Co-Op Indie Carnival Horror Where You Need to Wind Up Your Friends

After more than three years of hard work and dedication, indie development team Beer Night Studio has announced that their upcoming, Unreal-powered, psychological, carnival-themed horror, Carnival Hunt, can finally be experienced as a free demo over on Steam.

Enabling you to play as either predator or prey – represented by the monster roaming the circus and the bunnies it must catch to continue its own existence, respectively – Carnival Hunt is a dark mix of hide-and-seek, strategy, and survival.

When playing as a bunny, the core mechanic is the need to wind up your friends – as in, literally, using a key like an old-fashioned clock – and to stay wound yourself in order to survive.

The catch is that the winding sound carries throughout the circus, allowing The Magician, that monster I mentioned above, to locate you. Once your position is exposed, in addition to running and hiding, you can also play possum by blending in with piles of dead bunnies scattered around the map.

The bunnies' goal in each match is to avoid being caught by The Magician while using up all the wind-up keys scattered across the map, cooperating until the Monster's charge runs out. If caught, you lose your key and eventually your charge, and since keys are limited and both sides need them to live, someone is bound to lose in the end.

The demo version of Carnival Hunt is already available free of charge on Steam, while the full release is scheduled to take place next year. You can learn more and try out the game by clicking this link.

And if you'd like to learn more about Carnival Hunt's early days, you can also check out our 2021 interview with Beer Night Studio's Badraa Baatar, who discussed the development process behind the game and told us about the key components of a successful video game trailer.

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