Destructoid’s Indie Gems – Edition 12: When the safest place on Earth becomes a never-ending nightmare

Captured like a fly in a web, you awake inside the comfort of your own home, but something’s different. No matter what you do or where you go, the same white walls greet you into the home’s cold open arms. Rooms blur into one, and there’s no sign of it ever letting up. What was once a sanctuary is now a repeating corridor of death, and there’s no escape in sight. The exit leads back to the entrance, yet you continue to press forward, hoping for that light to show at the end of the tunnel.

You’ve vanished from reality, but your camcorder is functioning in two places at once. Your family can see everything you record. At least they know you’re alive, right? No one can make much sense of where you are, or what’s happened to you. Voices of your parents reach you, providing a flicker of hope that you may be able to return to them. Yet anomalies stand in your way, blocking the path to normalcy. The place you once called home is now crawling with things that don’t belong—and you’re here too. But you’re not alone. You’re never truly alone, are you?

Find the anomalies to escape, keep your sanity high, and don’t forget where you came from—otherwise you might be lost forever.

The scariest game of spot the difference you’ll ever play

This is CAPTURED, a backrooms anomaly-hunting game with a P.T. influence. Seeing the same repeating corridor on a loop would drive anyone mad, yet there’s something far worse waiting to consume you. Like a twisted game of cat-and-mouse, the search for strange anomalies that don’t quite match reality is disrupted by terrifying monsters that just want to play.

The gameplay follows the standard first-person perspective walking sim formula, where you must locate and report anomalies while avoiding danger. Reach the exit in time, and repeat until you’ve successfully found all anomalies needed to escape the loop.

A liminal horror of your worst fears

Anomalies seem overtly obvious as you’re trudging through the same corridors and rooms. But this is all part of its cruel design. Moving chairs, running water, red rooms, missing doors, and an abundance of toilets are just some of the recurring anomalies you have to report and fix if you want to escape. The challenge comes from the persistent threats that leak into your dreamlike world, turning this purgatory into an unforgiving nightmare. Each has its own rulebook you need to follow if you want to survive. Without a way to fight back and only the flashlight from your camcorder to use as navigation, uneasiness and panic feel inevitable.

The effectiveness of this title is in its lighting and sound design. I’ve never forgotten my time in P.T. for the game design and how its psychological elements continue to plague the indie horror realm, making it impossible to forget. Yet, CAPTURED manages to create an immersive and unnerving experience, even if it takes directly from the cancelled Silent Hills. Repeating corridors are overdone, and we’ve seen anomaly-hunting games come and go, with I’m on Observation Duty and The Exit 8 being the most popular titles.

But CAPTURED is the scariest anomaly-hunting game I’ve played, and it’s not even close.

Trust your senses—you’re not alone

A claustrophobic horror with little room to breathe, CAPTURED stops at nothing to make you feel uncomfortable. The entities aren’t anything new. We have the typical weeping angel, SCP-173 mechanic with the monster that can only move when you’re not looking at it, and another that resembles something out of Roblox’s ROOMS, trapping you within the P.T.-style corridor. The environment uses liminal space with a time-bending plot and worldbuilding reminiscent of Alex Kister’s Mandela Catalogue. This creates an uncanny aesthetic held up by its spotlight camcorder feature and restrictive FOV, making the surroundings feel even smaller.

Even with its obvious influences, CAPTURED manages to create tension and fear that a monster will leap out of the darkness—a terrifying change in the repetitive backrooms. Like seeing Kane Pixels’ Bacteria entity for the first time in Level 0, or Lisa in P.T., the entities in CAPTURED stand on their own two feet as horrifying monsters that’ll happily invade your nightmares.

CAPTURED effectively utilizes the fear of the unknown, and even once it reveals what’s coming, you have no choice but to play by the game’s sick rules. You are not in charge here, CAPTURED is. You run when it wants you to.

So, can you escape from this analog horror hellhole, or will you become just another version of yourself trapped in this infinity, prey to these monsters’ games? Hunt anomalies and flee from adult nightmares on Steam, PlayStation 5, and face your fears on Xbox Series X/S, coming Oct. 12.

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