In 2009, two young girls living in an apartment in Turkey perform satanic rituals with candles late at night. According to allegations, the girls, who lived on the top floor of the building, mysteriously lost their lives that night. Following this incident, the residents of the building gradually left over time. The building manager also left the building after locking the doors following the incident. This event made headlines in the Turkish media under the title "Apartment No. 129" and became part of urban legends. You play as Emir, a social media content creator, who enters the building in order to find out the truth surrounding the urban legend...

Danger lurks around every corner

Apartment No 129 is a first person psychological horror game that sees you exploring a mysterious, derelict apartment block. The aim is to see if you can discover any evidence of the supposed satanic ritual that took the lives of at least two young girls who lived in apartment no 129.

The opening segment of the game sees you getting to grips with the control system as you make your way through the ground floor of the apartment. This was were I first encountered, for me, a game breaking issue. There was no option to invert the Y camera angle. As a player of flight sims in my youth, I've gotten into the habit of pressing down to look up and up to look down. It's not all that uncommon and most first person games incorporate a simple option to switch the controls. So, I spent a great deal of time fumbling with the controls, which broke the immersion for me.

Explore a mysterious, derelict apartment block

The slow build in the game helps to add tension and suspense. The game is graphically fairly average, but the developers have given the environments just the right level of debris and worn paint to make the building feel deserted and out of date. There are notes dotted around the locations which act as hints on how to progress. But there are just too many of them and the game's focus is all over the place. It's hard to fathom what you're supposed to do, where you're supposed to look, but then I suppose this is to be expected when the apartment block feels like you have free reign to wander anywhere.

There are plenty of jump scares, but it was the slow build and brooding menace that kept me playing. It's cheap, it's a solid horror offering, it's just that the lack of focus distracts from what could be a truly suspenseful game.

5

Nick Smithson