Unhinged is a new short-form “immersive game experience” from Night School, perhaps best known for games like Oxenfree and Oxenfree II. This unusual “two-screen” interactive horror experience uses the player’s real-life smartphone in conjunction with a TV screen or web browser (Chrome or Edge only), telling a story about a young woman’s frightening encounter during a power outage, all unraveling over the course of about thirty minutes. To start, I simply loaded the game in a browser and scanned the provided QR code, and the game took over both screens. (I recommend putting away your headphones and turning the volume up on your computer speakers.)

The perspective is reminiscent of a first-person walking simulator, albeit with a twist. In Unhinged, the phone acts both as a controller, a pointer mapping the player’s physical gestures to where the main character Ava, voiced by Zoë Kravitz, is looking, and as the protagonist’s literal smartphone in the game. The “big screen” shows the environment; the interface is minimal, usually centered around interacting with objects or choosing a direction in which to turn/walk. The “small screen” acts as a sort of “mouse” for the big screen while having a display which mimics that of a real-world cell phone. Ava uses her phone as a flashlight for much of the gameplay which means the player is holding their phone up as their light source (it’s best to go into “do not disturb” mode when you start). 

Intriguingly, whenever Ava received texts or got a call, my phone buzzed. I had to tap on my phone screen to answer it or decline it, as all my actions are being mirrored in-world. The character on the other side of the call, Claire, voiced by Sadie Sink, even sounded like she was speaking through Ava's phone because the audio was clearly coming out of my iPhone. I’m not sure whose phone I’m holding, mine or Ava’s. Perhaps both, at the same time.

This kind of embodied gameplay can be tough if the protagonist is either saying or doing things that feel inauthentic to the player’s emotional state (a favorite subject, which I wrote about in my master’s thesis). For me, Kravitz’s performance allowed me to not only mirror Ava’s vulnerability but close the emotional distance between myself and the character. Because Unhinged relies upon horror tropes while using the phone as a grounding device, I felt emotionally aligned with Ava, in addition to physically embodying her, both of us clutching our devices in quiet terror. 

I also perceived Unhinged responding to some of my choices despite the somewhat thin plot being largely pre-determined. When I declined a call from Claire, I received a worried text message from that same character moments later. More experienced gamers may find the lack of freedom limiting and the visuals less photorealistic than expected; however, the gameplay is approachable even for a more casual player. Unhinged’s soundtrack and voice acting also go a long way to creating an appropriately creepy mood. I won’t spoil who else is in the cast but their role as a major character is delightfully demented. I will also note that if you’re someone who gets motion sick in first-person perspective games, you’ll probably want to turn on the reduced camera motion mode. 

The game periodically displays a timer during moments of crisis and Ava’s life will come to a violent, tragic end if your reflexes are not fast enough. But if you do die, the cops who find her body often sling gallows humor lines that are reminiscent of Law and Order’s Lennie Briscoe quips. Upon death, progress is saved and you simply return to the last checkpoint; there is also a “story mode” available where the player cannot die at all.

Using an intimate personal object like the player’s phone – a device which acts like an extension of the self for so many people – in such an embodied way is a clever move by Night School. I’ll admit I’m someone whose iPhone is seemingly grafted to my hand. So while playing Unhinged, it’s almost like the evil forces in Ava’s reality started invading my reality more and more with every text and every call. I winced at least twice when something happening in the story world affected her (my?) phone. While mechanically very different from augmented reality apps and alternate reality games, the sensations Unhinged evokes will feel familiar to fans of both.

By leveraging such a smart mechanic, the horrors of Unhinged felt like they spilled out of the screen and into my world. I sincerely hope we see more reality-bending experiences like this one in the near future.


Unhinged, from Night School Studio, is available for free to Netflix subscribers, starting at $8.99/month.

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