Stay Close

Stay Close asks for quick reactions and a taste for odd little scares, because it is built as a short horror game rather than a long, sprawling adventure. By our assessment, the main draw is its immediate pressure: it wants the player alert, moving, and paying attention to small changes in the scene. The limit is obvious too, since a compact horror piece has little room for systems or variety before the trick is done. In practice that makes it feel tense and stripped down, with less busywork than larger horror titles and fewer places to hide behind complexity. Against the genre at large, it sits on the slimmer, more focused end of the spectrum. Stay Close is for someone who wants a brief jolt and does not need a large mechanical toybox.