Fans of horror games—or those of us who have just been roped into playing with friends under the misleading promise of "it'll be fun"—have been well and truly spoiled recently. There have been a number of entertaining yet hair-raising horror games, and the popularity shows no signs of stopping. In particular, two upcoming games published by CRITICAL REFLEX are destined to pique the interest of any fright fiend.
Everyone fondly remembers the days of waiting for your screen to go to sleep so you could watch those colourful pipes run around your screensaver. If you don't remember, then you're too young to be online—sorry.
Pipes.exe is a first-person horror game which tasks you to climb your way through various, testing environments. Fortunately, you don't have to do it all alone either as Pipes.exe supports up to four players—which certainly makes facing the strangely ominous yet oddly familiar world that little bit less terrifying. If anything, it'll certainly make for some good clips.
In fact, Pipes.exe is one step ahead when it comes to capturing the funniest moments with your friends, implementing a swearing filter which will literally deduct your well-earned points if you're caught shouting naughty words down the microphone. If you're saving up for a particular cosmetic or item to spend your precious points on, you'll want to find some more creative ways to express your distress. You want to be a good worker, after all, and good workers don't curse.
As you climb, you'll need to complete a series of simulated assignments as an employee for an ominous overlord, or a Perfectly Legitimate Tech Company, if you will. These involve what seem like simple tasks, such as collecting a series of artifacts from around the procedurally generated world, before returning them to the recycling bin for "processing." Your only real incentive is proving yourself as a good worker too. No one wants to find out what happens if you're not.
However, your bumbling friends aren't the only thing occupying the space. Each assignment you take on has a series of threats, enemies, and challenges that only increase in difficulty to make your life that little bit harder too. Because scaling a challenging landscape isn't hard enough already.
If you're more of a solo horror fan, then SATED, a cooking-oriented roguelike-inspired horror, approaches the genre differently. Instead of surviving a series of simulated assignments, you have to use a rather unhinged "gacha fridge" where you can spin for ingredients like organs, live insects, batteries, human eyes, and faeces, but as disgusting as that sounds to us, it's bound to appeal to the hordes of monsters that just get hungrier and hungrier the further you progress through the game.
Your assignment here is basically to satisfy the cravings of your clients, aka the horrendous beasts that you find yourself in the company of. You could bung your chosen ingredients into a pot, give it a mix, and see what happens, but the result might not be what you're after. One wrong move, and you could create something moldy, cursed, or even sentient, and let's be honest, no one wants to deal with sentient soup during a lunch rush.
The content of SATED takes a lot of inspiration from games like Cloverpit, Balatro, and even Inscryption. So if you fancy yourself a tense roguelite that makes it feel like everything is on the line, or, if you're a chef with a keen eye for all things disgusting, then SATED probably sounds right up your dark, dilapidated alley. Even if you're not a talented cook, that's sort of the whole point. You're meant to make the most deranged meals imaginable, which is why your ingredients are so questionable.
These games have just been revealed, so neither currently has a release date, but they're still well worth keeping your eye on if you are looking for the next horror to invest your time and sanity into. Both SATED and Pipes.exe are currently available to wishlist on Steam, and it's worth keeping an eye out for any future playtests so you can get stuck right in once you've got the opportunity to.
