When people ask me what The Consumed is like, the shortest answer I’ve found is: it’s the Backrooms meets Resident Evil.
That sounds like two things that shouldn’t go together. The Backrooms is about wandering through empty, endless space where nothing happens, and that’s the scary part. Resident Evil is about managing scarce resources while something very much does happen to you. The Consumed puts both in one dead mall, and it works better than it has any right to.
The Backrooms Half: The Space
The Backrooms started as one photo and a few lines of creepypasta: endless yellow rooms, damp carpet, fluorescent hum, and nobody else there. It’s horror built entirely on a place.
The Hargrove Galleria is that kind of place. It’s a dead mall frozen in a year the timestamp only shows as 20XX, with yellowed marble floors, water-stained ceiling tiles, and fluorescent tubes buzzing in their sconces. At both ends of the concourse, photographs of more mall stretch away so the building feels like it never stops. The developers even put a “Backrooms yellow” filter into the game’s rendering, tinting the midtones that same sickly shade.
Then there’s the sound. Real 1974 mall muzak plays over the PA to a building with nobody in it. That’s the Backrooms feeling exactly: everything is still running, and everyone is gone.
The Resident Evil Half: The Toolkit
This is where The Consumed stops being a walking sim with a vibe and becomes a survival horror game. If you’ve played Resident Evil, a lot of this will feel familiar in the best way.
Your film is your ammo
Your only weapon is a camcorder. Switch to stills mode, take a photo, and whatever you caught gets banished. But film is limited: a roll is five shots, every press of the shutter spends one (misses included), and there’s a recharge between shots. Tougher things take more than one hit.
That’s Resident Evil’s ammo math with a camera instead of a handgun. You’ll count shots. You’ll hesitate before taking one you might miss. And you’ll feel it when you run dry. (If that sounds like Fatal Frame, you’re right: it’s one of The Consumed’s biggest inspirations.)
Healing comes in two sizes
There are two healing items: a small restorative that brings back one health block and a full restorative that refills everything. Each has its own hotkey, and neither gets wasted if you’re already at full health. It’s the green herb and first aid spray decision in a different coat: patch up now, or save the big one for when things get bad.
Permanent health upgrades
RE4 players will remember yellow herbs, which permanently raise your max health. The Consumed’s version is clothing. Every piece from the GREY GRADIENT store adds a permanent extra health block for the rest of your run, and buying one fills the new block right away.
It’s the same “worth it?” calculation RE always asks you to make, with one great twist: in a game satirizing consumerism, your survival upgrades are literally merch. (The clothing is real, by the way: greygradient.shop.)
The safe room has its own music
This is the detail that made me laugh, because it’s so clearly a love letter.
In Resident Evil, the save room is the one place nothing can get you. The music changes, your shoulders drop, and you get a minute to sort your inventory. In The Consumed, that’s the GREY GRADIENT store upstairs. It’s coded as a safe room: walk in and the mall’s PA music ducks out while the shop’s own track fades in. Nothing follows you in. You restock, you shop, and you breathe.
Then you walk back out into the mall and the muzak comes back.
A shop with spinning item previews
The GREY GRADIENT checkout terminal shows everything you can buy as a rotating 3D model: shirts, a cap, film rolls, and healing items. You pay in spirit coins, which you earn from each successful banishment. So the shop feeds straight back into the combat. Fight well, earn coins, buy supplies, survive longer. RE4’s merchant would approve.
Items you turn over in your hands
Certain items in the mall use a Resident Evil–style inspection. Press E once and the item floats in front of you in its own lighting, and you drag the mouse to rotate it and look it over. Press E again to take it. It’s one of my favorite little rituals from the series, done lovingly here.
Learning the building
Early Resident Evil was about learning the mansion: where the shortcuts are, which rooms are safe, how to get from A to B with the least risk. The Hargrove Galleria is the same mall every night, laid out the same way, so you start building that knowledge from your first shift. By the time things get serious, you’ll know which shutter you can drop behind you and which empty unit has a door that works from both sides.
Where the Two Halves Meet
Here’s why the combination works. The Backrooms half gives you dread with no clear rules: the long empty corridors, the hum, the mannequins. The Resident Evil half gives you something to do about it: tools, resources, decisions.
And tying it together is the job. You aren’t exploring for fun. You’re the night security guard, and every store has to be locked down (keypad, terminal log, lights off, shutter down) before you can file your report and go home. Try to leave early and the doors tell you flatly: “You are not done with your shift.”
So you’re always weighing it: spend film now, or save it? Heal now, or push on to the next store? Duck into the safe room, or finish this wing first? That constant low-level arithmetic, inside a space designed to make you uneasy, is exactly what made the best Resident Evil games stick. The Consumed just moved it to a mall.
Release Details
- 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)
- Languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Latin America)
Made by OTR HVN with GREY GRADIENT. Game design and direction by Jackie C, art direction by Jordan Daniels and Jackie C, written and voiced by Samuel Knox.