I Hate This Place’s throwback horror is like a lost Stranger Things episode

Homaging legendary horror movies and eras is a tricky game. Some attempts come across as inauthentic, while others make me cringe to my core. I Hate This Place is neither, thankfully. Bloober Team spin-off Broken Mirror Games bands together with developer Rock Square Thunder for a gnarly throwback to fleshy, weird, slimy terrors that David Cronenberg would relish. After getting hands-on with a Steam Deck build at Gamescom, there’s still more under the surface that I didn’t get to see.

For the purposes of keeping the demo brief, my time with I Hate This Place is boiled down to exploring the remnants of a dreary laboratory. I’m told by a developer on-site that the game’s base-building elements aren’t present in the build at hand, but flashes of what to expect are sprinkled in there – but more on that later. Before I can think about providing shelter for myself, my feet are treading along goo-soaked tile floors, each step producing a visual thud as I travel down a dim-lit hallway.

The game’s aesthetic is a pleasing mesh of cell-shaded graphic novels and Steven Spielberg-style haunts, with shadows and facility lighting mimicking the director’s work with famed cinematographers Janusz Kaminski and Allen Daviau. For movie nerds like me, it’s a dream to exist in a world painted like this. My goal is to explore the laboratory in hopes of uncovering its mystery, while collecting valuable resources along the way. Presented through an isometric perspective, the action unfolds similarly to one of my favorite Steam Deck games of recent times, Suit For Fire.

It isn’t long until my limited collection of ammo is used up, as infected, parasitic humans try to peel my flesh from my bones. Some of them are former scientists, but the most chilling foes are test experiments gone wrong. Their squelchy skins shatter with each shotgun blast, letting out a distorted roar upon a very grizzly death. Stepping over their bloody remains, glass pieces crunch under my feet from shattered windows, providing a glimpse into what twisted projects happened here.

With my ammo drying up, I Hate This Place wants me to consider other options, and that’s where crafting comes into play. Blueprints can be found in containers, lockers, and other places, ranging from electricity grenades to spiked baseball bats. Everything is essential according to Rock Square Thunder’s vision, making me consider how to use my inventory effectively. That’s quickly put to the test in light puzzle sections, as some passages require electricity to let me progress further.

I remember the taser gun I picked up just mere seconds ago, and then it clicks. I can shoot a switch box from afar, giving it the juice to let me escape a seemingly never-ending fleet of crawling creatures. This kind of thinking is all over I Hate This Place, asking me to throw out the traditional purpose of what my equipment is meant to do. It’s a lot of fun to play with, and the demo’s location serves this idea well.

As I mentioned earlier, the build of the upcoming horror game is a Steam Deck preview. I Hate This Place doesn’t appear to be a very demanding game, but its vibrant art direction and spin on comic book visuals are great to the eye. Performance is largely stable, apart from a hiccups with assets loading into new areas between elevator rides to different floors of the lab. Beyond that, I can’t see it making handheld PCs like the Asus ROG Ally sweat.

I Hate This Place, to me, feels like a piece of lost media. Large parts of it evoke Stranger Things vibes, and it could easily slot in as a one-off episode chronicling a standalone adventure. Despite the game’s origins in the beloved Skybound comic series, for me, it leans into the type of horrors that distributors such as Arrow Video love to release on Blu-Ray. It’s strange, funny, and dripping with aura, and I’m eager to see more.

For more Gamescom coverage, be sure to check out our interview with Resident Evil: Survival Unit producer and gaming legend Shinji Hashimoto and my hands-on Xbox Ally impressions.