Not recommended. The game is glitchy, not scary, and full of frustrating design choices. Keyboard and mouse controls feel bad, recycled assets are obvious, puzzles are confusing in a bad way, and bugs kill any tension. There are some good ideas (concept, soundtrack, lore), but the game is way too long and poorly executed. Not worth £11. [TLDR version, read my full review below for more details.. there will be spoilers though]

I wanted to enjoy Stay Out Of The House, but after finally sitting down and playing through more of it, I can’t reccomend it. The game is a broken, glitchy mess that fails at being scary, and a lot of its design choices actively work against the player. Right away, the controls on keyboard and mouse feel bad. Movement and interaction feel awkward enough that using a controller is actually the better option, which is kind of embarrassing for a PC game. At that point, if you’re playing on something like PlayStation, Xbox, or even a Steam Deck, you might as well just play it there with the lights on instead. The PC version isn’t tense or immersive, it’s just boring unless you’re making fun of it to yourself like an immature teenager. A lot of the game also feels recycled. Scripts, features, textures, and mechanics are reused from one of the developer’s other games to the point where this just feels like a knockoff cashgrab version of it. It reminds me of how Hanna-Barbera kept ripping off Scooby-Doo… even though they made Scooby-Doo. What makes this worse is that I did like this game at one point. Back in 2022, I played the first chapter and thought it was decent. The ending jumpscare actually worked on me the first time. I got stuck early in chapter two, didn’t know what I was doing, and dropped it. Fast forward to late 2025, I decided to replay it because I enjoyed some of the developer’s other games and wanted to finally finish this one. That was a mistake. The first chapter completely lost its impact. Instead of being eerie or tense, it was boring and glitchy, and I just wanted it to be over. Chapter two is where the game really becomes frustrating. There’s a maze section that is incredibly annoying, and the dog you find which SHOULD be helping you locate the house... doesn’t actually help. It leads you to a truck with useless notes and that’s it. You also find an abandoned church that exists purely for lore and serves no gameplay purpose at all. And somehow, even after all of this, you’re still not close to the house. By the time you finally reach the house, you’re already so annoyed that when the Night Shift Abductor catches you, he isn’t scary at all. He starts chasing you and it's just like "This game sucks anyway, just catch me." From there, the third chapter starts and the game completely loses any momentum it had left. You wake up in a cage and the protagonist says something cheesy like “Uh ohh!! Where am I?” which kills the tone instantly. There’s also a lighter mechanic that barely matters because of the item limit. Instead of engaging with it, you can just turn up your screen brightness in your system or TV settings and play the entire game that way. I’m not joking, that’s genuinely the easier solution. Some of the design decisions are just confusing, and not in a fun way like Sudoku or Portal. There’s a toolbox with a padlock code, and one of the notes implies the code is 4?62, but it’s actually 5373. For some reason, the internet collectively decided to troll everyone by saying the code was 4262, which just adds to the frustration. There’s also a room in the vents with a VHS tape and a TV. In the developer’s other game (the one this feels like a knockoff of), VHS tapes act as traps that alert the enemy. In this game, VHS tapes let you save. That makes no sense. Does the developer want players to save or not? If the goal was discouraging saving, they executed that part perfectly. On top of all that, I ran into bugs. At one point, while hiding under a bed, the Night Shift Abductor set a trap. When I stood up, the game glitched and we were both stuck. He couldn’t attack me unless I moved, and then I instantly died by turning the camera. That was basically the point where I stopped playing, because it wasn’t worth pulling through the rest. To be fair, there are good ideas here. Making a sequel to Night Shift was a decent concept, even if that game wasn’t amazing. Turning it into a digital escape room was also a good idea. The fictional cult tying multiple games together in the same universe is creative, and the soundtrack (from what I heard) actually does a good j*b at setting a creepy mood. But this game is way too long for what it is. The developer usually makes short experiences, and this feels stretched to a weird AAA length. Chapter one especially could’ve been improved by adding more activities to the convenience store. Right now, you explore, play a fake arcade game, sweep the floor, and wait forever for customers to show up.. and there's only three of them. During the maze section, simple toggleable arrows, hints, or riddles would’ve gone a long way toward reducing frustration without ruining the experience. Conclusion: Don’t waste £11 on this game unless you absolutely have to own it. There are a lot of better horror games out there. If you really want something from this developer, I’d honestly recommend checking out their CD-ROM releases instead. They’re $25 in American currency, come with bonus content, old versions, and downloadable soundtracks, and have more worth than this. And don’t buy this game just because your favorite YouTuber played it. In 20 years, people are probably going to critique this the same way they do games like Back to the Future or Skate or Die on NES, titles that got good reviews at the time and later aged terribly. For now, I guess I’ll just be one of those weirdos with the “wrong” opinion.

Granny-like game with strong horror elements. It's kinda hard and can be kinda frustrating to figure out what to do with the objects you are given. It is the best game by this developer if you liked the other ones.

Goated!!! Super difficult like super hard but worth it. I wished they’d add more games on Steam.