Fear Response — Play Free Online

About Fear Response

Fear Response is a first-person 3D horror game by No Pressure Studios, the team behind Stickman Climb and Crazy Cars. It came out on Poki in October 2024. You play Harry, a field agent of the Fear Response Team, sent to look into an abandoned mansion. A couple and their baby daughter Cheryl once lived there, and something still moves through the dark halls. Harry's car is parked outside, and the last objective of the game is simply to get back to it.

Controls

• Walk with W, A, S, D or the arrow keys.
• Use the mouse to look around and to interact with doors, drawers, notes and objects.
• On a phone or tablet the game uses on-screen touch controls instead.

When you aim at something useful, a short prompt tells you what will happen: open or close a door, unlock or lock a bolt, pick something up, read a note or examine an object.

How the investigation unfolds

The game is driven by a chain of objectives shown on screen. You start by investigating the mansion, but the front door soon locks behind you, so the first real goals are to get out of the foyer and find out what locked you in. From there the route leads room by room, each step needing an item found in the step before:

• Plaques around the house hold the music key, trophy key, garden key and basement key, and each one opens a new wing.
• Bolted doors are often locked from the other side, which forces you to find a way around through other rooms or narrow wall tunnels.
• Down in the basement there is a secret room to check out, and up in the attic thick spider webs block the way until you find something to burn them with, a burning torch.
• Later puzzles ask you to find a use for a valve and to carry a mysterious altar skull to a skull altar lit by candles.

Notes are scattered everywhere, from Harry's briefing to pages found by the piano, a wheelchair, a bed, a cell door, a pentagram and an attic clock, plus a copy of the Necronomicon. Reading them fills in what happened to the family. Lights flicker without warning, and at set points the game releases a monster that patrols the corridors along fixed routes, so standing in the open is risky.

Tips

• Read every note. Several of them point to the next room or item, and they are the only place the story is told.
• Check the objective text whenever you feel stuck; it always names the room or item you need next.
• A door that will not open from your side usually means the path continues elsewhere, so look for another way round instead of waiting.
• When the monster appears, keep doors and corners between you and its patrol route, and move on once it has passed.