There is a particular kind of afterlife, rare in a genre that usually hands you a flashlight and a polite ghost, in waking up on a morgue slab and discovering that dying was the easy part of the sentence. The tiles are still tiles. The cold is still cold. The first thing that talks to you is not a metaphor. Mortanis Prisoners, the first-person survival horror from Alexey Bulgakov and Vladimir Zlobin, is built on that slab, and the slab is ruder, heavier, and more useful than a twenty-dollar camp has any right to be.
I played the PlayStation 5 version, the 20 February 2026 launch that Axyos Games walked onto living-room hardware after a Steam Early Access that began on 30 June 2023 and a 1.0 that landed on 23 July 2025 at $12.99. The console ask is $19.99. You wake as Justina, a Polish resistance fighter the camp already tried to finish, and you learn that Death has a voice and a sense of humor that would get a person fired from any ordinary hospital. Purgatory, a rebellion that did not stay a rumor, a warden who would like your eyes, a heart in a technical room, a picture puzzle, a set of scales, and a bag if you would like the inventory to stop being a joke. Seven Steam achievements sit in the background. The Steam sample is Mostly Positive, 55 positive of 69, which is the honest weather report and not a dare. Great, not glossy, and very much an evening I would recommend you spend if you like a survival horror that knows it is a corridor.
The Camp Does Not Care What Escape Was
Most horror games begin with a speech and a tragic flashback. Mortanis Prisoners begins with a slab. Official copy on Steam says the camp leadership, upon discovering a planned rebellion, orders the execution of all accomplices, then adds, with the grammar of a person who has already lost the argument with history, that the main protagonist encounters an even more terrifying fate. The PlayStation listing prefers Justina, the operating theater, and Death as a host. Both versions agree on the next sentence. There is a way out. Dying might have been kinder.
That is not flavor text. It is the design refusing to pay for a war movie when a morgue will do. You start walking, reading notes, and putting keys in doors because the alternative is becoming another body the camp already catalogued. The first ghost is staged like a greeting that forgot to be gentle. Death talks. You listen. You are trapped in Purgatory that still looks like a Third Reich camp, which is the rest of the map and the rest of the joke, if a joke is allowed to have barbed wire.
I like a premise that prices history as a hazard and then lets you walk toward it anyway. Administration blocks, hospital wings, underground corridors, a roof if the warden is still employing eyes. Why are there human rooms and no living people who will help. What was that heart. The more you explore, the more the camp answers with another lock and another thing that would like a piece of you. Story is environmental and stingy, which is the right instinct for a game that wants your hands more than your diary. You are not reading a novel. You are looting a disaster that is still happening, and the disaster has a uniform.
The fantasy is not mastery of a lore bible. The fantasy is competence arriving about half an hour after you invent a reason to pick up a pistol. You will die in ways that would be funny if the inventory drop were not so sincere. You leave a key. You walk back. You become the kind of person who thinks a morgue drawer is a personality.
Wake Up in the Morgue, Then Invent a Path
The loop is the old religion and Honor Games does not pretend otherwise. Rooms, notes, the usual camp groceries of keys and tools. A pistol that makes the groceries arrive faster if the groceries are still moving. A shotgun if the night agrees to exist. Bandages if you would like dinner to stop being a hemorrhage. Inventory is on the character sheet because a survival horror without pockets is just a walking tour. Day does not turn into night so much as the lights change their mind. None of that is a revolution. All of that is the sentence the rest of the toybox has to live in.
Exploration is straightforward in the way a good corridor is straightforward. You are not drowning in an open world. You are looking at a door and deciding whether you have been useful enough today. Progress is linear without becoming a second career. Wings, stairwells, a defensive thought that you will test the first time a thing in a hallway decides your path is a suggestion. Puzzles are on the feature list, which is a polite way of saying the camp can grow a brain if you keep showing up.
I have played a lot of games that treat the first room as a tutorial and the hundredth room as a spreadsheet. Mortanis Prisoners is shorter than that on purpose. The developers wrote a camp that wants you to finish, which is both a promise and a warning. If you want a mansion that could unionize, you will feel underemployed. If you want an evening that turns a slab into an exit, you will feel hired.
Item gating keeps the commute from becoming a museum and also, some nights, from becoming a kindness. Points of interest sit on the map like dares. You loot them. You leave. You come back when the script has decided the handsaw is finally a character. The checklist of needed objects can feel like a to-do list written by a person who does not trust you with a pocket, which is a friction for people who freeze when a sandbox says not yet. I left a saw on a table and then needed it, which is the oldest inventory joke in the book and still a good one if you like walking.
Puzzles, Keys, and a Saw That Arrives Late
Puzzles are the temperature change. Early locks establish that this is not a peaceful walking simulator with nicer lighting. They will send you farther than pride would recommend. A picture gallery handles the general population of your patience. A set of scales will empty a mood if you treat them like scenery. Further in, a heart in a technical room would like a word, and the word is short. Getting the right tool with the actual permission to pick it up takes a while. Until then, backtracking is a strategy, not a cowardice.
The picture puzzle is the other half of the short description and the kinder half of a walk. Look, remember, place. The scales are why a room that felt like homework at noon can feel like a rumor at dusk. Puzzle variety is not a riddle 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 place.
I will not invent a highlight reel with fake timestamps and tidy lock counts. The nights that stay with you are the ones where you thought the wing was finished, then something started knocking in a rhythm that was not weather, and then you were on the wrong side of your own map. Clues can feel like two languages agreeing to take turns being disappointed. That clunk is real. It is also priced into a lightweight puzzle loop that would rather you look, retreat, and come back dressed. Notes help. Distance helps more, until the note is in the other building.
Inventory management is good practice and a grocery run. Keys, tools, the usual camp hospitality. Limits happen. The store page is not shy about it. What the store page cannot tell you is how quickly you will start treating a successful pickup as a mood stabilizer. You take. You stash. You put the bag down and look at the next door like a person who has decided civilization is a keyring.
Ghosts, Wardens, and a Shotgun That Matters
Combat is the other temperature. Early spectres establish that this is not a peaceful Robinson Crusoe simulator with worse lighting. They will occupy a hallway farther than pride would recommend. A pistol handles the general population. The evolved, louder editions will empty a health bar if you treat them like scenery. Further in, a warden on an administration roof would like a word, and the word is short. Getting a shotgun with actual pellets takes a minute. Until then, avoiding a fight is a strategy, not a cowardice.
Ghosts are the other half of the short description and the quieter half of a walk. They roam. They loom. They combine into a dread that would be thinner if there were only one of them. They are why a corridor that felt like home at noon can feel like a rumor at dusk. Enemy variety is not a bestiary novel. It does not need to be. Pressure is the variety. A door that holds is a better reward than a new silhouette if the silhouette is just another way to lose your bandage.
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 camp was finished, then something started looking in a rhythm that was not weather, and then you were on the wrong side of your own architecture. Shooting can feel like two people agreeing to take turns being disappointed. That clunk is real. It is also priced into a lightweight combat loop that would rather you hunt, retreat, and come back dressed. Headshots help. Distance helps more.
There is an unlimited ammunition option if you would like the fantasy of competence without the spreadsheet. There is a skip for puzzles if you have already found the pieces and would rather the camp stop being a quiz. Those two switches keep the evening from feeling like a nature documentary that learned to punch and then forgot to let you leave. They are not a town. They are a reminder that someone else survived long enough to write a kindness into the options menu. I turned them off for an evening and on for another. The camp did not mind. The warden minded either way.
Accessibility as a Design Choice
I should be clear about the manners, because they are real and they are not a footnote you hide after the score. Mortanis Prisoners looks like a game that was built by a small shop that wanted an atmosphere more than a showcase, and then had the nerve to let you finish it. Hardcore mode is on the door if one death should be the whole sentence. Map tracking for findable items is on the door if you would like the camp to behave like a to-do list. A question mark tells you there is something here. Once you have seen it, the mark grows up. That is a sentence no designer writes for people they want to punish.
I have a rule for cheap-to-mid horror. If a game is worse with a kindness than with a checklist, it is broken. If it is only good with a kindness, it is honest. Mortanis Prisoners is honest, and that honesty should sit next to the price. A solo night is a competent evening. You wake on the slab, you invent the path, you lose a key, you walk back, you put a better lock on the joke. A night with the map marks on is the version the systems were quietly designed around. Someone finds. Someone shoots. Someone learns, too late, that a warden does not respect architecture.
The Steam sample around a game this small is always going to look modest. Mostly Positive is the official weather, 55 of 69 on the side of yes, and that split is fair. Players who wanted a deeper scare, a prettier fight, or a resource economy that never hides the saw bounce off. Players who wanted a lightweight camp with a pistol and a bad idea about Purgatory stay. I am in the second camp with caveats, which is the only honest place to stand.
Compared with the giants of the mansion business, Mortanis Prisoners is not trying to be a career. It is trying to be a place. The store page said the quiet part with a list. Horror atmosphere. Intriguing storyline. Realistic shooting. Puzzles. Inventory management. That is not a cop-out if the place is worth the walk. Some nights it is. Some nights the handsaw is a myth and the doorway is a theology problem. Both nights are Mortanis Prisoners.
Short 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. Mortanis Prisoners looks like a game that was built by a small shop that wanted a camp more than a showcase. Corridors can be handsome. Animations can be stubborn. Combat can arrive a half-second late to its own impact. Items that the recipe assumes are common can play hide and seek until a saw becomes a rumor. I will not invent a mud census. I will say the camp sometimes forgets to stock the ingredient you need and then shrugs like weather.
Technical manners on a living-room build can stutter when the game decides to remember itself. Enemies can get philosophical in a doorway. Camera sweeps have a way of announcing themselves. None of that is unique to this camp. All of that is the tax on a lightweight horror that left Early Access in 2025 and arrived on PlayStation a year later still wearing some of the same boots.
Presentation is readable, which matters more than prestige. You can tell a morgue from a hospital from an administration block at a glance. If you cannot read a wing, the hunt dies and the camp becomes homework. These spaces are atmospheric enough to carry a dread and clear enough to carry a plan. You always know where you are. You do not always know why a spectre is already there.
English and Russian are the Steam languages. The PlayStation listing keeps the interface in those rooms, which is how a console audience gets in the door. I will not turn this into a localization seminar. The voice of the game is the camp, and the camp talks in notes, weather, and the occasional undead knock. Seven achievements sit behind the loop for people who like a receipt. None of them change the central truth. You are here to leave the camp and then find out what leaving is for.
The ending arrives like a person who has somewhere else to be. A boss that is more of a period than a chapter. A taste of unfinished business that some players will call honesty and some will call a shrug. I will not invent a spoiler with tidy morals. I will say the camp is better at beginning a sentence than at ending one, and that the sentence is still worth hearing if you like a setting that has the nerve to be this specific.
Still Standing After the Rebellion
Mortanis Prisoners is a rare mid-priced horror that understands its own joke and then has the nerve to make the joke a camp. Alexey Bulgakov and Vladimir Zlobin built a Purgatory about a rebellion, a door about teamwork with a map marker, and a toybox that looks a little homemade and plays a lot more sincerely than that sentence suggests. The loop is the hook. The atmosphere is the spine. The walk from a slab to a roof is the grin.
It is better with a kindness than with a checklist. Combat is clunky in the way a lightweight fight is clunky. Items can sulk. The presentation has indie fingerprints, from the stubborn animations to the story that would rather be a note than a cutscene. All of that is true, and all of that is already priced in at $19.99 on PlayStation and $12.99 on Steam. You are not buying a decade. You are buying an evening that can turn into a second evening if you like being a coordinated disaster, or being the person who has to explain the disaster to Death.
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 corridor that has weight and a setting that is allowed to be rude. Distinctive camp weather, a pistol that shrinks the hallway, options that turn wood 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 camp is still out there, still hiring a night shift, still asking what escape was. After a few doors, you will understand why the job is not finished, and why you keep waking up on the slab anyway.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of the Mortanis Prisoners for the PS5 version provided by Pressengine.
