

The Empty Inn
Candlelight Studios · 2015 · Indie, Pixel Graphics
PC
Mostly Negative27% · 11
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Screenshots
About The Empty Inn
The Empty Inn is a 2D, exploration game with 8-bit, NES-style, pixel art and puzzle gameplay. With only a small lamp in hand, the player is required to solve puzzles and explore the vacant inn, ensuring they keep their lamp lit along the way. If your light goes out then the monster will show its face… and I’m not just talking about the monster who’s watching you. 
- A thrilling game which provides the player with nothing more than a lamp and darkness to explore. Relying less on jump scares, and more on atmospheric and environmental tension, The Empty Inn is an unnerving experience.
- Solve fiendish puzzles whilst ensuring you keep your lamp lit. You’ll be forced to scavenge the once populated inn to survive and to get to the bottom of its current existence.
- Experience a shocking story as you play under a watchful eye which constantly judges and belittles you as you uncover more of the mysteries which haunt The Empty Inn.
- Three difficulty modes, including an EXTREME mode which significantly alters gameplay, as well as a secret ending with additional gameplay and puzzles.
- Made by one developer, The Empty Inn is an untainted vision which experiments with the elements that define horror gaming by creating an experience which is attempts scare the player in a more meaningful way.

"Something about The Empty Inn's presentation makes it look very uncomfortable... The sound of the rain, the dim glow of your candle, and the quiet inn build a powerful dread, even just from the trailer." - Joel Couture, IndieGames
"The Empty Inn provides brief shelter from the high-res multiplayer madness that most of us subscribe to. It's an overnight stay in the haunted halls of your childhood nostalgia. It doesn't last long, so try to enjoy each spooky minute." - Chris Saltel, Eat-Pray-Game
"\ feels very Lovecraftian in its nature and captures an uneasy setting perfectly." - Dan Hartnack, IndieJuice
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
The graphics are nice and retro and the game sets the eerie atmosphere well, especially on the harder difficulties! The game may be short but the secret ending pretty much doubles the content. It's a challenging game and I've enjoyed playing it :)6 found this helpful
Nice NES-stylized graphics and 2.79$ price won my attention, but I was wrong. It would be better if this game was a freeware, like the other projects from Candlelight Studios' website - no matter how much money you'll spend on it, you will be frustrated. Lack of content, poor gamedesign choices, primitive level-design, confusing plotline, imbalanced difficulty, repetitive gameplay - all you need to do in this game is to search the small rooms for keys and matches for your lamp (they makes the flying enemy disappear). Do this for 10 minutes and the "Easy Mode" ends - with a cliffhanger instead of ending, or, to be clear, with the beginning of the story at the very end of the mode. Spoiler:[spoiler] for some reason our hero wandered around the empty inn for 10 minutes, looking for a keys and avoiding an enigmatic flying thing, and then someone killed him! What a twist! Do the same thing on the "Extreme Mode" and don' t forget to find all the purple orbs to get the second part of the story![/spoiler] The "Extreme Mode" unravels a new layer of repetitiveness - now you have only one life and the flying enemy kills you on the first touch. If there was no bug that erases enemy from the ma…4 found this helpful
First off to note, this is not a very long game. It also has a couple of bugs here and there. However, if you understand that, then I'd definitely say it's worth a play if you can maybe pick it up on sale, because it's quite innovative for what it is, and the retro vibe is very well done. It's a puzzle-focussed exploration game, with a little bit of a story. I have yet to reach the secret ending, and extreme mode has posed a challenge for me - so if you want to replay it with a bit more challenge, there's a bit more meat to this little gem.2 found this helpful
Ok the first thing red flag was right after I'm launch this game. I even thought that this game is broken because no key on keyboard choose options in menu. Than I've relized that's left mouse button! Strange decition, I didn't recall it from any other game. You can't rebind keys and game has no support controller so it's just add to the problem... Oh btw if you click right mouse button you've just see your cursor he he "nice" coding. Main character has no diagonal animations, so it's look very ankward then you're going this direction. You're just collect stuff and there is no indication which key or item you had.1 found this helpful
What?? 2/10 - The Empty Inn wasn't so Empty. She should just take the frickin matches and burn the place down.
This is a rather short 4 dollar game. Besides trying to unlock the hidden secret story or to get all achievements it doesn't have much replay. The limited lighting is a nice idea maybe if there were different arrangment of the levels for the difficulties it would have had longer entertaining value for some users. There are some random gliches ( I had a few gamethru with no monster ghost chasing me fixed by shutting down and opening up the game). The controls are simple (I kind of wish I could use a controller on it) The sound effects are decent, story short, graphics for 8 bit not bad just a lot of Yellow (which you can see in the screen shots). So that being said if you know your getting a short dectective, run-from-the-scary-thing (actully just don't let it see you your not going to outrun it in the harder difficulties) game then its not bad. If you want to work on getting the secret ending then this game can keep you playing for a while. Pretty much what you see in the description and the screen shots is what you get. For that reason I give this game a thumbs up becuase it does deliver what it says it does. Its really a 3 out of 5 for short 8 bit style games.
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