Psychological horror Chilla's Art Short horror PS1 horror Haunted house

[Chilla's Art] Stigmatized Property | 事故物件

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A cheap apartment in Japan, and the reason the rent is so low.

Platforms: PC
Stores: Steam, itch.io
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (80% of 1,384 reviews)
Length: about 30 minutes
Players: 1
Controls: WASD and mouse to move and look, left-click to interact, Esc for options
Made by: Chilla's Art
Released: 2019

What frightens You move into a Japanese apartment whose rent is suspiciously cheap, a jiko bukken, and spend the nights there alone finding out why, with the steady feeling that you are not really alone.
Content: blood, dead animals.

Stigmatized Property is a short first-person horror game by Chilla's Art about a jiko bukken, a Japanese apartment where something happened that keeps the rent low. You live there alone for a few nights and find out the reason, in about 30 minutes.

About [Chilla's Art] Stigmatized Property | 事故物件

Stigmatized Property (事故物件, jiko bukken) is one of the early horror games by Chilla's Art, the Japanese studio behind The Convenience Store and The Closing Shift, released on Steam in October 2019. In Japan, a jiko bukken is a property where a death or other incident took place, and such places are known for cheap rents. The game puts you in one of them to find out exactly why yours is cheap.

You play in first person in a two-storey apartment block on a quiet back street at night: concrete stairs and outside corridors, vending machines glowing in a narrow alley, and your own small room. The makers call it mainly a walking simulator with some puzzle-solving, and the horror is in being alone in the apartment, or thinking you are.

Like most Chilla's Art games it runs through a VHS filter that copies the noise, bleeding and jitter of an old CRT screen over photo-real environments inspired by Japanese horror films. There is a good ending and a bad ending.

It is very short, about 30 minutes by the makers' own count, which makes it an easy first Chilla's Art game for anyone who wants a quiet, slow Japanese ghost story rather than chases and fights.

How to play [Chilla's Art] Stigmatized Property | 事故物件

Buy it on Steam or the studio's itch.io page and start it on Windows.
Walk through the apartment block and into your room in first person.
Click on objects and doors to interact and solve the small puzzles that move the night on.
Keep going through the nights to learn why the rent is so cheap, and reach the good or the bad ending.

Screenshots

Through a window, a dark figure stands with its back turned in a bare lit room of the apartment

The apartment block beside a street at night, with glowing vending machines and power lines

A narrow back alley at night with a bright vending machine against a tiled wall

A dim corridor along the apartment block with a red railing and a single light overhead

Tips

Play at night with headphones; the game is built on quiet and small sounds.
It is about 30 minutes long, so play it in one sitting.
The store's content notes mention blood and dead animals; nothing else is flagged.