Security: The Horrible Nights by Professional Villains

A small but mighty genre that’s been sweeping Steam for the last few years now colloquially know as the ‘anomaly’ horror game (as seen in our recent review of Cabin Factory and Twisted Logic: Abbotsfield). Inspired by things like Five Nights at Freddy’s and hidden image games, the spookiness comes from having to sit in place, flip through camera feeds, and notice what has changed or is out of place. It’s simple but effective, and obvious bait for easily-scared streamers.

Security: The Horrible Nights from Denmark-based team Professional Villains is a really ambitious take on this genre. Instead of randomized anomalies, you have a bunch of different horror scenarios that play out each night, moving to a new one if (and when) you die. But is it enough to make the game truly exceptional?

Crazy Nights

As the security guard at a hospital built on the site of supernatural shenanigans, your job consists of watching your monitors for anything weird. If you see something, you get up, run to whatever floor things are happening on, and try to yell at them to stop. They may stop, or they might try to kill you. It’s a living.

The variety in each of Security’s scenarios is really impressive. There are lots of creative monster designs that all act differently and need you to do different things to win. It does a great job of keeping you on your toes and having to be ready for anything, which is easy given how simple the game’s actual gameplay is.

All you ever need to do is either run, shine your flashlight, or yell.

The Nightman Cometh

The best times I had in the game really came through seeing all the creative scenarios the team came up with. There’s even a free DLC pack featuring scenarios by other horror writers.

Unfortunately, the thing that spoils these scenarios is having to actually play them. While the variety is great, they generally suffer from a lack of guidance or explanation about what you need to do to survive. To some extent, it’s to try to let you stumble into one of the multiple endings possible in each scenario, but it felt like the game at least needed to give you a sense of what you should be doing when encountering a monster.

This design choice unfortunately makes the gameplay frustrating as well. When your actions are limited to moving and yelling, when neither of those seems to be solving the issue you’re facing, it’s easy to get stuck in a repetitive loop.

The Verdict

Security is a hard one for me to rank. On the one hand, I think its ambition and creativity deserve to be rewarded. On the other, I found its general gameplay frustratingly obtuse for how simple it is. I think it’s worth a look if you want to see all the different ideas at play. Just be sure you know what you’re getting into.

Security: The Horrible Nights is available via Steam.

Watch the trailer for Security: The Horrible Nights below: