Withering Rooms Review - Lost in the Dream - Try Hard Guides (2024)

Withering Rooms has quickly become my favorite game of the year so far.

As the newest patient of the Mostyn House asylum, you awaken in the Dream, a literal living night that patients of the Victorian era manor share each night. The nature of this alternate reality is unclear, with some leaving and returning each night and some being unable to leave. Still, one thing is certain: Magic, the witches who practice it, and the wandering aggressive corpses of patients whose minds have gone into their comatose dream state wander the ever-shifting halls, and each night is filled with horror and discovery in equal measure.

Withering Rooms is a horror exploration game with a bit of a roguelike element. You awaken each night in the Dream and must navigate the procedurally generated Moslyn House to solve puzzles and unlock the secret to finally escaping. Danger awaits around each corner, but should you die, you’ll simply wake in the Dream again the next night.

One of the first things you’re sure to notice is the game’s use of the 2.5D presentation. 2.5D is a sort of cross between 2D and 3D for those who aren’t familiar. It’s games that use a sidescrolling perspective, which is usually reserved for 2D games, but with everything being 3D modeled. This gives the game a clean yet incredibly nostalgic look that harkens back to classic horror titles of old.

Thanks to the game’s core mechanics, creeping through the derelict halls of the Moslyn House dream is an experience that constantly shifts between utterly terrifying and powerful fantasy.

It goes without saying that Withering Rooms is filled with creepy and dangerous monsters formed from the decayed minds of asylum residents whose brains have begun to rot while they are trapped in the Dream. Encountering one of these creatures can be deadly, and hiding beneath tables or within a closet as they shrug by you can be a tense, heart-pounding experience. Worse, these fiends can pursue you through most rooms, so you aren’t safe simply running away from them.

But then, magic also exists in the Dream, and you are the latest initiate in the order of witches who explore its deep, corrupting depths in the realm of the Dream. By learning and crafting spells, you not only begin to exert some independence over the corrupted evils in the Mosyln House’s halls. But you are, in fact, encouraged to hunt them down and harvest them for body parts, necessary tools for casting spells. Cleavers and other melee weapons also come especially in handy here and make for powerful weapons to defend yourself or hunt the other patients for their precious, precious parts.

In this way, Withering Rooms mixes up the survival genre with a bit of a sidescrolling beat-em-up flair. The combat mechanics are pretty generous for a horror game, even allowing you to dodge roll-through enemy attacks. If you are careful and well-prepared with healing potions, you can treat the whole game like a beat-em-up and clear levels with your cleaver for great rewards.

Yet, even as you begin to feel more powerful than any evil that lurks in the Dream, it has a way of making you feel small again as you encounter even deadlier monsters in even eerier places. As I mentioned, the balance of power feels like it’s constantly shifting, and you never really feel like the master of the Dream; you’re just well-prepared at best.

As you may have already gathered from what I’ve said about the game so far, magic plays a pretty big role in Withering Rooms. This is apparent in the spells you can craft and cast to gain the upper hand over your zombified fellow patients, but it goes far beyond that with an incredibly nifty corruption feature.

In Withering Rooms, when you cast a spell, you gain a hefty chunk of corruption. This is a lingering sickness of the soul that has progressively serious effects, from greying the skin to the ability to see ghosts and other spiritual phenomena around you. It is both a punishment to balance out the strength of magic and a key means to progression, as some aspects of the house can only be seen or interacted with if you’re pretty far corrupted.

In my humble opinion, you can judge a good horror story by the characters. Cheap jump scares and bloody deaths are nothing compared to interesting protagonists or enigmatic monsters or killers that just suck you in and keep you utterly invested in what happens to them. Withering Rooms has both superbly interesting monster designs and handfuls of characters who aren’t out to bash your skull with various blunt objects. The witches were incredibly fascinating, and my favorite character had to be the Blanchett child, whose first name I’m suddenly drawing a blank on. I nonetheless found her especially interesting, her story especially tragic, and her model especially pretty.

How does a guy get into the Dream, by the way? Asking for a friend.

Withering Rooms is a masterclass in horror gaming. The game is as fun to play as it is incredibly engaging with its presentation and characters. It truly is something I’m going to remember, and I can only hope the game receives the attention that it deserves.

Withering Rooms was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in theGame Reviewssection of our website! Withering Rooms is available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.