon Den ====

For the show's finale, the team with the most points can either choose to send the losing team into the Dragon Den or face it themselves. The pair of contestants is seated in a large cauldron that is dragged through the artifical cave entrance at the back of the set. In here, they find themselves slowly being rotated underneath a set of large prop dragon heads aimed down at them, which one by one spew "bile" and other fluids down on to them through their nostrils and mouths, covering them in gunge and filling up the cauldron around them. Under the onslaught, they have to answer five questions from the host correctly to earn their freedom again, with score being kept with a set of five glowing lanterns mounted on the cave walls.

The gunging sequence can be altered on the fly, to position contestants beneath the maw of a dragon and gunge them directly for a wrong answer, or to just let the pouring gunge be a random distraction from the questions.

==== Influences ====

The Dragon Den was invented to be a setting that didn't require a lot of setup around it and which could be used for more intense, chaotic gungings to suit willing contestants like Isla and Gwen! Later on, the rest of the Fright Night format got built around that final game. Its aesthetic comes from similarly themed game shows like Terror Towers or It's Torture.

==== Stories ====

{zshowstories:frightnight}