Intruders: Hide and Seek Review for Steam

Mechanically speaking, assembling a horror game is easy. Get an intricate level layout, add menacing roaming enemies, a healthy dose of scary ambient music, and dim lighting, and you have a standard horror game. Intruders: Hide and Seek by developer Tessera Studios and publisher Daedalic Entertainment, doesn’t deviate from that formula overmuch, but it’s the presentation and attention to detail that make a game interesting, and here we have that in spades. You’re not a driven engineer running away from aliens aboard a rusty ship, or a amnesiac-plagued noble waking up in a crypt, but a little boy in a house in the woods. 

You have two parents and a little sister with a medical condition that sees her wracked by coughing fits, and after the quaint introductory missions are done to give you a sense of the house’s layout and the stealth mechanics – all of which is peppered with foreshadowing, from reports of recent break ins in the area, to your father discussing his secretive science project, to discovering a hidden safe room with cameras wired over the house – then, disaster strikes. Three intruders attack, capturing your parents and holding them in the basement. Your sister is safe in the panic room, so the responsibility of freeing your parents and getting help falls to you: though of course, nothing goes according to plan. 

I reviewed this game on the PC without a VR headset, as it was intended to be played, but it’s still plenty frightening. Playing as a child emphasizes a particular sense of helplessness – you approach the world from a child’s height, peeking over most chest-high edges and walls, and have no ability to fight – only to run and hide from the Intruders. The three adults patrol the house separately, and move rather quietly – it’s easy to get caught, which necessitates careful pathing and deliberate movement. I learned the layout of the three floor house after trial and error, and used the basement or third floor to navigate the house whenever possible, avoiding the open spaces of the living room and kitchen. Every decision carries risk, and lingering too long near light sources can invite unwanted attention. 

Intruders: Hide and Seek drives up tension effectively. The phones are cut off, the wifi has been hacked, and your sister is coughing terribly – she needs her meds. Every element of the world and story are used to further the tension and make this a truly terrifying home invasion. Ignore that the enemies have jankily animated faces, or that they’re a little blockish – these details are quickly glossed over in the face of effective voice acting and a tight, no-nonsense script that firmly establishes the intruders as dangerous people to be absolutely feared. It was also not too frustrating – while I was caught and beaten/kicked/stabbed many, many times, I was always able to work past the pathing or find a way to my objective. The game is challenging but rewarding, and absolutely scary: with VR enabled, this game would be terrifying. I really enjoyed it, which is something to be said for someone who usually can’t finish horror games!

Check Out the Intruders: Hide and Seek Steam Video:

Intruders: Hide and Seek is available for PC for $19.99 via Steam as well as for PlayStation VR.