There is a particular kind of vanity, rare in a genre that usually hands you a jump scare and a tragic flashback, in walking a camera into an abandoned building and discovering that fame is a word with no furniture in it. The corridor is still a corridor. The note is still a note. The first entity that tries to edit you is not a metaphor. Apartment No 129, the first-person horror from Dead Witness, is built on that vanity, and the vanity is ruder, funnier, and more useful than a fourteen-dollar urban legend has any right to be.
I played the PlayStation 5 version, the 16 January 2026 launch that Axyos Games walked onto living-room hardware after a Steam launch on 2 August 2024 at $7.99. The console ask is $13.99. You read, you search, you put a torch on a hallway, and you learn that the building has already hired a night shift of rooms that remember 2009. Notes, an inventory, an axe that arrives before a gun, cinematic scenes with real actors, and a conscience that would like a word about the ending. The Steam sample is Mostly Positive, 91 positive of 128, which is the honest weather report and not a dare. Great, not glossy, and very much a weekend I would recommend you spend if you like a horror that knows it is a locked door.
The Building Does Not Care What the Camera Wanted
Most apartment horrors begin with a dinner party. Apartment No 129 begins with a legend. Official copy on Steam says that in 2009 two young girls living on the top floor performed satanic rituals with candles late at night and mysteriously lost their lives. Residents claimed a violent earthquake shattered every window. Earthquake records claimed no such quake. The manager locked the doors. The building emptied. People who went back left disturbed, talking about a heavy smell, symbols on the walls, and entities that did not ask to be filmed. The event made headlines in Turkey and became the kind of story a content creator cannot leave alone.
That is not flavor text. It is the design refusing to pay for a haunted mansion when a sealed block will do. You play Emir, who makes videos about mysterious events and takes a solitary step into Apartment No. 129 to trace a paranormal trail that shook a country. From the first landing he feels the spirit of the place and the residue of the major event. He also carries doubts about the existence of the creator, which is how a horror about a building becomes a horror about a person. The first locked door is staged like a punchline that forgot to be funny. You find a note. You read it. You are inside for now. The script, still a little breathless, asks who can assure the next floor is kind. Nobody can. That is the rest of the map.
I like a premise that prices curiosity as a hazard and then lets you film toward it anyway. Abandoned rooms sit in the block like questions with wallpaper. Why are there writings if there are no people. What was that smell. The more you explore, the more the apartment answers with another corridor and another thing that would like a piece of your battery. Story is environmental and stingy in the rooms, then suddenly cinematic when a real actor walks into frame, which is the right instinct for a game that wants your hands and then your nerve. You are not reading a novel. You are looting a disaster that is still happening.
The fantasy is not mastery of a lore bible. The fantasy is competence arriving about half a floor after you invent a habit of reading every scrap. You will die in ways that would be funny if the checkpoint were not so sincere. You leave a bad choice. You walk back. You become the kind of person who thinks a torch is a personality.
Read the Note, Then Invent a Faith
The loop is the old religion and Dead Witness does not pretend otherwise. Notes, keys, the usual apartment groceries. A torch that makes the groceries visible. An inventory if the pockets agree to exist, a weapon if you would like dinner to stop being a hunt. Batteries are on the character sheet because a horror without a stomach for light is just a walking tour of wallpaper. Day does not turn into night so much as the building turns into a mood. None of that is a revolution. All of that is the sentence the rest of the toybox has to live in.
Progression is straightforward in the way a good workbench is straightforward, and then it is not. Official copy says that to progress you need to read the notes, which is both a kindness and a dare. You are not drowning in a skill tree. You are looking at a paragraph and deciding whether you have been useful enough with the last key. The inventory and weapon system sit on the feature list, which is a polite way of saying the hallway can grow teeth if you keep showing up.
I have played a lot of games that treat the first scare as a tutorial and the hundredth scare as a spreadsheet. Apartment No 129 is shorter than that on purpose. A thorough walk is a couple of hours, longer if you chase every ending and every note like a person who has decided civilization is a document. That sentence is both a promise and a warning. If you want a mansion that could unionize, you will feel underemployed. If you want a night that turns a rumor into a floor plan, you will feel hired.
Choices keep the commute from becoming a museum. Official copy says you decide which fears you will face and that the game will confront you with your own conscience. Multiple endings sit on the map like dares. You loot a path. You leave. You come back when you have a better shirt and a worse idea about faith. I left one ending on for an evening and another on for a second night. The building did not mind. The conscience minded either way.
Entities, Axes, and a Torch That Matters
Combat is the temperature change and the argument. Early darkness establishes that this is not a peaceful documentary simulator with nicer lighting. Entities will occupy a doorway farther than pride would recommend. An axe handles the general population if you treat the swing like a conversation you are losing. A later gun would like a word, and the word is short. Getting a firearm with actual confidence takes a while. Until then, avoiding a fight is a strategy, not a cowardice.
The torch is the other half of the short description and the nastier half of a walk. Batteries drain with the sincerity of a mechanic that has read every other horror and still wanted a job. It is why a kitchen that felt like home at the first search can feel like a rumor when the light dies. Enemy variety is not a bestiary novel. It does not need to be. Pressure is the variety. A door that opens is a better reward than a new silhouette if the silhouette is just another way to lose your nerve.
I will not invent a highlight reel with fake timestamps and tidy kill counts. The nights that stay with you are the ones where you thought the cupboard was finished, then something started knocking in a rhythm that was not the score, and then you were on the wrong side of your own inventory. Melee can feel like two people agreeing to take turns being disappointed. That clunk is real. Hits can arrive without the courtesy of feedback. It is also priced into a lightweight combat loop that would rather you search, retreat, and come back lit. Clothes do not help. Distance helps more. Reading helps most.
Hunting notes is good practice and a grocery run. Drawers, symbols, the usual apartment hospitality. Blood happens. The store page is not shy about sudden noises and scary characters. What the store page cannot tell you is how quickly you will start treating a successful read as a mood stabilizer. You eat the paragraph. You drink the implication. You put the axe down and look at the next door like a person who has decided civilization is a footnote.
Rituals, Endings, and the Conscience Getting Louder
Cinematics are the moment the apartment changes tense. Official features list scenes with real actors, a screenplay by film director and screenwriter Batuhan Gündüz, and a story inspired by a real event that became folklore. Those faces do not just make the building prettier. They make yesterday’s note into this afternoon’s accusation. A distant rumor stops being a paragraph. A ritual stops being a set dressing. You start thinking in consciences instead of corridors.
That shift is the closest Apartment No 129 comes to a power fantasy, and I like it more than a new gun. Mastery, here, is attention. You gather scraps, you stash a better reading of 2009, you walk a ridiculous little camera through a place that tried to eat you last room, and you stand like a person who has mail from the dead. The map does not get smaller because the developers deleted floors. It gets smaller because you invented meaning.
Faith is the other vehicle. Emir doubts the creator and then the building asks him to prove it, which is a rude thing for wallpaper to do. Multiple endings sit behind choices that are less about a skill check and more about what you are willing to carry out of the block. I will not write a theology white paper. What I can say is that the loop is kinder when you treat the notes as a conversation instead of a fetch. Conscience is the co-op fantasy you play alone. So is the moment an entity that would have ended a careless walk becomes a question with worse manners.
The Turkish setting is not tourism. It is why the legend has a weather of its own. Islamic imagery and ritual language sit next to the satanic rumor the headlines preferred, and the friction between those readings is the story’s actual monster. I sold my first interpretation and then needed it, which is the oldest folklore joke in the book and still a good one.
Cinematic by Design, Janky by Habit
I should be clear about the friction, because it is real and it is not a footnote you hide after the score. Apartment No 129 looks like a game that was built by a small shop that wanted an atmosphere more than a showcase. Hallways can be handsome in the dark. Animations can be stubborn. Combat can arrive a half-second late to its own impact, or arrive on time and forget to tell your hands. Cupboards can play a sound and keep their secrets. I will not invent a tile census. I will say the building sometimes forgets to stock the interaction you need and then shrugs like weather.
Technical manners on a living-room build can stutter when the game decides to remember itself. Controls can feel like two menus agreeing to take turns being unintuitive. The torch can empty a battery while a gun light pretends it never heard of physics. Translation can stumble in a sentence that needed to be a knife. None of that is unique to this apartment. All of that is the tax on a compact horror that left Steam in 2024 and arrived on PlayStation two years later still wearing some of the same boots.
Presentation is readable when the light agrees, which matters more than prestige. You can tell a kitchen from a stairwell from a ritual at a glance if the torch is alive. If you cannot read a room, the hunt dies and the ending becomes homework. These spaces are atmospheric enough to carry a scare and cluttered enough to carry a plan you will lose. You always know you are in the building. You do not always know why an entity is already there.
English sits next to Turkish audio and a list of interface languages, which is how a local legend gets in a wider door. I will not turn this into a localization seminar. The voice of the game is the apartment, and the apartment talks in notes, smells, and the occasional cinematic that remembers someone else. Sensitive content warnings sit on the store page for people who like a receipt before a jump scare. None of them change the central truth. You are here to keep Emir alive and then find out what alive costs.
Better With Patience Than With a Checklist
I have a rule for cheap-to-mid horror. If a game is worse with patience than with a checklist, it is broken. If it is only good with patience, it is honest. Apartment No 129 is honest, and that honesty should sit next to the price.
A rushed night is a competent complaint. You miss a note, you invent a fight, you lose a battery, you walk back, you put a worse mood on the joke. A patient night is the version the systems were quietly designed around. Someone reads. Someone listens. Someone learns, too late, that a cupboard does not respect architecture. The building becomes a shared instrument with a dead roommate instead of a commute.
The Steam sample around a game this small is always going to look modest. Mostly Positive is the official weather, 91 of 128 on the side of yes, and that split is fair. Players who wanted a deeper fight, a prettier interaction, or a movement system that never stares at the ceiling bounce off. Players who wanted a lightweight legend with a camera and a bad idea about faith stay. I am in the second camp with caveats, which is the only honest place to stand.
Compared with the giants of the cursed-building business, Apartment No 129 is not trying to be a career. It is trying to be a place. The developer said the quiet part on the store page. Read the notes. Face the characters. Fun if you will meet the apartment where it lives. That is not a cop-out if the place is worth the walk. Some nights it is. Some nights the torch is a myth and the doorway is a theology problem. Both nights are Apartment No 129.
Still Standing After the Quake That Wasn’t
Apartment No 129 is a rare mid-priced horror that understands its own joke and then has the nerve to make the joke a building. Dead Witness built a legend about a camera, a door about conscience, and a toybox that looks a little homemade and plays a lot more sincerely than that sentence suggests when the light holds. The loop is the hook. The notes are the spine. The walk from a rumor to an ending is the grin.
It is better with patience than with a checklist. Combat is clunky in the way a lightweight fight is clunky. Interactions can sulk. The presentation has indie fingerprints, from the stubborn menus to the story that would rather be a note than a cutscene, until a real actor walks in and proves the exception. All of that is true, and all of that is already priced in at $13.99 on PlayStation and $7.99 on Steam. You are not buying a decade. You are buying a weekend that can turn into a second weekend if you like being a coordinated disaster, or being the person who has to explain the disaster to a legend.
I am scoring it 8, Great, because the identity is this clear and the limitations are the limitations of a focused horror, not an empty one. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a note that has weight and a map that is allowed to be rude. Distinctive apartment weather, a torch that shrinks the horizon, endings that turn faith into conversation, and a price that respects your week are a lot of game for the ask. The systems repeat their manners. The manners are still useful.
The building is still out there, still hiring a night shift, still asking what the camera was for. After a few endings, you will understand why the job is not finished, and why you keep waking up in the hallway anyway.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of the Apartment No 129 for the PS5 version provided by Pressengine.
