Author's note: I was provided an early access download code for Necrophosis on PS5 by the publisher. As a longtime horror fan, I was excited to check this one out! All opinions in this review have been filtered through that love of horror. It's worth noting that all of those opinions are completely my own.
Necrophosis was originally released May 10th, 2024 on PC, but it's set to release on Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on May 28th, 2026 as Necrophosis: Full Consciousness. Enjoy my thoughts.
A World Built From Death
There are horror games that want to scare you. There are horror games that want to challenge you. And then there’s Necrophosis, a game that feels like it wants to crawl directly under your skin and stay there while it festers and warps you from within.
Developed as a surreal first-person horror adventure, Necrophosis drops players into a decaying world where flesh, machinery, architecture, and Death all seem fused together into one massive nightmare. Souls appear trapped in endless torment, massive structures pulse like living organs, and every environment looks ripped from the pages of some forbidden biomechanical art book.
The setup, as much as the game ever truly explains itself, revolves around traversing this dying realm while uncovering fragments of its lore through cryptic narration, environmental storytelling, and strange encounters. Necrophosis clearly wants players to think deeply about their own mortality, suffering, and transformation. Whether it succeeds emotionally will probably depend entirely on your tolerance and appreciation for abstract storytelling.
For me? I admired Necrophosis more than I connected with it.
One of the Grossest Atmospheres in Horror Gaming
To be clear, I actually mean that as a compliment. Stick with me here.
From the opening moments, Necrophosis assaults your senses with wet, squishy, organic sound design that made me uncomfortable more than once. Every movement through the world is accompanied by disgusting squelches, distant groans, and unsettling ambient noise that makes the entire experience feel rotten, but alive. Once I got past the ick my brain was telling me I should feel, it all seemed to make sense in the confines of the world and I couldn't think of this game being any other way.
The visual presentation is the real star here, though. The game is packed with incredibly detailed environments full of twisted bodies, tortured figures, and endless imagery of eternal decay. It’s the kind of horror art direction that instantly sticks in your brain. You don’t just walk through areas in Necrophosis, you wander through grotesque exhibits of suffering. A lot of what you see, at least to me, was more fascinating then horrifying.
The developers absolutely nailed the look they were going for. Fans of games like Scorn will probably feel right at home here. While I'm not really familiar with their works on a personal level, the influence of artists H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński are pretty evident. More so Beksiński based on gamer feedback I've see. Check them both out, they've created some interesting stuff. Regardless of influence, every hallway, structure, and creature in Necrophosis feels handcrafted to maximize discomfort.
Even when I wasn’t fully engaged with the gameplay, I constantly wanted to see what horrifying visual waited around the next corner. It was all fascinating, and I found myself seeking out the discomfort. Strange, I know.
A Slow Puzzle Adventure More Than a Traditional Horror Game
If you go into Necrophosis expecting combat, stealth mechanics, or survival horror systems, you’re probably going to leave disappointed. This is primarily an exploration and puzzle-focused experience. Most progression boils down to finding an item, carrying it somewhere else, inserting it into an object, and unlocking the next area.
Thankfully, the puzzles rarely become frustrating. The game does a solid job subtly guiding players with faint outlines and environmental clues showing where important objects can be placed. I never really found myself wandering aimlessly or completely stuck, which honestly feels like an accomplishment for a game this abstract.
That said, the gameplay itself is fairly simple. The puzzles serve more as pacing tools between environmental showcases than meaningful mechanical challenges. Depending on what you want from horror games, that’ll either feel immersive or disappointingly shallow.
Personally, I didn’t mind the simplicity because the atmosphere was doing most of the heavy lifting anyway. Even if I was lost, the environment did a decent job of keeping me engaged as I went.
Lost in the Fog of Its Own Mystery
The story is where Necrophosis lost me a little. I can appreciate ambiguous storytelling. Some of my favorite horror games leave room for interpretation. But Necrophosis walks a very fine line between mysterious and emotionally distant.
Ironically, the game actually talks a lot. There’s a surprising amount of narration and dialogue from several beings you come across in your travels attempting to explain the world, its suffering, and the meaning behind everything you’re seeing and doing. I appreciated the effort, because the developers clearly wanted this nightmare realm to feel purposeful rather than random. However, much of the dialogue and even the written texts you find really require you to think deep about their meaning. And while I'm sure it comes together for some, it failed to connect with me. I felt no true motivation to do what I was doing other than to see where it was all leading, or find a way to get to the next area just to see what things looked like from a presentation standpoint.
That sounds harsher than I mean it to, though. I don’t think Necrophosis fails narratively because it’s confusing. I think it struggles for me because it never gave me enough emotional grounding beneath all the symbolism. The world is fascinating to look at, but I rarely felt invested in understanding it.
A Horror Experience I Admired More Than Loved
Necrophosis is one of the most visually disturbing and artistically committed horror games I’ve played in quite some time. The grotesque environments, oppressive sound design, and relentless imagery of death and decay create an atmosphere that’s impossible to ignore.
But for me, atmosphere can only carry a game so far.
While I really appreciated what the developers were trying to accomplish (and apparently this game was made by two people I've heard! Bravo!), I never fully connected with the experience on an emotional level. The gameplay is intentionally simple, the storytelling remains buried beneath layers of symbolism, and by the end, I found myself admiring the world more than caring about it.
Still, there’s something undeniably fascinating about Necrophosis. Even now, I can clearly picture many of its horrifying environments in my head. Few horror games commit this completely to a singular vision, and even fewer execute that vision this confidently. This isn’t a traditional horror game. It’s slow, abstract, uncomfortable, and deeply surreal. I think for some players, that’s going to make it unforgettable. But for others, it may feel overly cryptic.
For me, Necrophosis lands somewhere in the middle: a grotesque, haunting horror experience that I respect immensely, even if I never truly loved it.
"Necrophosis (Ambience)" from Necrophosis (Dragonis Games, 2024) All rights belong to Dragonis Games.