RPG Maker horror Psychological horror Short horror 2D horror

It's Not Me, It's My Basement

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Mom and Dad are away. You can keep everything under control, can't you?

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Stores: itch.io
Price: Pay what you want
Rated: 4.7 of 5 from 831 ratings on itch.io
Length: 30 minutes to 1 hour (maker's estimate)
Players: 1
Controls: Keyboard or mouse, with RPG Maker's usual controls: arrow keys to walk, Enter or Z to examine, Escape or X for the menu
Made by: arcadekitten
Released: 2021

What frightens With Mom and Dad away, a nonbinary child is left at home to look after themselves and keep everything under control, and something about the house and its basement is not right. The maker opens the page with a warning that this is a horror game that may not suit all audiences; the cover shows the child with a bloodied apron against a door.
Content: blood.

It's Not Me, It's My Basement is a short RPG Maker horror game by arcadekitten about a nonbinary child left alone at home while their parents are away. You walk the house and yard, look at what the family left behind and try to keep everything under control, while the basement waits. It takes 30 minutes to an hour and has one ending.

About It's Not Me, It's My Basement

It's Not Me, It's My Basement is a free, name-your-own-price horror game by arcadekitten, made in RPG Maker and released on itch.io in 2021 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Volunteer translators have since brought it to more than ten languages, from Spanish and Russian to Thai and Ukrainian, each a separate download.

Mom and Dad are away, and you are old enough to take care of yourself now. Or so the game tells you. You play a nonbinary child going about daily life alone in the family home: a yellow-tiled kitchen, a drawing that has been on the fridge forever, a pink house with a swing set and a pond in the yard. Soft, hand-drawn scenes of a mother and child kneeling over a flower break up the top-down rooms.

The horror sits in the gap between that gentle surface and what the title hints at. The maker says little more than that it is a horror game that may not suit every audience, and that is the right way to go in: the less you know about the basement, the better it works.

It is short, at 30 minutes to an hour, with a single ending, and rated 4.7 out of 5 by over 800 players on itch.io. It suits players who like quiet, story-led RPG Maker horror in the line of small domestic games, where the fear comes from what a home is hiding rather than from chases.

How to play It's Not Me, It's My Basement

Download It's Not Me, It's My Basement from itch.io (name your own price, free is allowed); pick the build for your system or the translated build for your language.
Unzip it and run the game; it appears as INMIMB. On a Mac, open Game.app's Contents, then MacOS, and run nwjs, as the maker advises, so the menus work.
Walk around the house and yard and examine objects to read what the child notices.
Follow the day as it unfolds and keep going until you reach the ending.

Screenshots

It's Not Me, It's My Basement title art: a pale child in a bloodied apron hugging themselves against a closed purple door

It's Not Me, It's My Basement screenshot: Mom and the child kneeling by a purple flower as she says it is easy for a flower to grow in the right conditions

It's Not Me, It's My Basement screenshot: the child standing in a stained yellow-tiled kitchen, seen from above

It's Not Me, It's My Basement screenshot: a child's crayon drawing of a family, with the line This drawing has been on the fridge forever

Tips

Examine everything in each room: much of the story is in what the house holds.
Play it in one sitting; it is under an hour.
Mac players should follow the maker's launch steps, or the menus cannot be closed.