VACANT 1.0

Low budget indie games tend to be some of the most creative around, assuming they aren't just flipping assets poorly in Unity. Without the budget to create an epic, the creators instead need to focus on one unique feature to make their games stick out. From these restrictions come some truly inventive concepts. One of them is VACANT, where you play as a girl who's recruited by her friends for their ghost-hunting Youtube show.

To play VACANT, simply run the executable after unzipping it to a folder.

The narrative is easily the best part of this game. It's paced extremely well, with it being a slow burn until everythign starts going down. While it's a bit exposition heavy early on, it's a fantastic piece of storytelling once it gets going. There are very few jump scares in this game, which is always a plus when it comes to indie horror nowadays. 

The atmosphere and horror lies in what it implies rather than a ghoul jumping out of the shadows and screaming in your face. And on top of that, it's a very grounded human narrative outside of the horror elements. The psychological toll that all of the stress takes on people are portrayed very realistically, and everybody's reaction to events are also written believably. 

And the best part is that despite it being a pixel indie game, it's still incredibly visually appealing. Unlike many in the 16-bit craze, it's still high resolution and detailed enough to look great.

All in all, if you want to play a game with an incredibly unique premise, then you should give VACANT a download.