Hello! Cat (Red Lace Reviews) and I are back to bring you more freebies for the fearless (and not so fearless) from Steam. Some free games are full-fledged games and some are demos to an upcoming game and sometimes they’re a prequel to an already existing game.
It’s been so fascinating watching games evolve and grow in the indie market. The independent developers have really revived the horror genre. I’m not trying to say that indies have never been available but they’re so much more accessible now and it’s amazing. It literally kills us that there are o many books to read, movies to watch and so, so many games to play. Just, why can we not have all the hours we need to play alllllll the games that we want to.
Annnways, back to the topic. We’ve found ten more free-to-play games for your playing perusal. Some were good, some were meh but most of them were fantastic so take a look at More Freebies for the Fearless!
Deceit
Played by Cat
Developer: Baseline
Publisher: Baseline
Release Date: 3 March 2017
Review: Deceit is the name of the game in this multiplayer, first-person shooter. I played this with friends and had fun—it follows the popular formula of one player being the bad guy, so while the survivors attempt to escape, the infected member of the group must sabotage and play it cool, or be at risk of getting voted out. It got some laughs, and definitely had us distrusting each other.
Ginkgo
Played by Cat
Developer: Ginkgo
Publisher: Ginkgo
Release Date: 26 June 2020
Review: Ginkgo is another game to implement a unique mechanic that worked well. Inspired by East Asian horror, it relies on sewing together pieces of the environment in order to progress. It’s short, has some tense chase sequences, and all in all I liked it for what it was. Described as a demo, it’s unknown if it’s a part of a larger project, but it would be nice to see
Kraven Manor
Played by Cat
Developer: Demon Wagon Studios
Publisher: Demon Wagon Studios
Release Date: 26 September 2014
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Kraven Manor, especially its unique mechanic of having to interact with a miniature scale replica of the game’s layout in order to progress, each room added dynamically by the player. Sounds cool, right? I’ve never encountered anything like it since. Throughout the exploration of the expansive manor, there were certainly scares to be had and backstory to piece together.
Lust from Beyond
Played by Cat
Developer: Movie Games Lunarium
Publisher: Movie Games S.A.
Release Date: 31 October 2019
Review: It’s official: I love demos that act as standalone games. Lust From Beyond has a self-contained story that serves as a prologue for the main game, taking place in the mansion of a cult, and yes, there’s no getting around the sexual themes, however its optional censored mode can dial down the explicit imagery. I enjoyed the exploration, the collectibles and secrets, as well as the atmosphere.
CW: sexual violence
Mr. Hopp’s Playhouse
Played by Cat
Developer: Moonbit
Publisher: Moonbit
Release Date: 7 October 2019
Review: A 2D sidescroller, Mr. Hopp’s Playhouse is a fun, if somewhat frustrating (that darn bunny) little game. When her toy seems to come to life, Ruby must escape her house by avoiding his attention, but of course it’s not that easy. With three endings in total, I replayed it three times, my patience tested and sometimes failing altogether. There’s not a lot to it, but it totally works!
Not in Heaven
Played by Gracie
Developer: Ricardo Pratas
Publisher: Ricardo Pratas
Release Date: January 31, 2019
Review: I saw some, I don’t really want to say ‘negative’ reviews because they sounded like legitimate complaints, but some reviews mentioning some glitches. They seem to have been fixed as far as I can tell. I didn’t run into any in my game, anyways. The one part that made me wonder if it was a glitch was escorting two children through an area. You can interact with them for help with some puzzles. In one section the speech bubble came up but there was no prompt to speak with them. So I wasn’t sure if the next part was something that would have happened regardless or if it happened because the speech bubbles didn’t interact properly.
I would like to give a heavy, heavy content warning for child death. Violent child death. I do think it’s handled well and the plot holds it up well. It didn’t feel used for shock value, at all. I generally don’t like when a story uses it as just an “Oooh, look how edgy we are! Aren’t we extreeeme?” kind of thing but I didn’t feel that from this game.
The story itself is well told and the area designs are very interesting. The puzzles are light and not very hard but they fit the narrative well. Most people do use a mouse to play but I don’t a lot of the time if it’s a slower paced game but you will definitely want a mouse for this or turning your character will be very, very slow. You’ll also want to make sure your volume is turned down quite a bit because Max Volume seems to be its default when it loads and if you’re wearing headphones it is loud.
I do really love the opening music and the sound design in general is excellent.
CW: Child Death
Rhome
Played by Gracie
Developer: SMU Guildhall
Publisher: SMU Guildhall
Release Date: February 21, 2020
Review: The house is the showcase of the game. It’s mainly a walking sim with some very light puzzle aspects and a decent story to uncover. But the rooms you travel through are surreal and wildly inventive. It’s worth it just to check out the house itself.
September 1999
Played by Gracie
Developer: 98DEMAKE
Publisher: 98DEMAKE
Release Date: October 10, 2018
Review: I honestly wouldn’t classify this as a ‘game’ per se. It’d barely be considered a walking sim. It’s more like a short (very short, exactly 5 minutes and 30 seconds – never look at my Steam play times for an accurate representation, I have a bad habit of leaving them open) found footage movie. Which has a tiny bit of implied story but if you’re looking for a game I’d give it a miss. However, it is only 5 minutes long so if you want to check it out it’s not a chunk out of your day.
Serena
Played by Gracie
Developer: Senscape
Publisher: Senscape
Release Date: January 30th, 2019
Review: I played this quite a while ago, probably close to its release date and I remembered liking it so I thought I’d give it a replay. And I do still like it. It’s a walking sim type but you are confined to a cabin that gradually changes as you examine everything. The story is very well told and had a twist near the end that I didn’t see coming. It’s fairly short but well worth it.
Wardwell House
Played by Gracie
Developer: Moolion
Publisher: Moolion
Release Date: January 14, 2020
Review: I liked the still photos as background and the story was intriguing enough to make me want to finish it. I liked the idea of using real pictures, props and scenes to make a game and I can tell a lot of time and effort was probably put into it, just going by how everything, especially the house, was set up. However, I had a lot of issues with it, as well. It ran fine so they weren’t ‘bugs’ or anything.
Ok, for starters the background is completely black and white. Which I really don’t mind. The Lost Crown has a nice muted grayish black and white aesthetic to it that feels nice with some muted colours here and there. It’s nice. Wardwell House is a more harsh black and white contrast, which, again, I think could have worked. But it almost hid some of the more ‘creepy’ aspects are almost buried because with no distinct shades it would get lost in the black.
I have to explain this to explain my biggest pet peeve I had with it. The way the game is set up is there are small yellow dots that you right click to zoom in on to read the info (story) attached. Cool. However, when you zoom in it does not center on where your cursor is. Ok, fine. You need to move a small, tiny white box to the general area where the yellow dot was (because it disappears). And it took me way too long to find the tiny white box on a black and white background and realize “Hey, I need to move the box there instead of the cursor“. The text is also white and when its on the white areas it can be really hard to read.
But it is free and the story is interesting. So it’s worth giving it a shot. I want to say I completed it in a half hour to an hour?
If you’d like to check out another really awesome free game you can check out my review of Doki Doki Literature Club
Did you check out any from last week’s list Freebies for the Fearless? If so, how many did you like? Or, hopefully, something from this list piqued your interest. Let us know down below!
GracieKat was the first co-host of Sci-Fi & Scary, Lilyn’s partner-in-crime, and sub-head of the Kali Krew. She reviews horror books, movies, and games for the site. She also does a weekly Focus on the Frightful feature, and is the site list-maker. She is also in control of the Sci-Fi & Scary podcast which will relaunch soon.
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