Have you ever played a scary game that, instead of showing the horrors of ghosts, showed you the horrors of humans? Well, Chillasarts owns that playing field.
If you’ve ever watched streamers or any kind of gaming content at all, there’s a high chance you’ve stumbled upon someone playing a Chillasart game. Even though the dev name itself is not a very noticeable one, just take one look at the game style and you’ll know exactly who made it. Chillasarts’s games are incredibly popular in the gaming community. When one video of a game goes viral, the entire content community follows, Chillasarts being one of the lucky ones.
But what is Chillasarts known for? Chillasarts is a game dev company that prides itself on its paranormal and psychological horror games. They use a very detectable retro and glitchy yet realistic style for their gameplay and rendering. But what really sets Chillasarts apart from other game developers is that they completely own their game’s atmospheres. It has a slightly nostalgic feel while also underlying an immense amount of uneasiness. This kind of game atmosphere is what made their games so incredibly popular in the gaming community.
Today I will be specifically reviewing their most popular game: The Closing Shift.
The Closing Shift was released on March 18, 2022. It follows a story of a young woman working the closing shift at a cafe. Over a couple months, you leave the apartment every day to get to your job. Coupled with an annoying manager and creepy customers, it takes a lot to get through a shift. However, more and more weird instances have been happening to make the main character feel incredibly unsettled. The weirdest moments are when she’s all alone, closing up shop. Some of these creepy instances include: customers talking about a weird man creeping around the store, camera shutter noises, the car suddenly breaking down, finding candid pictures while cleaning up the store, misplaced items, love letters, and seeing someone in the CCTV (only for them to disappear a moment later). “The general ambiance of the game, how the creepiness slowly, well, creeps into everything with subtle details, etc. really had me on edge even before stuff started going down. It’s like, things are off all the time. For example, a lady you meet carting around a baby comes to the store the day after, with the baby carriage, but when you look the baby is missing. That’s probably one of the more obvious ones.” (User review from Steam by ‘Eclipse’).
All of these strange occurrences lead to the main character believing she has a stalker, a thought brushed off by her manager. She also has to deal with strange customers that really change the tone of the previously calm shift. You get through these shifts until you discover the truth about these weird events and what lies hidden in the cafe itself.
I think that it’s an amazing game that creates a really great atmosphere for a non-paranormal horror game. Taking the ‘horror of humans’ route was a really smart decision, especially since the game feels so realistic. It has good spaced-out jumpscares (even though they’re a little cheap) and the empty audio makes it feel even more creepy. The scary moments like finding the love letters or candid shots of yourself were timed really well, and I felt pure panic. The buildup in this game was just right for me and they built up the player’s fear of closing the cafe really well. By the last few shifts, I was completely horrified with every little task I had to do, even though they were simple tasks like sweeping the floor. They had a few moments where the NPC you meet glitched out, on purpose or not, which made me feel queasy. However, the tasks you have to do are a bit repetitive. I felt as if most of the game wasn’t on the creepy guy but serving customers and cleaning the cafe. And despite being pretty scary, I felt as if there weren’t enough jumpscares. There were only two moments where I jumped.
In the end, I think it’s an impressive game that deserves a lot of love. It has a high rating of 9/10 out of 1,876 reviews from Steam and has about 60,000 copies sold. If you like thrillers or any kind of eerie horror, this is the perfect game for you.
