Tag: Horror Game

Curse of Resthaven – Demo Impressions

Who knew combining management, rogue-lite and adventure game could create such perfection.

Curse of Resthaven

Developer: Hilltop Studios

Release Date: 29 October 2026

In this single-player narrative roguelite, govern a cursed island as you investigate your niece’s mysterious disappearance. Interrogate, trade, upgrade, and embark upon card-based expeditions to uncover dark secrets – before the next cataclysm strikes.

The Curse of Resthaven demo is very a generous demo. It only took 1 hour for me to be sold, but I still got to play for 2 more, gaining 11% completion on a save file that will, gratefully, transfer over to the full game. Of course, you don’t have to play the demo for that long, but if you are anything like me you won’t be able to put it down.

The structure of Curse of Resthaven is familiar in its elements, but I have never played anything that blended these aspects together so well. In the process of tracking down our missing niece, we are now suddenly responsible for the wellbeing and prosperity of a dying town. Sometimes these things just happen, you know? The demo takes us through our first week in our new role, playing detective, getting to know the townsfolk and seeing to their businesses. All the while time moves forward and life continues, whether we are ready for it or not.

Managing your time is the overarching puzzle, as everything you do progresses the day forward. The triangle of talking to residents to investigate plot points that evolve with time and knowledge, investing in businesses to bring in more goods, money and clout for ourself, and using the resources to go on neat little expeditions is implemented very cleverly. You cannot do one of these things without doing the others. Each feed into eachother and neither detracts from the others. And the genius thing about it is, there is always more to do than you have time for, meaning there is always an interesting and engaging level of decision making in the actions you choose to take. Some things can only be done at certain times, some take longer and new events will happen that change your plans entirely. Every spanner in the works is a new, exciting lead to chase, but is it worth it if it means giving up the only chance you have had in a while to speak to an important character?

If it isn’t clear, I adored this demo. However, my immediate first impression wasn’t the strongest. The first few days felt a little railroaded at times, but this eases off the longer you play and approaching it as a first/tutorial run of the roguelite structure makes the most sense. The only other negative point I have is that I don’t like the trading game. I don’t really understand what I am doing and just cheesed my way through. I learned through time that it isn’t a huge part of the game, but I wanted to bring it up as it made me wonder if this game wasn’t going to be for me early on. If you have similar feelings, please persist, it is so worth it.

To wrap this up, I just want to touch on everything else. The writing is great. Every conversation felt real and set up the world and characters well. Even when I wasn’t getting what I wanted from them, I enjoyed the conversations. Not to mention the game is fully voice acted. My limited experience with the expeditions was also fantastic and left a wonderful impression. Every element of the gameplay is fleshed out enough to feel like it belongs in the game, with nothing feeling like it is there just for the sake of it. Resthaven itself is fun to explore, with the art style bringing the place to life in its own atmospheric way. The entire game is just gloomy enough, and just weird enough, and there are more than enough mysterious hooks to have me 1000% intrigued about everything that is going on in this strange place.

Demo Length – 3 hrs
At a glance
+ A story based, non-action rogue-lite that works beautifully
+ Everything that you can do feeds into everything else that you can do in one way or another, and it is up to you to decide how to approach that
+ So much to do and not enough time = engaging choices and ‘one more day’ energy
+ The writing hits in character dialogue, mysteries and expedition stories
+ The mysteries… I have got to know more
+ Voice acted
+ The setting is perfect
+ The story evolving and events progressing throughout the week makes the world feel alive
– I did not follow the trading game at all

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Desktop Explorer – Demo Impressions

Step aside logic puzzles, there is a new contender in town.

Desktop Explorer

Developer: Recurring Dream

Release Date: 17 Jul 2026

Rummage through the abandoned profiles of an old PC to unravel an inherited mystery. What secrets hide in this eerie adventure of cryptic games and outdated software? Who was using this computer? And what happened to them?

Desktop Explorer is what I want to call an OS exploration game, but not like any other I have played. The entire premise of the demo revolves around solving the puzzles on the system, incrementally unlocking new folders and using the files within to solve the next puzzle. They are presented to you through a light horror adventure, laterally unravelling the presumably real life mystery of your uncles amnesia/history/life.

The immersive nature of the OS threw me at first, as puzzle solutions can and will be found throughout the functions of the programmes themselves. Every solution had me feeling like a tech genius, despite – or should I say, especially because of – the brain scratching moments that had me starting at the screen, browsing back and forth wondering what on earth I was supposed to do. The information is there for those lightbulb moments and I feel that is all that you should know going into this game.

After seeking out logic puzzles for the last while, Desktop Explorer is an absolute breath of fresh air and I can’t say I have played anything else like it. I was thoroughly invested in this demo both mechanically and narratively and I highly recommend checking it out for yourself.

Demo Length – ~1 hour
At a glance
+ Excellent puzzles
+ Diagetic puzzles
+ Diagetic hints
+ Immersive
+ Engaging story
+/- Doesn’t feel hand holdy
+/- Disturbing enough. Not too scary (yet)

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Grunn – Demo Impressions

Who gardens at night anyway? ⁿᵒᵗ ᵐᵉ ᵃⁿʸᵐᵒʳᵉ

Grunn

Developer:
Sokpop Collective,
Tom van den Boogaart

Release Date:
4 October 2024

A gardener gets hired for maintenance work over the weekend. A simple task, but strangely some tools are missing…The owner of the garden isn’t around, and their house is off-limits. Perhaps new tools can be found in the mysterious town, or maybe some of the reserved townsfolk have seen them?

Grunn mixes together a type of game that I love with a type of game that I hate. Together, they become a genius concoction that I absolutely don’t want to play despite REALLY wanting to play. Let me explain.

I love a task simulator. Give me games like Powerwash Sim, House Flipper or similar and I can play them all day, getting myself into that hyper fixated state of ‘just one more task’. The entire idea of this genre – in my opinion – is to allow for a flow state, zoning out of your everyday life, keeping your hands busy and your dopamine bar full. No thinking, only doing. As soon as I begun cutting the grass in this slightly overgrown garden I instantly fell into this zone, my safe zone, forgetting any uncanny feelings I may have had prior. What a perfect zone to get someone in before intruding, pulling the rug and making their hair stand on edge.

In Grunn, we are hired to do some gardening. We are left some instructions, a deadline, and that is all you get as you are let loose into this sandbox of oddities. I am not going to spoil in which way this is a horror game, you will have to play yourself for that, but I will say that at one point I did squeal. Once you notice something strange, you may notice something else, until the things you are noticing are probably nothing at all. Or.. If you are like me you will just get on with the job you were hired to do, happily snip-snip-snipping away without a care in the world. Once you realise, however, that things don’t quite seem ordinary, the dread creeps in and the real game begins.

You have been placed into a playground and the world is yours to explore, experiment and tidy up.. or not. Every action you take, object you find or information you obtain will lead you to the next, adding to your knowledge banks ready to take action somewhere down the line. The game takes place with a running clock, which means you only have limited time to do what you need to do, and there is far more to do than you could achieve before the deadline. The time pressure looms as you make your choice on what you pursue. I recommend a notebook as you find yourself zipping around, following clues without context and discover leads that you may want to follow up on.

I found the games unique aesthetic to be a little jarring at first. The generally soft colour palette draws you into the initial ‘cozy’ atmosphere, but it never feels perfect as what can only be described as a surreal wobble obfuscates your environment. This can be turned off in the settings but I quickly got used to it, preferring to keep it on as a scapegoat for any potential peripheral movement that should not be, that I would rather deny happened.

The demo contains 5 endings, with the full game presumably adding many more. In my playtime I found 2, neither of which being the true ending of the demo. While I had ideas of more things to try, I decided to wait for the full game to puzzle it out. Maybe then, I will finally dare to stay out after dark.

If you enjoy weird and wonderful, subversions and curiosity, I recommend giving this one a go. Something is going on here, and it is NOT wholesome.

Demo Length – 1+ Hours
At a glance
+ All in on the surreal aesthetic that can so easily turn creepy.
+ Tasks feel good to do and complete.
+ Freedom/No handholding.
+ So weird.
+ Multiple endings feel achievable in a game this length and densely packed.
+ Non-traditional puzzle game.
+ Contrasts cozy ideas with less cozy moments.

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The Horror at Highrook – Demo Impressions

Screw the madness, I have got to know more..

The Horror at Highrook

Developer: Nullpointer Games

Release Date: To be announced

The Horror at Highrook is an occult card crafting RPG. Explore a haunted mansion with your team of investigators, summon dark entities, craft powerful protections, uncover the fate of the missing family, and choose your own path through the darkness.

I have been searching for my perfect crafting game for a while now. So often I have the urge to gather stuff to make things, to distribute them, to gather more and make more, but I have yet to find the jackpot game that satisfies my very specific itch. I didn’t even consider I would find it here. The Horror at Highrook demo allows players to play through Chapter 1 of the game. I could have played a LOT more. I am not saying that this is the perfect game or the jackpot, but based on this first hour, it not only hit that compulsive management corner of my brain, but made my eyes sparkle at the idea of increasing complexity. All of this, seasoned with a really enjoyable flavour made this demo an absolute treat.

The game begins with an instruction manual which I found incredibly easy to read. It suits this game a lot more than a conventional tutorial would, immediately setting you loose playing god over a group of investigative explorers. The house that we are inspecting is our board, the team and their belongings are our cards, and it is up to us to set everyone away doing tasks, using the resources that we have to discover new tasks to perform.

As we perform our tasks we find journal pages and other bits of lore scattered throughout the mansion. This guides us forward as we follow in the footsteps of the family that lived here. Doing questionable rituals to appease eldritch horrors is never a good idea, with one exception. Luckily for us, we are doing it to rescue someone, which makes it absolutely fine, and we can all be sure that nothing terrible will happen.

I like the cast of characters. One of them wants to leave – rightfully so might I add – but is reluctantly convinced to stay due to history with another character and despite the fact that I have only known them for 30 minutes, I totally believe it. I didn’t expect to empathise with a card on a board but it is the little details like that that engage the player within the story and make it a memorable experience.

It is hard to put my finger on the exact reason this game hits for me. It has a lot of elements that I like individually, like crafting, management, cosmic horror, character interactions, investigation, and even exploration somehow works considering we are on a static board. Everything feels additive to the next thing with no padding involved. So far it has been linear and I imagine the rest will continue to be the same, I just hope the game continues to feel as fresh as the beginning, as getting new cards is a dopamine rush that only has limited legs. Either way, I will certainly be keeping an eye on the game, consider it wishlisted!

Demo Length – 1+ hour
At a glance
+ Easy to learn.
+ Drip fed the story.
+ The character interactions.
+ The theming is great, especially when surprises happen.
+ I just love arranging my cards on a mystery mansion.
+/- On one hand I could see the game remaining engaging with complexity, but on the other I could see it getting repetitive. Hoping for the former.
+/- We can choose the way we manage our time and characters but the overall story so far appears to be linear.

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A Noob’s [Mini] Review – SOMA

If you play one horror game in your life, I believe it should be this one.

Explaining in too much detail why you should play SOMA runs the risk of ruining the reason that you should play SOMA, but I am going to give it a shot.

SOMA is a narrative experience like no other I have ever had. While it isn’t gameplay heavy, it is a classic example of a story thats impact is amplified due to the medium and the player input that brings.

In this game we play as Simon Jarrett, an ordinary young man who has suffered the misfortune of a brain injury. Taking part in some experimental treatment, Simon arrives to get his brain scan but it does not go as expected. As he comes to, it rapidly becomes clear that all is not how it seems. 

This is a game of linear exploration. From a first person perspective, we guide Simon through an ordeal, moving forward through circumstances that are horrifying on a spectrum from deeply personal, to unfathomable.

If you are a person that does not enjoy playing horror games for reasons like jump scares, intensity and/or gore (like me), then all is not lost. While the atmosphere is indeed spooky, the most worthwhile aspects of the game come from the themes and events that can stay on your mind for weeks, as opposed to a cheap scare. To account for these people, the developers added a ‘Safe Mode’. This is how I played and it prevents any lose state, allowing you to be confident that you won’t lose any progress while you explore the environment (which I highly recommend doing to get all of the context).

SOMA is not a pleasant experience. It is haunting, dark and bleak. But, it is up there with the most thoughtful games I have ever played and I think about it on at least a monthly basis. It presents the player with choices that have no easy answer and deals with existentialism among other topics in very interesting ways. It is the only horror game that I would encourage anyone unsure to try to look past the genre, and if you are a horror fan? Turn off the lights, get fully immersed and enjoy.

Developer: Frictional Games
Publisher: Frictional Games
Release date: 22nd September 2015
Average play time: 10 hours
Available on: PC, PlayStation (4, 5) and Xbox (One, Series X/S, Game Pass)

If you would like to see my live playthrough, here it is!

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Review – Until Dawn – PS4

Until Dawn is a Horror Survival Game with a difference. It plays similar to Heavy Rain, by which I mean your choices determine the outcome of the game. The butterfly effect system means that certain things that you do or choices that you make can hugely change your game, making everyone’s first play-through unique to them-self. I have to advise you that these games are best played without doing any googling or reading and just using your instincts and seeing where that takes you. Once you finish the game you can play again or go back chapter by chapter to see what you missed. I found it hilarious looking back and seeing what awful decisions I made!

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The game starts in a lodge in a secluded snowy mountain. Eight friends are having a vacation when a tragic event occurs.This is the tutorial level that allows you to get a feel for the game and sets up the story nicely. The game then skips forward to the year anniversary of the accident. The group are continuing their tradition and returning to the lodge spend the night.

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The game is played from eight different characters point of view. The goal is to see who can survive Until Dawn. As the night progresses we learn more about the threats that the characters face and how they link to the past. Each chapter brings us an hour closer to dawn and there are 10 in total.

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I wasn’t quite as attached to the characters as I was in Heavy Rain. I guess when there are so many characters they don’t get as much development and/or you don’t spend as long playing that character. Having said that, they were also a different age group in a totally different situation so it was never going to be the same. It just didn’t punch me in the feels quite as hard as Heavy Rain did. Nearly, but not quite. The characters themselves were quite cliche, from the jock guy to the geeky guy to the mean girls, but some of them changed as the game went on. I grew really fond of some of them that I hated in the beginning and was genuinely gutted when I lost a certain few of them.

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Quite honestly.. if you aren’t a horror fan than this game probably isn’t for you. I adored Heavy Rain and was excited by the concept of this game. It turns out that I am a massive wimp and needed to recruit my Dad to help me play the scary parts. I got as far as Chapter 5 on my own before I couldn’t take it anymore. We do make a good team, he does the slow exploration parts where there are likely to be jump scares and then I take over for the fast parts as I am better at the QTE’s. I also make all of the decisions, which it turns out that I’m not great at doing – due to 1. being indecisive and 2. shockingly bad judgment.

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I didn’t know what to expect from the horror side of things. When I started the game I thought it was a slasher game, from the things I’d heard and the tone of the game, but it turned out to be a bit of everything. Think of most horror movies you’ve seen. A bit of each of them has probably been incorporated one way or another. The atmosphere is very spooky and there are frights around every corner. If you are a hardened horror fan then you will be fine to play it alone in the dark. I screamed at parts and my Dad didn’t even flinch, it just depends on the individual. Overall though, even if it doesn’t scare you (which it probably will), you’ve got to be impressed by the variety they have managed to fit into one story. I had read in other reviews that the first half is best and that it got more silly as time went on so I was expecting to be disappointed, but in the end I really enjoyed how it all came together. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen and I thought it all fit together really well!

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I can’t comment on the sound because I have the volume turned right down but I did notice while walking through the snow, the snow under your shoes sounds just like real life, I literally could have been walking out in real snow for all I knew. The only other part of the sound that I can comment on is that it gets loud when it makes you jump. The score must have been doing a good enough job to create the atmosphere though for me to need to turn it down in the first place. The ‘O Death’ song is great too.

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It’s not the longest game to play through but it definitely has replay value, even if it is just to make all of the opposite choices and see what you end up with. I would recommend going for the Platinum trophy on this one. It’s a good way to see the majority of what there is to see and still enjoy it. Do your first play-through on your own then if you look up the trophies, you will only have to do two more play-throughs at the most to get platinum and they will both be different to your original one. I haven’t got mine yet – wimp – but I’ve got it planned, I only had to go back two chapters the first time, then I will have to do one more play-through from near the beginning. If you are doing this make sure to just use chapter select to restart your game instead of starting a whole new game.

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I still can’t decide whether I liked the addition of the totems or not. Totems are collectible items that you find on the ground and they give you a small glimpse into a possible outcome. There are 5 different colours which equate to five different categories – Danger, Loss, Death, Guidance and Fortune. I did think it was a really clever idea, however at the same time it did influence some of my decisions, I would obsess when one of my characters was near fire because I had seen an explosion. I know that’s what they were there for but it makes me wonder whether the game would have been better without having these little clues.

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Overall, it’s one to play, without a doubt. Fans of interactive movie games and fans of the horror genre are guaranteed to enjoy this game and it would be a great entry game for anyone who has never played before. Even if you are a wimp like me, keep the lights on, turn the volume down and have some friends over. Of course, if you want to play it how it’s supposed to be played I salute you. Dark, loud and shit-stained pants. Don’t go in expecting a masterpiece but do expect to have some fun.

SPOILERS AHEAD – DO NOT CONTINUE UNLESS YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE GAME

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