The Consumed launches October 23, and if you’re like me, the wait is the worst part. So here’s a list of games that hit the same nerves: night shifts, empty liminal spaces, cameras as weapons, and low-poly dread.
Several of these aren’t just similar. The developers name them as direct inspirations, and I’ve marked those. Each one gets a quick note on why it’s here, so you can pick the ones closest to what you’re excited about.
1. Five Nights at Freddy’s
Why it’s here: the night-shift security guard
The obvious one. A lone night guard, five nights, and a building full of human-shaped things that shouldn’t move. The Consumed shares the premise but gets you out of the chair: you’re walking the floor and securing stores, not watching cameras. I did a full comparison here.
2. The Closing Shift
Why it’s here: mundane work, wrong atmosphere
Chilla’s Art’s game about closing up a coffee shop at night is the purest version of the “just doing my job while something is off” feeling. The Consumed runs on the same dread: the checklist still has to get done, whatever’s in the building with you.
3. Fatal Frame (Project Zero)
Why it’s here: your camera is your weapon (direct inspiration)
The classic camera-as-weapon horror series, and one of The Consumed’s biggest inspirations. You fight ghosts by photographing them, which means looking straight at the thing you most want to look away from. The Consumed’s camcorder works on the same principle: take a photo in stills mode and whatever you catch is banished, with limited film and a recharge between shots.
4. Resident Evil (the classic ones, and RE7)
Why it’s here: the survival horror toolkit
Limited ammo, two sizes of healing, permanent max-health upgrades, a safe room with its own music, and items you rotate in your hands to inspect. If any of that makes you nostalgic, The Consumed has all of it, set in a dead mall. I wrote a whole post on The Consumed as Backrooms meets Resident Evil.
5. The Exit 8
Why it’s here: paranoia in a liminal corridor (direct inspiration)
A short, brilliant game about walking the same underground corridor and spotting what’s changed. It’s one of the games the developers point to directly, and you can see why: it trains you to distrust every poster and every figure in the hall, which is exactly the mindset you’ll want walking past the Hargrove Galleria’s mannequins.
6. POOLS
Why it’s here: pure liminal space (direct inspiration)
Empty, tiled, echoing pool rooms with nothing in them, and that’s the whole point. POOLS is one of the influences The Consumed’s developers cite directly. It’s the Backrooms feeling in its most distilled form.
7. Bloodwash (and Puppet Combo’s other games)
Why it’s here: PSX horror done right (direct inspiration)
Puppet Combo is the name in modern PS1-style horror, and Bloodwash, a night at a laundromat that goes very wrong, is another direct influence. Low-poly figures, crunchy textures, and a mundane location at night. If The Consumed’s look is what grabbed you, start here.
8. Silent Hill (and P.T.)
Why it’s here: psychological horror in a place that’s wrong (direct inspiration)
Silent Hill wrote the book on horror where the place is the antagonist: fog, rust, and a town that seems to know who you are. And P.T., the playable teaser for the cancelled Silent Hills, distilled it into one looping hallway that still haunts people a decade later. Both are named inspirations for The Consumed, and you’ll feel them in its slow, oppressive atmosphere and in how much it lets the building do the scaring.
9. Shift at Midnight
Why it’s here: is that customer actually human? (direct inspiration)
An online co-op detective horror game for up to three players. You work randomly generated shifts and investigate your customers, because some of them are only pretending to be human. Get one wrong and the job turns into survival: board up, set traps, and hide. That pivot, from routine work to barricading yourself in, is exactly the nerve The Consumed hits every time you drop a shutter between you and something in the mall.
10. Dreamcore
Why it’s here: the Backrooms, as big as they get (direct inspiration)
A psychological exploration game set in what it bills as the largest liminal world ever made, with no guides and no set path, only your intuition. If the Backrooms feeling is what pulls you in, this is that feeling at full scale. The Consumed takes it somewhere more focused: one dead mall, photographs of more mall stretching away at both ends, and a job to do inside it.
11. I’m on Observation Duty
Why it’s here: the security job, from the other side
You watch security camera feeds and report anomalies. It’s slower and more observational than The Consumed, but it scratches the same itch of being the person whose job it is to notice when the building starts acting wrong.
Honorable Mentions (Not Games)
- Local 58 (direct inspiration): Kris Straub’s analog horror series of hijacked TV broadcasts, and a big part of where The Consumed’s tape-footage look comes from
- The Boiled One Phenomenon (direct inspiration): proof that a grainy, low-information image can stay with you longer than any monster reveal
- Kane Pixels’ The Oldest View (direct inspiration): Kane Pixels’ series after The Backrooms, and one the developers specifically name. If you only watch one thing on this list, make it this.
- Kane Pixels’ The Backrooms: the found-footage series that turned a creepypasta into a phenomenon
- Dan Bell’s Dead Mall Series: real dead malls on YouTube, the Hargrove Galleria’s real-world cousins
- Mallsoft albums like Cat System Corp.’s Palm Mall: the soundtrack of an empty shopping center
- Dawn of the Dead (1978): the original “horror in a mall as consumer satire”
And Then: The Consumed
Once you’ve worked through the list, The Consumed is waiting: five night shifts at a dead mall, analog horror visuals, real 1974 muzak on the PA, and a satire of consumerism as religion.
- Release date: October 23, 2026
- Price: $7.99
- Steam Scream Fest: featured in Steam Scream V Fest, October 26 – November 2, 2026
- Platforms: Windows (Mac version coming later)
- Demo: coming soon
Made by OTR HVN with GREY GRADIENT.