Cabinet Phobia
One key is in the room. So is the reason you hesitate.
A first-person room-scale horror concept where the exit is locked, the key is inside one cabinet, and every opening asks the player to choose what they are willing to see and touch.
Fear begins with an action the player chose: approach, open, look, reach.
- Experience
- Room-to-room physical horror
- Platform
- Windows target · keyboard and mouse
- Project stage
- Early playable-room prototype
Follow the game’s story and defining mechanics below.
One-room prototype controlsShow controlsHide controls
Move with WASD and look with the mouse. Aim at a cabinet, key, or exit and hold the left mouse button to reach and interact. Escape releases or recaptures the mouse.
The key is simple.
The reach is not.
The player wakes inside a small, damp room with a locked exit and walls crowded by nearly identical cabinets. There is no guide pointing to the right one. Somewhere inside is the key, but every cabinet is a possibility the player has to approach and open by choice.
A cabinet may be empty, hold a key, contain one or more real-world creatures, or reveal both the key and a living presence. Opening it is not just a search action: the player watches the door move, looks into the space and may have to reach inside to take the key.
The creatures are intended to behave as inhabitants rather than scripted scares. They can remain, run or fly out, hide around opened cabinets, move through the room and react to the player. The planned arc gives the player five or six ordinary rooms with denser cabinets and more creature possibilities before a final surreal transition breaks the rules of the search.
Choose a cabinet, approach it, open it, read what is inside and decide whether to reach for the key. If the key is elsewhere, the choice repeats; if a creature gets out, the room now contains one more living possibility.
Horror caused by the player.
Fear begins with an action the player chose: approach, open, look, reach.
Uncertainty before every opening
Silence, movement and empty shelves are not reliable safety rules. The key and the creatures can share the same cabinet.
A hand instead of a weapon
The player has no combat system to solve the room. Reaching for the key is the moment of exposure.
Living things in shared space
Creatures can leave an opened cabinet, hide beneath it and move through the room; the aim is emergent tension, not a jumpscare queue.
Choose. Open. Reach.
- 01
Read the locked room
Take in the visible exit and dense cabinet walls. The room gives no HUD hint and no approved cabinet.
- 02
Choose without a recommendation
Approach any cabinet. Its contents were set when the room began, and opening it is the player’s own decision.
- 03
Reach for the key
The key must be seen and physically taken. It can share a cabinet with a creature, so the correct answer may still demand a reach.
- 04
Decide whether to leave
The exit opens when the key is found, but any remaining cabinets stay available for the curious player.
- 05
Enter a familiar room changed
The planned sequence repeats similar rooms with more cabinets and denser creature possibilities before a final transition breaks the rules of the search.
From room-search to a night behind the counter.
Cabinet Phobia is an earlier room-scale horror prototype and a predecessor concept in the studio’s horror work. The Horror Pharmacy archive records a “Cabinet Phobia Horror” concept that was later superseded by the pharmacy direction. The selected repositories remain distinct projects; the relationship is design lineage, not shared code or a claim that this prototype became the pharmacy build.
Another world is waiting.
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