Games Like Ib: Pixel-Art Horror Adventures

The Witch's House is the closest companion to Ib. Viola walks into a house in the forest, the door vanishes behind her, and almost every room hides a trap, so one careless touch can mean a sudden, gory death. Mad Father, by the maker sen, follows an 11-year-old girl through her father's mansion on the anniversary of her mother's death as his experiments come loose, and his Misao pulls a whole school into an other world of violent spirits after a bullied girl vanished.

If what you loved was the gallery, Time Is Solid Here walks you down a hallway of warped paintings and has you step into each to help a troubled figure move on. Lily's Well is free and short: a little girl alone on a rainy night hears someone crying at the bottom of the well and gathers what she can to climb down. Ann is a free love letter to this era of RPG Maker horror, with Ib among its models: an art student breaks a school rule and is trapped in the building at night, with chase scenes and deadly puzzles, and only the security guard to help her out.

Two free browser games carry the same spirit. Human Construction Site, whose maker names Ib, Ao Oni and Angels of Death as its models, wakes you in a locked cell of a strange facility and asks you to find a way out through puzzles and chases, with five endings. Being Her Darkest Friend traps an art student, Selina, inside one of her own nightmares, a grey world of puzzles where people from her life come back as something else, and takes about forty minutes.

For something longer or darker, The Crooked Man follows a man whose new apartment comes with a crooked, grinning figure, Ao Oni is the official remake of the classic in which four teenagers are hunted through a mansion by a blue demon, and Angels of Death pairs a girl with a scythe-carrying killer climbing a sealed building of deranged captors. The Forest of Drizzling Rain, from the same maker as Angels of Death, takes a student to a rainy village where peaceful days end in one long night.

Three newer hits show where the scene has gone. Tales of the Black Forest, by the small Chinese team Shiying Studio, traps a schoolgirl who can see yokai in a dark Japanese town and sends her back through its history to escape, in about three and a half hours. Dead Plate is free and short: a waiter in a 1960s French bistro tries to earn what he can in a week under a charismatic chef, and the story turns to blood, with four endings. Look Outside, published by Devolver Digital, is the long one: everyone who looked out a window has become a monster, and you scavenge your apartment building, fight in turn-based battles and choose which neighbours to trust.

Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum is the lavish one: a remake of AstralShift's 2016 RPG Maker game in which a girl with no memory and a golden pocket mirror explores a gothic, dreamlike mansion of strange girls in elaborate dresses, with puzzles and several endings.

Three newer free RPG Maker games on itch.io keep the scene going. re:curse, whose maker names Ib among its inspirations, has a researcher explore her own laboratory as it warps and decays around her. It's Not Me, It's My Basement leaves a child alone at home for half an hour to an hour, keeping everything under control while the basement waits, and The Well Speaks to Me follows a woman doing the same chores alone in the forest each day as things change around her.

Yume Nikki is the odd one out: no puzzles to speak of, just a girl's silent, unexplained dreams, but it shaped much of this scene and is free.

Two more free Japanese games, both translated by vgperson, will feel like home to Ib players. In Bevel's Painting a young artist walks into her own glowing canvas, a world where nearly everyone speaks a made-up language, paint changes the world around her, and a reaper later hunts her through a house. Blank Dream sends a girl into a Mirror World between heaven and hell, where each realm, from a dark forest to a gallery whose artist wants paint, is a set of item puzzles full of ways to die; it deals with suicide head on. And Symbiosis, free in the browser, turns The Witch's House around: you are the witch, getting intruders out of her cottage in the woods.

If you only try one, play The Witch's House for the closest feel, or Mad Father for a longer story.

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