Trenches - World War 1 Horror Survival Game

Introduction

Trenches - World War 1 Horror Survival Game puts players in the boots of a soldier trapped behind enemy lines, escaping a claustrophobic maze of trenches while something inhuman hunts them through the fog. Developed and published by Steelkrill Studio, it launched on Steam on 20 January 2023 at NZ$12.39. Nearly four years later, its 99 English-language reviews sit at 69% positive, Mixed. This review read all 31 negative reviews in that sample, alongside a range of the positive side.

A setting worth taking seriously

WWI horror is a genuinely rare premise, and it's the single point both sides of the review sample agree on. Even reviewers recommending against the game credit its atmosphere: "the atmosphere of this game is executed really really well," reads one negative review, adding "this developer is fantastic in terms of atmosphere so I would keep an eye on them for the future." Positive reviews push further — "puts you in the shoes of what war can be like, not just during but post war and the health problems attached to it, eerie with fantastic atmosphere," reads one. The sound design draws specific, repeated praise across the aggregate: thunder, ambient trench noise, and a microphone-detection mechanic that punishes players for making real-world noise are called out directly by multiple reviewers as genuinely unnerving.

Where the negative reviews converge

Despite that shared respect for the atmosphere, the negative-review sample converges tightly on what sits underneath it. "This is absolutely not a survival horror game by definition... it's basically Slenderman with a WW1 coat of paint," reads the most detailed critical review, describing a collect-nine-items loop through a maze rather than a sustained horror campaign. Length is a recurring complaint tied to that same criticism — one reviewer reports completing the game in 41 minutes, another describes it as "a real quick game where you just run around collect so many dolls and the game is over," with zero built-in replayability since the game has no Steam achievements to chase. Several reviewers specifically fault the jump-scare density for undercutting the praised atmosphere rather than building on it — one notes that even the game's own "No Jumpscare Mode" setting still triggers scares roughly every five minutes.

A separate, real cluster of complaints centres on performance and stability: multiple reviewers independently report stuttering every five to ten seconds regardless of graphics settings, at least two describe menus becoming entirely unresponsive to mouse or controller input, and one details losing all mapped keybinds mid-session. A no-checkpoints design compounds the frustration for several reviewers, who report having to restart the entire short campaign from zero after any single failure.

An unusually long support tail

What sets Trenches apart from most budget indie horror titles in this library is what happened after launch. Steelkrill Studio's own news feed shows updates continuing well past the initial release window — version 2.5.1 in September 2023, version 2.6.0 in March 2024, and version 2.6.1 in July 2025 — culminating in a dedicated Trenches VR release in October 2025, nearly three years after the original launch. That's genuinely uncommon longevity for a game at this price point, and it means at least some of the specific bugs described in older reviews may since have been addressed, even though this review can't verify which ones without a fresh playthrough. It's a real point in the developer's favour regardless of how the base game reads today.

Verdict

Trenches picks a genuinely underused horror setting and executes its atmosphere and sound design well enough that even its critics say so. But the game built on top of that atmosphere is thin by its own critics' consistent account — a short, maze-based item hunt leaning on jump scares more than dread, with real performance bugs reported across a meaningful share of the sample. The developer's multi-year commitment to patching and eventually porting the game to VR is a genuine, rare positive worth crediting — but it doesn't fully answer the core complaint that there simply isn't much game here once the atmosphere wears off.