Horror games usually give you one goal: survive. The Consumed gives you a shift to finish. Something is in the building with you, and the job still has to get done.

Here’s what OTR HVN’s new game is and how it plays, without spoiling what’s waiting for you on each night.

The Setting: The Hargrove Galleria

The Hargrove Galleria is a dead mall stuck in a year the clock only shows as 20XX. Yellowed marble floors, water-damaged ceiling tiles, buzzing fluorescent tubes, empty kiosks. Most of the merchandise is gone. The mannequins stayed.

The store names are where the game’s sense of humor shows first: EATEMYOUNG ACADEMY, VICTIM’S SECRET, AMERICAN BEAGLE, GOODBYE KITTY, HAIR SUPERIORITY, DROP DEAD, FOREVER TODAY, BREAD N CIRCUS. You laugh the first time you walk past them. By the third night you aren’t laughing.

The Job: How a Shift Works

You’re the night security manager. Each night, every open store needs four things done, in whatever order you want:

  1. Arm the keypad
  2. Log the store at its terminal
  3. Kill the lights
  4. Pull the shutter

Once every store is locked down, you head upstairs to the office, file your end-of-shift report, put the office in the dark, and clock out through the exit. Try to leave early and the mall tells you plainly: you are not done with your shift.

The checklist is the clever part. It’s boring retail work, and the horror comes from doing it anyway. You can’t hide in a corner and wait for morning, because the stores still need logging.

Five Nights, Each One Worse

There are five shifts, and each has its own set piece. Night one eases you in while you learn the routine. After that the mall stops pretending to be empty, and some of what’s in there will chase you. I’m not going to spoil specifics. Learning what each night throws at you is a big part of the fun.

Your Tools: A Flashlight and a Camcorder

You carry a flashlight and a camcorder. Switch the camcorder to stills mode and a photo can banish whatever it catches, but film is limited and there’s a recharge between shots. You have three health bars, refilled each night.

That leaves you real choices. You can photograph a spirit, drop a shutter between you and it, or slip past it and keep working. Banishing spirits earns spirit coins, which you spend at the GREY GRADIENT store upstairs on film, healing items, and clothing that permanently raises your max health. That part comes from the game’s collaboration with the real fashion brand for their Series 002, which I wrote about here.

What It’s Actually About

The mall is a cathedral. The brands are saints. The money is a sacrament.

Under the jump scares, The Consumed is a satire about consumerism as religion. The mall is where people go to perform a ritual: the trip to the store, laying money on the counter, wearing a brand as an identity. The game keeps every piece of that ritual in place and takes the people out. What’s left is a building full of empty worship, and something has moved into it.

The game asks: what is a brand? What is value? What are you consuming, and what is consuming you?

The Vibe: VHS Meets PSX

Visually, The Consumed is bodycam footage meets PlayStation-era low poly: film grain, heavy vignetting, chromatic aberration, and a sickly yellow cast. The audio does a lot of the work too, with fluorescent hum, HVAC drone, distant shopping carts, and muzak coming through the walls.

If you like P.T., Kane Pixels’ The Oldest View, liminal-space horror like POOLS, or Puppet Combo’s PSX nightmares like Bloodwash, this is very much your thing. Those are the influences the team cites, and you can see every one of them.

When Can You Play It?

  • Demo: next week
  • Full release: October 23, 2026, for $10 on Windows and macOS

Wishlist The Consumed on Steam

Made by OTR HVN with GREY GRADIENT. Directed by Jackie C, art direction by Jordan Daniels and Jackie C, written and voiced by Samuel Knox.