Finding affordable housing has become its own kind of horror story. Between rising prices and tiny apartments the idea of finding a cheap place to live can already feel like a nightmare. Welcome to Kowloon is a game that adds a landlord who wants to make that nightmare literal. We hope you’re in a mood for a short 50-minute journey through forgotten hallways, strange encounters, and plenty of jump scares.
Looking for a Room in the Worst Possible Place
Welcome to Kowloon feels like a game you’ve played before. Many times. You walk through the building, explore different rooms, and solve simple puzzles to move forward. The slow movement speed forces us to take in every little detail around us. The piles of garbage sitting in corners, the rusty gates, the leaking pipes, and the cramped living spaces all create a place that feels uncomfortable to exist in. The game does an impressive job capturing the feeling of overcrowded apartments where every hallway feels too narrow and every room feels like it has seen better days.
For true horror, sometimes, all it takes is an apartment complex that looks like it should have been abandoned years ago. But, that novelty wears off soon, and a game that you thought was horror, turns into a walking simulator built around basic objectives and cheap jumpscares. Find a code. Get scared. Search for an item. Get scared. Open a locked door. Get scared. Fix something broken. Well, you get the point. None of these tasks are particularly complicated, but the problem is that the narrow environments often turn exploration into unnecessary backtracking.
When the Lights Go Out
The sound design does a fantastic job making the building feel alive. Every dripping pipe, distant movement, and muffled sound coming from another apartment makes us stop and wonder whether something is nearby. They also implemented some interesting play with shadows. If you blink you might miss them. If you don’t they will stop you dead in your tracks. Many of the horror moments rely heavily on sudden images appearing on screen combined with extremely loud audio stingers. While these moments can still make us jump, they start feeling predictable after a while. Instead of building tension and letting our imagination do the work, the game often chooses the quickest possible way to get a reaction.
Should You Sign the Lease?
There is something genuinely impressive about what this small team managed to create. The recreation of Kowloon Walled City feels oppressive and believable. It’s unlike many horror settings we have seen before. The atmosphere, visuals, and sound design do a great job creating moments of genuine unease, but the constant head-bobbing, basic objectives, and reliance on loud jump scares slowly pulls us away from being fully immersed.
For us, this is a 5/10. The apartment might look terrifying from the outside, but after spending some time inside, we were ready to hand back the keys.
- Developer: a1esska, Notex, N4bA, Admia
- Publisher: N4bA, Notex, a1esska, Admia (PC) / Axyos Games (Consoles)
- Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
- Release Date: August 1, 2023 (PC) / July 10, 2026 (Consoles)
- Genre: First-Person Psychological Horror
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