AISLE 7

Free online horror game · five night shifts · no download

AISLE 7 is a free first-person horror game you play online in your browser. You are the new associate on the night shift in a supermarket that should have closed for good. The announcer reads out your order, the doors lock, and something is walking its rounds.

What is AISLE 7?

A night in AISLE 7 is a shopping trip that goes wrong. You get a paper list, a store plan and a flashlight, and the exit only opens once every item on the list is in your hands. For the first stretch of a night the shop is simply empty, dark and humming, and that quiet is your time to work. Then a voice starts far away, and the lights begin to die, one fitting after another, walking toward wherever you are standing.

It hunts you when it can see you and loses you when it cannot. That is the whole game: get round a corner, switch the flashlight off, duck behind a till and hold still while it passes. You cannot fight it and you cannot outrun it for long, so the skill is reading the room before you need it.

There are five nights in the same building, each with its own floor plan, its own dressing and its own monster, and every monster is that same rule with one new twist. On the second night you cannot see it at all, and its muttering is the only thing that tells you where it is. On the third it is asleep until you wake it, so the noise you make is the danger. The fourth comes for you when you get dirty, and the fifth night is a game of musical chairs you very much want to win. Survive a night and the next one opens.

How to play

• Fetch the list: walk the aisles, find what is written on your paper and hold the take button for a moment to pick it up. Every list is rolled fresh, so a night never plays out the same way twice.
• Mark next item: asks the store where the next thing on your list is. It answers over the speakers and marks it on your plan, and it can be heard by more than you.
• Break line of sight: when it spots you, run for a corner rather than a distance. Once it has lost you, stay out of sight until the hunt ends and the lights come back on.
• Mind the battery: the flashlight runs down and recharges while it is off. In the dark it is your best friend, and it also tells everything in the aisle where you are.
• Get out: with the last item in hand the exit opens and the plan shows you the way. Walk out to end the night.

Pick your difficulty before a night: easy lists five items, medium seven and hard ten, and a harder night brings the monster sooner and lets it grow more dangerous as you collect. Beat every night on hard and nightmare mode opens: all five in a row on one life, with a flashlight you wind by hand.

Controls

On desktop it is WASD to move, the mouse to look, Shift to run and C to duck. Hold G or the left mouse button to take an item, and tap it to throw what you are carrying. F or the right mouse button works the flashlight, Q marks the next item, E brings up your list, Tab the store plan, and Esc pauses. Every key can be changed in the options. Controllers work out of the box, and on a phone or tablet you play in landscape with on-screen controls.

Tips from the developers

• Use the quiet at the start of a night. Taking items while nothing is hunting you is worth far more than taking them later with something behind you.
• Watch the ceiling. Lights going out in a line are telling you which way it is coming from and roughly how long you have.
• Learn the plan before you need it. Knowing there is a second way out of an aisle is the difference between a close call and a catch.
• Running makes noise, and so does a thrown can. That is bad when you are hiding and useful when you want it looking somewhere else.
• Ducking is cover, not invisibility. The shelves and tills that hide you crouching do nothing if it is already looking straight at you.
• Play with headphones. Most of what you need to know about where it is, you will hear first.

Under the hood

AISLE 7 is made by mobx.games, a small indie studio in Germany. It is built on Three.js and drawn at a low resolution with a dithered, tape-worn picture, so it looks like a game you found on an old disc and should not have put in. Each floor plan starts life as a plain text grid, and the monster sees the store on that same grid: how a monster knows it can see you walks through how that works.

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