In Our Parlor

A developer's dream, turned nightmare

In Our Parlor is developer Justin Wootten's free, short horror walking simulator, released under the debut banner of Wickwire Game Studio on 5 November 2025 for Windows. Its premise folds neatly back on itself: players control a game developer who falls asleep at home after watching a movie and dreams about the very game world they're in the middle of creating, waking inside their own half-finished project rather than their bed. Armed with nothing but a lantern, the player must navigate a series of dark, surreal set pieces inside a mysterious manor, following music cues through the gloom to find the titular parlor and, with it, a way to wake up and end the nightmare.

An atmosphere and soundtrack reviewers keep recommending headphones for

The single most consistent thread running through In Our Parlor's review corpus is specific, repeated praise for its sound design. Reviewers describe a custom atmospheric soundtrack, composed by Kyle Faber, paired with a carefully chosen selection of vintage music, with one detailed review specifically recommending headphones to fully appreciate the effect. That same review, written by a player who explicitly frames In Our Parlor as "this debut title from Wickwire Game Studio," credits the game with "an excellent ratio of SPM (scares per minute)" building toward "a satisfyingly dramatic climax," closing with the assessment that the studio is "one to watch" ahead of its next release. Environment design draws its own repeated, specific credit, with reviewers describing a lovingly detailed manor setting and visuals that read as simultaneously "lovely" and "disconcerting," reinforcing the dreamlike uncertainty at the centre of the game's short narrative.

Bugs that stop a short walk before it starts

Set against that atmosphere, a specific and independently repeated complaint concerns the game's technical stability at launch. One detailed review recounts three separate attempts before completing the game: a first playthrough that softlocked during the intro when a record player scene stopped progressing, leaving the player stuck on a couch with no way forward; a second attempt that crashed to a fatal error after turning off a record player inside the dream sequence, when expected assets and level geometry failed to load; and only on a third attempt a level that loaded correctly, though that same reviewer went on to describe the resulting space as under-realized, finding "nothing interactive or interesting" and "no scares" despite acknowledging the atmosphere was technically present. A related, smaller complaint concerns performance on lower-end hardware, with one otherwise positive review describing frame drops severe enough to joke their "potato of a PC" was blowing smoke, even while praising the game's visuals and music as effective enough to carry the experience regardless.

A short walk some reviewers say doesn't add up to much

A further, smaller but pointed complaint, distinct from the corpus's bug reports, argues that In Our Parlor's content doesn't match the strength of its atmosphere. Several brief negative reviews describe the experience as offering no clear story and no meaningful scares, with one summarizing bluntly that the game "took longer to install than play," and another dismissing the more enthusiastic reviews in the corpus outright, asking "are these other reviews for real?" That criticism sits in tension with the corpus's more detailed positive reviews, several of which explicitly acknowledge the surreal, deliberately ambiguous plot, one reviewer opening with "I'm not entirely sure what the heck I just played" before going on to praise the disorienting dream logic as the game's core appeal rather than a shortcoming, a small tonal reveal involving a cat drawing a specific, genuinely delighted mention as evidence the game rewards patient attention even within its brief runtime.

A free debut that plays like a proof of concept

Taken as a whole, In Our Parlor reads less like a fully realized horror game and more like a confident, atmosphere-first proof of concept for a first-time studio, a framing several of its own reviewers reach independently. More than one reviewer explicitly frames the game as evidence of what Wickwire Game Studio and developer Justin Wootten might build next rather than a complete statement in its own right, a reading the game's own structure supports: a short, linear walk through a handful of striking, carefully scored set pieces, built around mood and sound rather than mechanical depth or puzzle design. That framing helps reconcile the corpus's split reaction, players approaching the game expecting a fuller horror experience report thin content and real bugs, while players approaching it as a short, free mood piece describe genuine, specific satisfaction with what it sets out to do.

Value

Costing nothing to try, In Our Parlor asks little of players beyond a short walk through its manor, and that free-to-play framing does real work in how forgivingly much of its review base treats its rougher edges. The Very Positive score, 51 positive against 9 negative across 60 reviews, reflects a corpus broadly won over by the strength of its sound design, environment art and pacing, tempered by a specific, repeated complaint about softlocks and crashes that can derail an otherwise short playthrough, and a smaller complaint that the finished experience doesn't offer much beyond its atmosphere. For horror walking-sim fans curious about a promising debut studio and willing to tolerate real launch bugs at no financial cost, In Our Parlor is worth a look; for players wanting a complete story or consistent scares, the current review corpus suggests tempering expectations first.