Night At the Gates of Hell

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Headshots only: escape a seaside city overrun by Italian-style zombies.

Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
Stores: Steam, itch.io
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (90% of about 900 reviews)
Players: 1
Made by: Black Eyed Priest, Henry Hoare
Released: 2022

Get it on Steam itch.io PlayStation Store (PS4, PS5)Xbox Nintendo eShop

What frightens A zombie outbreak overruns a seaside city and you, a grieving widower, fight through slow, rotting zombies that only fall to a shot in the head, collecting weapons and solving puzzles to get out, all in gory PS1-style 3D.
Content: gore, nudity, sexual themes, strong language, decapitation.

Night At the Gates of Hell is a first-person survival horror game with PS1-style graphics, made as a tribute to the Italian zombie films of Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei. You play David, a widower who must fight his way out of a city overrun by the dead; only a shot to the head puts a zombie down.

About Night At the Gates of Hell

Night At the Gates of Hell is a zombie game by Black Eyed Priest (Jordan King) and Henry Hoare, the makers of Bloodwash, published on Steam by Torture Star Video in September 2022. It came to PlayStation and Switch in September 2023 and to Xbox in December 2023, published there by Puppet Combo.

You play David, a quiet man whose wife has recently died and who lives alone in a seaside apartment. When a zombie outbreak tears through his city, he gathers a few weapons, meets other survivors and sets out to escape and to find out what caused it. Progress comes from searching levels for clues, weapons and items, solving puzzles to unlock new areas, and fighting zombies and cultists on the way.

The maker took early Resident Evil as a model but moved it to first person. The zombies are slow and menacing rather than fast hordes, and they only die from a headshot, which is hard to land without fixed aiming. Each fight is meant to be tense and deliberate. The store promises 85 different zombie models, so you do not meet the same one twice.

The look and tone come from 1970s and 1980s Italian zombie films: rotting flesh, gushing blood, neon light and a disco soundtrack, with full voice acting. It is gory and has nudity, so it suits players who like grindhouse horror and retro low-poly games more than those looking for quiet dread.

How to play Night At the Gates of Hell

Buy it on Steam or itch.io for Windows, or on the PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo stores.
Leave David's apartment and search each level for weapons, items and clues.
Aim for the head: zombies only go down from a headshot.
Use the items you find to solve puzzles that unlock the next area.
Keep moving through the chapters until you escape the city.

Screenshots

A flayed, bloody zombie in a green-lit tiled room faces the player's raised revolver

A low-poly zombie in a bloodied white vest close up in a room with blue curtains and a wooden floor

Two survivors in low-poly PS1 style, a man in a patterned sweater and a woman holding a child, in a rusty room

Tips

Line up your shot before you fire; a body shot does not stop a zombie.
The zombies are slow, so backing away to get a clean headshot is often better than shooting in a panic.
Search rooms fully, since the items for puzzles and new weapons are found while exploring.