Ultra-Indie Daily Dose: Linger Is A Short And Sweet Atmospheric Ghost Story
Hello, you glorious gluttons for all things indie horror! Are you just starving for the newest of the new, the most unknownest of the unknown? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to the Ultra-Indie Daily Dose! In this series, we’re going to pick a new game every day from an indie horror creator you’ve probably never heard of. No million-dollar budgets or factory productions. This is the space for the little guy with not but a developer toolkit and a dream. So if you’re down to roll the dice on something different, then stick around and check it out!
For today’s Daily Dose, we have Linger by itch.io developer Bioxide. A classic haunted house (or in this case, haunted apartment) style game, Linger channels the P.T. energy in an affluent urban setting. It’s a tried and true gameplay style—why reinvent the wheel?— and this one is expertly done.
In Linger you play as a man stuck inside an apartment during a snowstorm. With snow and ice blocking all the doors and windows, you find out quickly that you’re not alone. Not only are you receiving mysterious instructions via notes from the owner, some kind of entity is inside of there with you.
The home is extremely detailed and looks great, giving Linger a deeply unsettling atmosphere. Bioxide has also made great use of the limited space in the form of these notes. The gameplay loop is fairly quick, since the days are very brief. The instructions you receive every day creatively have you interacting with the everyday objects in the house, and the longer the game goes on, the more terror you feel.
You can download Linger through Bioxide’s itch.io page by clicking here.
