Withering Rooms

About Withering Rooms

Withering Rooms is made by the studio Moonless Formless and published by Perp Games. It was released in April 2024 on PC (Steam and GOG), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

You play Nightingale, a girl trapped in Mostyn House, a Victorian mansion that does not stay the same. Each night the rooms are rearranged: corridors lead somewhere new, attics and secret passages hold treasure, and beneath the house lies an ever-changing labyrinth. Beyond the grounds wait hedge mazes, tombs, caves, churches and ruins. You explore from the side in a 2.5D view, gathering weapons, distractions, magical artifacts, keys and crafting materials. The store pages describe the setting as gothic horror mixed with 19th-century science fiction.

The house is hostile in many ways. Overgrown undead shamble through the halls, invisible ghosts can only be seen by their effects, madmen swing axes and witches bargain for body parts. Some threats are best avoided by hiding, laying a hex trap on a closet door, raising an enchanted suit of armour or casting a decoy of yourself. Death ends the night and costs you what you carried unless you performed a ritual to keep it, which gives every venture into a new wing real weight. Rituals can also level you up for good.

There is a lot of it: the PlayStation Store counts more than 200 rooms, more than 80 monsters and bosses, more than 400 items and more than 30 characters to befriend or betray, with four endings and New Game+. A first run to the end takes around 17 hours.

The look is dark and painterly, with candlelit rooms, faded wallpaper and grotesque monster design, and the story is told through the strange friends, merchants, liars and witches you meet. It suits players who like survival horror with a strong RPG and soulslike side, such as Bloodborne or Darkwood, more than those after pure hide-and-seek horror.

How to play Withering Rooms

1. Explore Mostyn House room by room each night, picking up weapons, keys, artifacts and crafting materials.
2. Fight what you can with melee weapons, firearms and spells, and hide or use distractions against what you cannot.
3. Perform rituals to keep items from night to night or level up permanently, since death costs you what you carry.
4. Talk to the house's residents, merchants and witches to learn the story, open new areas beyond the mansion and decide which ending you reach.

Tips

• Learn each enemy's attack before committing; blocking and timing matter more than swinging fast.
• Use rituals before risky trips so a death does not wipe out a good haul.
• Secret passages and attics hide much of the best loot, so check walls and ceilings.
• Hex traps on closet doors and a decoy of yourself can turn a fight you would lose into one you can walk away from.

Questions