Stay Close Horror better with a friend

Co-op is where this game works best. You and a friend play the trapped couple together: one lobby, two people in the town, protecting each other while you work through the tasks. The story even changes depending on whether you play alone or together, so the co-op run is its own version of events. One player and a friend spent a good two hours screaming, failing and laughing at every death. Play it with someone. The single-player route exists, but the game is tiring alone and the fear lands harder when there's someone next to you to blame.

The town is not empty. Its creatures, the Residents, each come with their own rule, and learning them is the game. One kills you if it sees light. Another stands perfectly still while a light is on, then moves when it goes dark. Some lurk, some sprint at you when you least expect it, and some won't let you run at all. At first you don't know any of this, and that's when the game is at its scariest: a sound in the dark, no idea what made it, no idea what to do. Once you've learned each creature's trick, the fear turns into a puzzle of timing and nerve, figuring out how to slip past. Fair, but not easy.

A man named Cyrus is your only guide out. He waits in a kind of hub room, hands you tasks (finding his compass, looking for other survivors) and, before each one, sets riddles you must solve to proceed. The riddles are written in tricky English, and at least one per round will make you stop and stare. Answers are findable if you look around the town and read the notes scattered through it, which are genuinely well written and creepy. The riddles gate your progress, so they can feel like roadblocks when you just want to get moving. Treat them as part of the trip, not an obstacle, and they give the run a rhythm: think, then survive.