Scared by Squares is bringing its liminal horror to Steam and you can demo it now
Sorry, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, we’ve got a new nightmare – cubes. No, we’re not kidding. Scared by Squares, a liminal nightmare that’s making the leap from Meta Quest to PC, is set to spook players with geometry, and you can demo it now.
The unsettling premise behind Scared by Squares is that there’s an entity known as the Shaper, a floating block which has been sealed in a prison made of cubes. However, the prison is starting to give and you’re sent in to sort the whole mess out.
That entails roaming a vast realm where any of the objects you could encounter could be your worst nightmare. Is that cube just for show, or is it about to descend on you when your back’s turned? From the floor falling away to a malevolent Rubik’s Cube pursuing you down a narrow runway, you’ll never feel safe.
At least, that’s the nightmarish vibe we got from the demo (thanks to Alpha Beta Gamer for putting this on our radar). Even when we weren’t being directly threatened, we’d catch the Shaper peeking out from a corner or rushing across behind another object, disappearing before we could reach it. It left us wishing we were roaming a swimming pool.
There are puzzle elements too, as you use your handy laser to manipulate zap away certain cubes, though you can’t dig your way through, Minecraft-style. Instead, you stand there, hoping that some faceless foe isn’t going to savage you while you’re lasering its less sentient brethren.
Scared by Squares is out in Early Access on Meta Quest 2 and while there’s no PC release date, the demo, which you can find here, will let you play the entirety of the first floor.
