Need a Halloween gaming fix? Free horror from maker of Lethal Company sounds like a treat

If you've been distracted by Google's playable Pac-Man doodle today - yes, check out the search engine for a Halloween-themed take on the arcade classic - there's something far spookier on the loose for PC gamers.

XDA Developers noticed that Welcome To The Dark Place has been released by Zeekerss, the improbably named creator of the well-liked Steam early access horror hit Lethal Company.

The Dark Place as I'll call it for short - not to be confused with the classic Quake deathmatch level, The Bad Place (aka the duellist's paradise) - is a single player effort for Halloween which is available as a free download on Steam.

This isn't anything like the coop survival of Lethal Company, mind. It's a creepy and atmospheric text adventure, with the audio adding nicely to the unease, which is mostly played in the dark (hence the name) and is all about trying to map your way around in the pitch blackness (though there are visuals scattered about here and there).

Steam reviews are very positive, and seemingly there's quite some mileage here in terms of figuring out what's going on - it's an expansive game and beating it isn't easy by all accounts. Some people even indicate that they're surprised the developer isn't charging for The Dark Place.

I haven't played it yet, but intend to give it a shot, perhaps tomorrow evening for obvious reasons. These are the only instructions you get, by the way, in the form of six enigmatic clues:

• 1: Three red blots mark liars
• 2: Food means depravity and death
• 3: Tellers of time are sped up by--
• 4: Holes in suspicious places may lead to the Undergoing
• 5: Don't listen to the wolf
• 6: The train is the only escape

So, it seems the train might be where you should be headed, eventually. Creepy stuff, certainly far more so than Pac-Man's ghosts (although there's admittedly some mileage in Google's doodle, too).