Indulge Your Clown Phobia With Clown House

I’m not exactly sure why, but a lot of people are afraid of clowns. Maybe it’s the exaggerated features and overdone makeup, or the fact that so many of them can fit into a tiny car, or maybe they had a really bad experience at the circus when they were kids. Sure, some of them are funny and friendly and enjoyable; I like Ronald McDonald as much as the next person. But sometimes they’re just super creepy.

Clown House is all about that creep factor.

The freeware game, made by Turkish studio Aslan Games, looks like something out of an old horror film. For no especially clear reason, the player character has become trapped in a shadowy, unsettling house. Also for no clear reason, the house is filled with clowns, all of whom know who the player character is on sight. Some of these clowns are friendly and harmless. Some of them are evil and want to kill the player character. The problem is that there is no way to know which is which. The player’s only hope of survival is to explore the house and find the key which will unlock the door to freedom.

Complicating the matter is, of course, those particular clowns who are bent on murder. The player character carries a pistol with which to defend themselves, and taking down the killer clowns is all well and good. But if the player kills one of the harmless clowns by mistake, the game is automatically over. Since the location of the key to escape is randomized every time, starting again from the beginning really does mean starting again from the beginning.

Clown House is a freeware game, currently being vetted on Steam Greenlight. PC gamers can download it for Windows, Mac, or Linux; mobile gamers can find it in the App Store, the Google Play Store, or the Windows Phone Store.