Captured review

Anomaly games are all the rage lately: games that thrust you into an environment that loops around, and each time you need to spot something that’s different. Maybe it’s something obvious, like a giant, gaping hole to hell that’s opened up. Or maybe it’s more subtle, like a dripping tap. These games test your memory and your attention to detail, often while putting you on edge with a tense atmosphere and the fear or something jumping out at you. The latest is Captured by Puck Games, and honestly, I can’t get enough of it.

Captured casts you as a boy who, after spotting something strange in his bedroom, ends up stuck in a terrifying loop in his own home. The light switches have disappeared, the lights have all gone off, and the windows have vanished. If that wasn’t bad enough, at the start of every new loop, up to three ‘anomalies’ will be found around his house. Oh, and there are the entities too. Those god damn entities.

This is a genuinely creepy game, and perhaps the scariest anomaly-spotting game I’ve played to date. The entities, which can pop up at any time — and don’t count as anomalies — constantly keep you on edge, because you simply don’t know when they’ll appear. There’s a terrifying rabbit whose eyes glow red if it gets close enough to you; don’t take your eyes off it, otherwise it will get you. Sometimes you’ll open a door to find a horrifying Slender Man-like creature staring back at you; that one, you need to look away until it disappears. There’s another one that will chase you, and one more that lurks in the shadows; if you’re lucky, maybe you won’t spot it. If you do? You won’t want to play this game with the lights out, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t take long to complete Captured; completing a loop means spotting 13 anomalies, which can be done in roughly 30 minutes or less. But with multiple difficulty levels, along with an endless mode that tasks you with spotting as many anomalies as possible, there’s plenty of reason to jump back in. There’s even a leaderboard if you want to make spotting anomalies while being scared silly competitive.

It helps that Captured looks so realistic. The house that you find yourself in looks like a real, lived-in house, complete with bedrooms, home office and utility room. It’s dark as you make your way around, and you’ll rely on your torch to illuminate the way. Most anomalies are pretty obvious — a TV set is switched on, there’s an extra toilet in the bathroom, or a cabinet is on the ceiling rather than the floor — but some of them are a little more subtle.

What sets Captured apart from other anomaly games is that you have to identify exactly what the anomalies are. Sometimes in these games, you simply need to say whether or not something, anything, is different. Here, you have to scan and categorise each anomaly. Is it a missing or extra object? Is it water-based? Is it something electrical? You never know exactly how many anomalies are going to be in a loop either; there can be up to three, but sometimes there’s only one or two. It leaves you doubting yourself, wondering if you’ve missed something. You can scan something if you think it might be anomalous, but doing so drains your battery. Run out of batteries, and you can no longer scan for anomalies, leaving you open to failure.

If you’re a fan of the anomaly-hunting genre, you’re going to love Captured. It wears its P.T. inspiration on its sleeve, but exploring this spooky house is a genuine thrill. It’s a shame it’s over so fast, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll be itching to jump straight back in to try and spot all possible anomalies.