A Disturbing Dystopian Anthology

Unsorted Horror was released on itch.io and Steam on August 1st of this year. It was created by Mike Klubnika, known for creating bite-sized experimental games. Unsorted Horror contains four games that Klubnika had previously released on itch.io and a new game, “Tartarus Engine”.

In these short experiences, you’ll find yourself lost in dystopian futures, isolated behind massive labyrinths of steel and concrete. Each title is a contained story that deals with heavy themes that can question your ethics and understanding of the worlds that Klubnika has created as well as our own.

I recommend that you play Unsorted Horror blind, as each experience leans heavily on using the unknown as part of its horror. You can play it for free on Steam or on Klubnika’s itch.io page. With the spoiler warning out of the way, let’s dive into the first entry of Unsorted Horror.

The Other Side

This game begins with a short forward which informs you that you are forbidden from going outside. In just a few seconds, the player is given motivation and all the backstory they need. The character you play is trapped and they know that something more lurks beyond the steel prison that you live in.

In secret, you have devised a plan to escape the life of isolation that’s been forced on you. You are tasked with drilling a hole through the rust-covered steel walls to allow you to escape. To do this, you are given all of the parts and tools you'll need to operate your drill. As you dig through the wall, you’ll have to continuously run diagnostics on the drill to keep it operational. The other challenge of this game comes from ensuring that you do not get caught while you carry out your task.

The Other Side brings a large amount of immersion, as I often felt like something or someone was always watching me. I knew that I was doing something wrong according to the powers at be. This was due to how strongly the soundtrack and visuals worked together to create an oppressive environment.

The sound design for The Other Side coupled with the jarring, yet well-crafted, visuals carries most of the game’s horror. This game does well to ramp up the tension and terror without the use of jump scares. This is a commendable feat that helps Unsorted Horror stand out above other horror games found on itch.io.

Each of your actions is accompanied by sound effects that indicate that even something as small as unscrewing a panel has an impact on the world that you are stuck in. I feel like this attention to detail allows the player to feel like their actions carry a heavy weight, adding more tension and uneasiness.

Part of the horror for this game was a mental battle between me completing my objective and thinking that something horrible was just around the corner. After each phase of stopping the drill to maintain it, I felt more and more pressure as if the door behind me was going to get kicked open by the authorities at any second.

The game will run you for around 20 minutes, depending on how much you inspect the area that you are in. The Other Side is a wonderful example of telling a horrifying tale at lightning-fast speed. 

Control Room Alpha

While The Other Side starts this collection of games off with heavy tones, Control Room Alpha is more relaxed in comparison. It may not be as scary as the first entry, but it does have a bit more of a lighter side to it with some dark humor sprinkled in if you know where to look.

The game begins with the player facing a control panel and a window into what looks like an underground mining operation. Once you put your headset on, a voice will begin telling you instructions on what your job is.

You are informed that you’ll be gathering specimens that are worth… a questionable amount of money. All you have to do is unseal the specimen tank (the nest) to begin extracting them with a crane-like device. Sounds easy enough right?

Upon opening the specimen tank, a swarm of massive spiders will begin climbing out of the hole in the ground. You can hear them scuttering around while you get used to the crane’s controls. It’s definitely a skin-crawling experience and makes it slightly difficult to focus on your objective, especially if you have a fear of spiders. The sound design does an excellent job of making you feel very uncomfortable.

Control Room Alpha was a fun experience that carried some of the same feelings of dread the first entry of the collection had. The Slavic-accented supervisor that guides the player adds a sense of humor and helps show how numb these characters have become to the world they take place in.

There is a section of this game where you have to enter the area where the specimens are roaming to retrieve a sample. While horrifying, this reveals to the player that the company they work for cares more about a few bucks than the safety of their employees. Kind of similar to real life, huh?

I love the themes that Control Room Alpha brings to the table, but I feel overall like it needs just a little more going on for it to have a stronger impact. The atmosphere is tense, but I can’t help but feel like the concept and setting were underutilized.

To give credit where it is due, the game does well to avoid overstaying its welcome, as it's the shortest game of the collection. The dev allows the player only a glimpse into the world of Control Room Alpha, which is more than enough to get invested in. My only complaint is that I wanted more, which leans harder into being a compliment rather than a negative criticism. Good problems to have? That’s up to the dev.

Carbon Steel

This entry is the longest in gameplay and is the deepest in terms of mechanics. Carbon Steel begins with the player making their way to their assigned ‘job’ via a tram, Half-Life style. Once you reach the laboratory where you’ll be working and staying, you are given your assignment as well as your ‘room’ (more like a cell).

Your job is to extract data from newly discovered fauna that the research team has been attempting to study. While this sounds easy on paper, there are procedures that you must follow if you want to survive the workday.

Before you can extract specimen data from the ‘thing’ you pull up from the depths, you’ll need to knock it out with properly mixed anesthesia. To determine the right ratio of ingredients used, you’ll have to use the information provided to you upon the specimen's arrival, and later, you’ll have to gather critical information with new tools as you progress.

As you progress through the days, you’ll quickly get the feeling that something is off about the research that you are assisting with. Valuable information is slowly fed to you at the start of each shift, just enough to keep you interested in pushing further. One thing about Klubnika’s games is that the player will always have room to fill in the gaps with their theory about the narrative, and Carbon Steel is a powerful example of how the dev approaches storytelling and worldbuilding.

Carbon Steel does an excellent job of providing a great story and provides enough gameplay mechanics to give the player a challenge while they try to piece together what is going on around them. This game also provides two separate endings depending on some of the choices that you make, which gives this title a bit more replayability than the others.

Overall, I think Carbon Steel has all of the elements required to be a great game and it ends just before things get stale. The developer could have milked this game for longer runtime, but after 3 titles in this collection, it's apparent that Klubnika knows how to leave the player starving for more. This title is worth downloading Unsorted Horror alone, in my opinion.

Concrete Tremor

This entry is not for the faint of heart. Concrete Tremor is a dark and gritty game that encapsulates feelings of hopelessness. It’s a short experience but carries a heavy weight that lingers long after your first playthrough.

You are dropped into the world to be met with grainy black-and-white visuals of the environment. It doesn’t take you long to understand why the developer may have decided to opt in this for the visuals, as they aren’t easy on the eyes and actually made me feel a bit nauseous while I was moving around.

You begin the game by grabbing some questionable food and taking a seat near some other people who may or may not be strangers. They begin conversing about the views that they have from their room. One of them mentions that someone had picked open the door to the roof, and from the context of the conversation, no one knows where they are.

This desire for knowledge leaves the protagonist more interested in answers instead of eating. After a short trek up the stairs of what appears to be an apartment complex, you reach the roof to discover rows and rows of concrete apartment buildings.

All of these buildings are similar in style and color, with no distinction, hence why the color palette and textures used in this game are effective. The immediate feeling you get upon reaching the roof is feeling small and insignificant, no different than your peers that you met at the beginning of the game. These feelings invoked by the art style and design of the world tie into the heaviness of what occurs next.

After a few seconds of looking around on the roof, you are interrupted by a cutscene that shows a helicopter flying overhead. A conversation can be heard between two individuals who talk about the fate of those living in the complexes below.

They acknowledge that the protagonist and another are on opposing rooftops, referring to them as ‘players’. One of the men in the plane requests permission to gun them down, whereas the other claims that it would be useless; everyone down below is going to die regardless. The tone is set, and the stakes are rising not even five minutes into the experience.

The cutscene ends with the sound of an old-school dial phone ringing. Upon answering it, a voice begins to tell you a set of rules. It doesn’t take long to piece together that you are now pitted against another ‘player’ in a game of Battleship. Instead of ships, however, you will be trying to target the other players' apartment buildings, all of which are occupied.

If one player misses five consecutive shots, the other wins a phone call. Without knowing what this extra rule means, the game begins, and the music drones in your ears while you make your first turn.

Each turn you choose five spots on a grid to attempt to hit your opponent's apartments. After you have made your selection, a volley of bombs will slam down on the opposing side in the grid slots that you’ve chosen, ending the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to get struck down.

Should your opponent make a mistake, you’ll be granted a call. This is another impactful moment about the person you play as. Without giving away anything, this call can help you locate one of your opponent's buildings, giving you an edge. Gameplay continues like this until one side has lost all of their buildings and you are presented with the ending.

Concrete Tremor carries a heavy message that allows players to think about their choices and gives them room to reflect on who they are as a person. In my experience, I felt very nihilistic about the world I was thrust into, and at a point, I stopped caring. I was numbed by what the game expected me to do due to the fact of feeling helpless to change the outcome. I knew what I had to do to see the experience through, even though what I was doing was costing innocent lives.

Overall, Concrete Tremor was one of the most unique gaming experiences I’ve had in a few years and I applaud Klubnika for their artistic talent to create a gut-wrenching trial to endure.

Tartarus Engine

This title is the newest creation from Klubnika and is certainly the most existentially terrifying of Unsorted Horror. Tartarus Engine places you in a world where a massive supercomputer was constructed. This machine has the power to run advanced simulations where the user can be fully immersed in.

The Tartarus Engine is currently being used for prisoners to serve their lengthy sentences in a simulation; they will spend what feels like decades in the simulation, but in reality, only a few seconds have passed on Earth.

Understanding how powerful the machine is, a few technicians have plotted to utilize the machine for their own personal gain. With this power, they can create their own simulation presets to indulge in countless ‘realities’ that they themselves create.

To be able to do this without getting in huge trouble, they must first create a simulation where they can program presets on the Tartarus Engine through a simulation of the Engine itself. This allows them all the time they could ever want to create presets and run them, basically giving them the power to be gods of their own reality.

You play as one of the technicians and are tasked with breaching the supercomputer and replacing a data rack which will allow you to ‘cascade’ the Tartarus Engine into itself. After a short elevator ride, you are given just a few minutes to find where the rack needs to be placed.

From a gameplay perspective, there isn’t really much that you can do in Tartarus Engine, but the world, visuals, and audio design contributed to how engaged and invested I was. One of my favorite sections out of the entire Unsorted Horror collection was when you enter the never-ending rows of partitions where you are meant to place the data rack.

This moment made me feel incredibly small and insignificant in the grand scheme of Tartarus Engine’s world, which is a common feeling experienced while playing every title in this collection. Klubnika has a strong grasp of creating dystopian and hopeless worlds, while also adding a dash of existential horror.

Tartarus Engine has one of the most disturbing endings in comparison to the other games in Unsorted Collection, which makes the ~15-minute runtime extremely worth your time as a player. If you decide to try out this collection of games, Tartarus Engine is a must.

Final thoughts on Unsorted Horror

I feel strongly that Unsorted Horror is worth paying for, and it almost feels slimy that I was given the opportunity to play all five titles for free. There are hundreds of free horror games online that you can play for free, but Unsorted Horror rises above the masses to provide a series of unmatchable and disturbing experiences.

If you have some spare time and are looking for a spook at the end of your day, Unsorted Horror will provide more than enough entertainment and horror. If you do pick up the game and enjoy it, consider leaving a review on Steam or itch.io to support the developer and encourage future projects such as this one.

If you want more from Mike Klubnika, here are all of their games available on their itch.io page. Thanks for taking the time to read this lengthy breakdown of Unsorted Horror. If you have a suggestion for what games you’d like to see featured on my blog or are a game dev that wants feedback on their game, reach out below!

For another great game recommendation, check out my review of Nowhere, MI, which is another hidden gem that I’ve found on itch.io that you can play for free. I’ve also got some good perks being cooked up for users who sign up for email notifications if you are into that kinda shit, so keep your eyes peeled for another update.

Anyways, that’s all I've got to say for now. More posts coming soon!

Stay spooky, my friends,

~Greysyns