21 Rooms

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A stranger's game, a locked hotel, and a killer you only hear.

Platforms: Browser, PC
Price: Free
Rated: Game Jolt: 67 likes, 87 followers and 52 comments, many of them Let's Play videos; players call its chase scenes frightening
Players: 1
Controls: Mouse: click the dialogue to continue, the room buttons to move and the backpack to use items
Made by: Real Tough Chickens
Released: 2017

What frightens Locked in a decaying hotel for a stranger's game, you scavenge food room by room while an unseen killer roams the floors; you listen at doors for its footsteps, and when it finds you a countdown starts and you have seconds to get away.
Content: loud sounds, jumpscares.

A free photo-based horror game from Real Tough Chickens. Broke and out of options, you agree to play a stranger's game inside a ruined hotel: survive its days, keep yourself fed from what you find, and stay away from the killer who walks the halls.

About 21 Rooms

21 Rooms is a small horror game by the three-person team Real Tough Chickens (Brian Pickens, Blake Pickens and Micah Sparks), released on Game Jolt in 2017. It runs in the browser, with a Windows download as well.

The premise is set out in a few lines: with no options left you take up a stranger's twisted game. Win and you will have more money than you can imagine; lose and only death waits. The doors of a decaying hotel lock behind you on the first day.

Each scene is a photograph of a real derelict building, with a text box beneath and a few buttons to choose where to go next: the lobby, the elevator, the stairwell, room after numbered room. A hunger meter drains as the days pass, so you search rooms for food and tools and keep them in a six-slot backpack. Somewhere in the building is a killer you never clearly see. Listening at a door may give you the echo of footsteps; walking in on it starts a red countdown bar and a few seconds to choose the way out.

The fear is in sound and timing more than images, which is why the makers ask you to play full screen with headphones and the game opens with a warning about loud noises. A Normal difficulty shortens the game and makes finds kinder; Challenge is the original release. It suits players who like text and choice-driven horror and the dread of a building they cannot see all of.

How to play 21 Rooms

Open the game's Game Jolt page and play it in the browser, full screen and with headphones, or download the Windows version.
Choose Normal for a shorter game with better item finds, or Challenge for the original difficulty.
Click the dialogue to read on, and use the buttons on each photograph to move between rooms and floors.
Search rooms for food and items, and keep your hunger meter from emptying.
Listen at doors before you go through, and when the killer appears, pick the way out before the countdown ends.

Screenshots

21 Rooms screenshot: a peeling green elevator in the hotel lobby, a red 25-second countdown and the text The elevator doors open, the killer emerges

21 Rooms screenshot: Room 101 on day 11, an old television under a torn sheet in a mouldy room, with a knife and a jar of food in the backpack

21 Rooms screenshot: a stairwell door on floor 2 and the text You listen closely at the stairwell door, you hear the echo of footsteps

21 Rooms screenshot: the hotel lobby on day 1 with the hunger meter and an empty backpack, and the text The doors lock behind you

Tips

The help button above the backpack explains the rules; read it before the first day.
Footsteps behind a door are a warning: choose another route.
On a 16:10 screen the web version may be cut off at the edges; full screen helps.