Four games rendered in the PlayStation 1 visual language — wobbly polygons, dithered fog, 256-color textures.
The PS1 look — wobbly affine-textured polygons, no perspective correction, vertex snap, dithered fog, low-resolution 256-color textures — became a horror language of its own in the late 90s. Resident Evil, Silent Hill 1, Echo Night, the Clock Tower series: they were all working within the same hardware constraints, and those constraints turned out to be a perfect engine for dread. These four games are built on the same shared PSX render pipeline and run entirely in your browser — no download, no installer, no launcher.
Tallowmoor is the deepest cut. A first-person PS1-era horror set in an abandoned 19th-century English town on the moors. The Gentleman patrols the lanes in a top hat and long greatcoat, faceless and silent, and he hears every footfall — sprint and he comes running. You have to recover three relics from buildings around town (a verger's locket, an iron nail, a vial of communion wine) and place them on a stone altar in the church courtyard to perform the rite of departure. Daily omens randomize the difficulty. Roughly 5–10 minutes per run, brutal replay tension.
VACATED: The Mall is the urbex stealth photography one. A PS1-aesthetic abandoned 1990s shopping mall with two long corridors, a food court with a dry fountain and cracked skylight, half the storefronts gated shut behind roll-down security grilles. You slip in, photograph seven forgotten subjects (a toppled mannequin, an empty register, the dead Cinnabun sign, the dry fountain, an abandoned shopping cart, plus the dead RAINFETCH CAFÉ sign and a slumped animatronic in the West Wing), and try to get back out before two roaming security guards catch you. Stealth verbs include sneaking, freezing in place to break detection, and breaking line of sight behind store fixtures. The West Wing is now open — a derelict rainforest-themed café with a drained saltwater tank system, gift shop, and back-of-house kitchen — and its far arms are barricaded for a future expansion.
The Showroom is the liminal escape one. You wake up in a residential cul-de-sac that's somehow indoors — astroturf lawns, painted blue sky walls, foam clouds dangling on wires from a fluorescent-lit ceiling. One of the houses is unlocked. Read the clues, decode the keypad, find a way out. No monster, no threat, just the wrongness of the place itself. Short, and the most quietly unsettling.
Tranquility is the other liminal escape — same dread, traded for vacuum. You wake in an abandoned domed moon base with the crew gone and a lander waiting on the surface, but the airlock won't cycle until you're in a full EVA suit and the four suit parts are locked away. Read the crew's notes, solve four lockers (a quarters-roster keypad, a breaker bank you reset in sequence, a pressure dial, and an O₂ master code built from the others), then cross the regolith in low gravity on a ticking oxygen tank and board the lander. The run is timed, so once you know the codes it becomes a race against your own best.
All four games share the same Three.js-based PS1 renderer with vertex snap, low internal resolution, point-filtered textures, and configurable fog. The visual identity is consistent across the catalog — if you like the look in one, you'll feel at home in the others. Tallowmoor, VACATED, and The Showroom run on desktop and mobile with full on-screen touch controls; Tranquility is keyboard-and-mouse only. Tallowmoor and VACATED have audio cues that benefit from headphones in a dark room.
Don’t let him hear you.
A PS1-era first-person horror set in an abandoned 19th-century English town. The Gentleman walks the lanes — top hat, long greatcoat, faceless. He hears every footfall. Recover three relics from the town’s buildings (a verger’s locket, a blessed iron nail, a vial of communion wine) and place them on the stone altar in the church courtyard to perform the rite of departure. A flintlock and a cane are hidden too, but every shot brings him running.
After hours, after closing, after everything.
VACATED: The Mall is a PS1-aesthetic urbex stealth photography game set inside a sprawling 1990s shopping mall years after the doors were chained shut. The fluorescent strips still flicker over terrazzo floors; ceiling tiles have started to drop; the dry fountain in the food court catches the last of the daylight from the cracked skylight overhead. You slip in through a propped-open service door with one job — document seven forgotten subjects scattered across the food court atrium, its two long corridors, and the abandoned West Wing beyond the north passage (a derelict rainforest-themed café with a drained saltwater tank system, gift shop, and back-of-house kitchen), then make it back to the entry before security catches you. Two private guards wander the whole length of the mall on unpredictable routes, a ceiling camera sweeps the food court, and half of the storefronts are sealed behind roll-down security gates. Sneak slowly, duck behind a clothing rack or a toppled mall bench to break their line of sight when a vision cone swings your way, and learn where each subject lives by reading the directory kiosk at the entrance. Get spotted and you're escorted out — bring the photos out and the run is yours. The whole experience is built for one short session: roughly five to ten minutes per run, no installation, no save files, plays in the browser on desktop or mobile.
The neighborhood is indoors.
A PS1-era liminal escape. You wake up in a cul-de-sac that's somehow inside — astroturf lawns, painted-blue sky walls, fluorescent-lit ceiling, foam clouds dangling on wires. One of the houses is unlocked. Read the clues, work the keypad on the rear door, and try to leave.
Suit up. Cycle the airlock. Get off the rock.
A PS1-era first-person escape set in an abandoned domed moon base. The crew is gone and the lander is waiting on the surface — but the airlock won't cycle until you're in a full EVA suit, and the four suit parts are locked away. Read the crew's notes, work a keypad from the quarters roster, reset a tripped breaker bank in the right order, dial the boots maglock to cabin pressure, then arm the O₂ pack from the master code. Cross the regolith in low gravity on a ticking oxygen tank, reach the lander, and board it to escape. Free to play in your browser on desktop, no download.
Start with VACATED if you want a short focused session you can finish in one sitting. Move to Tallowmoor when you want to actually be scared. The Showroom and Tranquility are the palate cleansers between runs — short, strange, no pursuit — one suburban, one in vacuum.