A new Steam horror game turns simple cubes into a four-player nightmare, and you can play it in VR
Horror games have found plenty of ways to make dolls, clowns and abandoned buildings terrifying. Scared by Squares has a different idea: send you into a maze of cubes and make you afraid of the shapes that don’t belong.
Siege Industries’ new game launched in Steam Early Access on November 3. It supports both standard monitors and VR, and you can explore alone or bring up to three friends along in online co-op.
Your task is to move through strange rooms, find corrupted shapes and cleanse them with a focused flashlight while dealing with the things roaming inside the Cube. There’s also a free demo on Steam for anyone curious about the premise.
The Cube has two playable floors in the current Early Access release. Image: Siege Industries
Two floors of puzzles and anomalies
The developer’s Steam page describes the current release as two playable floors, each expected to take around 25 to 30 minutes. Along the way are memory and pattern puzzles, anomaly hunting, platforming and boss encounters.
The game also has leaderboards for players who want to revisit completed levels and chase faster times. Whether you go in with friends or on your own, the basic challenge stays rooted in watching the environment carefully rather than simply shooting everything on sight.
That’s a relatively short starting package, and the developer is upfront that Early Access means unfinished work. Content, balance, performance and controller support are still being developed, and players may encounter bugs.
Players can explore alone or with up to three friends. Image: Siege Industries
A horror game that doesn’t require a headset
VR is optional. The store lists Oculus Rift and Meta Quest via Link with Oculus Touch controllers, as well as standard monitor play. Standing and room-scale VR are supported, according to the listing.
On PC, the published minimum requirements include Windows 10, 8 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290. The developer plans to add floors, puzzles and story elements during Early Access, but says those plans can change.
