'Unhinged,' the newest narrative game from the streamer, lets people play through a horror show, with very creepy results
It’s a stormy night. You’re in your apartment, looking nervously out the window at the trees bending in the wind, when you get a call from your best friend across the street. Her power is out — is yours still on? Suddenly, your living room goes dark. Get out of the building, she says. Meet her downstairs. That’s when you realize you’re not alone. Then everything starts going wrong.
This could easily be the premise of a new Netflix horror show — an episode of Black Mirror, say, or maybe something haunting from Ryan Murphy. But instead of simply watching where the show goes, you’re now part of it. When your friend calls in the game, your smartphone actually rings in your hand. When the lights go out, you use that same personal device to turn on a flashlight and look around. And when the shadows dancing in the corners start to move, it’s your actual skin you jump out of.
This is Unhinged, out June 30, a new narrative game that will show up automatically on your Netflix app (assuming your TV is modern enough to support it). Starring Sadie Sink and Zoë Kravitz, the interactive, immersive horror story isn’t a video game in the sense that most people might be familiar with — there’s no console to buy or controller to learn. Instead, your own smartphone becomes your entry into the world, navigating you through a creepy apartment building, fielding phone calls and text messages from friends and neighbors as you scramble to escape. “We’re not coming for Resident Evil,” jokes Sean Krankel, founder of the game developer Night School Studios, which was acquired by Netflix in 2021, and head of narrative games for the streamer. “It’s like, ‘I want to play a story,’ as opposed to, ‘I want to get extremely good at or play a game that has a lot of escalating difficulty.’”
