Highlights
- Stores make terrifying settings for horror games; dealing with nightmare customers, stalkers, and otherworldly beings creates an unnerving experience.
- Game examples like The Convenience Store and Night Of The Consumers showcase how familiar locations can turn dangerous and truly shake players.
- Playing titles like Employee Of The Month offers a uniquely complex and trippy horror experience in store settings, worth enduring the mind-bending narrative.
Stores are a surprisingly and largely underrepresented setting for horror games; an isolated gas station in the middle of nowhere or a convenience store at the end of a dark street with winding alleyways seem like the perfect locations for horrifying encounters. Working alone on the night shift at the whim of strangers with unknown motives is in itself an unnerving concept.
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The following store-based horror games from Steam and itch.ioexemplify how such familiar locations can turn dangerous; whether dealing with nightmare customers, creepy strangers, stalkers, intruders, or unwanted otherworldly beings, the narrow aisles and dingy storage rooms have the potential to become terrible labyrinths that leave the player truly shaken.
8 The Convenience Store
Steam User Rating: 84%
- Release: February 17, 2020
- Developer: Chilla's Art
The Convenience Store is a Japanese horror game that begins with the player walking from a dingy house through the desolate foggy streets of nighttime Japan to their shift. Over the following five nights, the protagonist receives a series of VHS tapes that contain increasingly disturbing footage.
As the automatic doors begin to glitch and ghostly figures start appearing on the CCTV cameras after unlocking the nearby taped-off outhouse, the player will wonder whether they should have taken the warnings about the impending "day of judgment" from the strange man lurking outside seriously. There are two endings to this game.
7 Night Of The Consumers
Itch.io Score: 4.4
- Release: March 7, 2017
- Developer: germfood
Night of the Consumers is a high-adrenaline, store assistant simulator-slash-survival horror. Tasked with restocking shelves whilst being chased down by an endless onslaught of zombie-like customers hungry for products, the players' only refuges are the sparsely placed staff rooms.
While it can be frustrating at times, requiring practice and strategy to get things done without interruption, this PS1-style game rewards the player with a higher level of satisfaction (and relief) when they succeed. Overall, Night of the Consumers is an effective parody of the horrors of retail.
6 The Closing Shift
Steam User Rating: 88%
- Release: March 19, 2022
- Developer: Chilla's Art
Another game by Chilla's Art, The Closing Shift is set in Japan's suburbia. Working as a barista in "Chilla's Coffee" store, the player must make and serve drinks and food. As a range of interesting and quirky customers come and go, bringing with them rumors of ghosts and stalkers, the player is unsure of what the danger is and when to expect it.
As obsessive notes start turning up both at the protagonist's home and work, and customers begin questioning who the person lurking outside is, the cozy café starts to feel less and less safe. With unique character designs and an increasingly sinister plot, this game (which has three possible endings) is much more than a barista simulator.
5 Night Shift: A Homage To Puppet Combo's Game
Itch.io Score: 4.5
- Release: 2022
- Developer: CharlieGS96
In this remake of Puppet Combo's discontinued 2018 game of the same name, the protagonist awakes at 23:00 and must walk through the dark hallways of their apartment complex, through the streets, and bus to the "8-Twelve" - a convenience store in the middle of nowhere.
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The player must complete tasks: clean the store, replenish shelves, and serve customers, but although Night Shift is a seemingly idle cashier simulator, its simple and largely uneventful gameplay, when contrasted with the isolated surroundings, makes for an unnerving experience. Well-paced, this game waits until the players' guard is down to prove that they were right to be paranoid.
4 The Shopping List
Itch.io Score: 4.6
- Release: 2022
- Developer: JordiBoi
Based on the developer's mother's "fear of being stalked while shopping", The Shopping List begins with the protagonist moving from their hometown to the city, endeavoring to complete their shop before heading to their new apartment. As locals talk of disappearances and warn against roaming the streets at night, the simple list of evening errands turns into a much more foreboding experience.
With occasional flashbacks to the protagonist's troubled childhood interjecting the gameplay, this game concludes that players can never truly escape the past. Overall, The Shopping List has an engaging plot with unexpected twists and a hair-raising atmosphere.
3 Midnight Shift
Steam User Rating: 93%
- Release: May 1, 2023
- Developer: Shatter Glass games
Midnight Shift follows Johnny, an employee at "Quick Stop" gas station, on his night shift. The player soon discovers that Johnny is being watched by an axe-wielding, masked killer who is lurking in the surrounding woodland.
The ongoing thunderstorm creates an uneasy ambiance, making the bright interior of the store feel exposed and turning Johnny into a sitting duck as he waits for the police deputy to arrive. With moments of crude toilet humor and profanity, Midnight Shift is more of a horror comedy that offers a tense experience without taking itself too seriously.
2 Night Stop
Itch.io Score: 4.8
- Release: 2022
- Developer: Jonny's Games
"Every year thousands of people go missing along the United States forests and roadways ... some disappearing without a trace."
In Night Stop, the protagonist is commuting through rural America when they come across a gas station that they don't remember being there before.
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Inside there is strange graffiti, pentagrams, and missing posters, and the player must follow the clues to figure out what happened to the missing people. This developer cleverly manipulates time and uses body horror to create a unique game that asks whether all doors are worth unlocking.
1 Employee Of The Month
Steam User Rating: 97%
- Release: September 21, 2022
- Developer: Projeckt Skeleton
Employee of the Month has perhaps the most complex plot of other store horror games. A combination of meta humor and trippy locations, Employee of the Month transports the player into a variety of alternate dimensions as they repeatedly attempt to carry out the manager's orders on their first shift - all while being hunted by the monstrous form of an ex-employee.
This game is an overall longer experience, but its uniquely geometric design and self-referential jokes make it well worth enduring the mind-bending (and at times confusing) narrative.
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