It’s late at night. You peer across your desk at the strange, misshapen figurine. Its features are human, but not quite human enough. You don’t know it yet, but you’re playing with forces far beyond your understanding. We love a good horror game here at Gamezebo, and it’s one of those genres where indies so often do it better. You can throw a huge budget at a title, but ultimately, what makes a horror game good is concept and atmosphere. Balázs Rónyai’s The Children Of Clay has it in spades, and it’s completely free.

The Children Of Clay was originally created as an entry to a cosmic-horror themed game jam, but a more polished version is now ready to play via Steam. It’s also only 170MB, so it isn’t a big drain on the hard drive.

So what’s the game about, and why do we think it’s so cool?

An Unusual Discovery

The Children Of Clay puts you in the shoes of an archaeologist, stuck at home after an unfortunate accident involving a cave that you don’t want to think too hard about. You might not be in the field, but you’re still busy. Your colleague sent you an artifact to investigate. This peculiar and undeniably creepy little statue is the heart of the game. It’s up to you to shed light on its mysteries with your skills of research and investigation.

You can turn the artifact, look for details with a magnifying glass, and consult your library of history and folklore for information on any clues you find. As you do this, you piece together a story of Hungarian folklore that slowly builds the sense of dread, the understanding that there is something deeply wrong with the statue, something you might only fully understand after it’s too late.

Crudely-Made Statue, Finely-Crafted Horror

The game has a superb sense of atmosphere and does not rely on cheap tricks to scare you. While some developments are surprising, there are no jumpscares. (We checked.) The statue itself is rendered in a stop-motion style that gives it real weight and presence, and the visual style reminds us of the best of the horror flash titles of the early 2000s that blended real-life assets with visual manipulation to create a world that seems very real, but a little off-kilter.

If you’re perceptive and good at translating runes, you could probably complete the whole thing in around fifteen minutes. It’s a small time investment for a genuinely unique experience, and we would love to see more of this kind of content. We would gladly drop money for more of this kind of horror.

If you want some more interesting horror titles, maybe take a look at our news on Holstin.