Constriction takes the schoolyard game of hangman and reframes it as a horror match played for survival. Developed by Studio Onira, it seats you at a desk across from an animal-masked opponent, both of you strung up by nooses, guessing letters on a retro green CRT monitor. Every misstep tightens the rope, and the round ends when one player runs out of air.
Quick answer: Constriction is a horror puzzle game from Studio Onira built on competitive hangman, where wrong or weak moves advance a suffocation meter and the first player to suffocate loses. It is available to wishlist on Steam.
The hangman loop and the suffocation meter
Each round works like hangman with a countdown. You pick letters to fill in a hidden word, and you can attempt the full word once you think you know it. The opponent does the same against you, prompting for guesses out loud as the timer ticks down.
Progress is tracked by a suffocation gauge tied to both hanging figures. Correct guesses and solved words push damage onto your rival, while mistakes and incoming pressure move your own meter toward the red threshold. The monitor shows the state of both nooses, with green and red markers signaling how close each side is to losing air.
Solving a prompt correctly is where you claw back ground. Typing out the full answer for a partially revealed word registers a hit and visibly rattles the opponent, which is what turns a defensive round into an offensive one.
Totems that change how damage and healing work
Between the guessing, you can open a briefcase and equip totems that bend the rules in your favor while adding a drawback. Each one is a risk-and-reward trade, so choosing the wrong totem for a given round can leave you unable to recover.
| Totem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Totem of Death | Guessing letters that appear multiple times in a prompt deals triple damage, but you can no longer heal. |
| Totem of Sacrifice | You take half damage, but you are unable to heal. |
Both featured totems disable healing entirely, so committing to one is a bet that you can close out the match before your own meter climbs too high.
Multiplayer with lobbies and cosmetics
Beyond the solo matches against AI opponents, Constriction includes a multiplayer mode aimed at playing against other people. The multiplayer menu offers options to host a lobby, join a lobby, browse cosmetics, and return to the main menu.
Cosmetics are unlockable and equippable, so the animal-masked look carries over into head-to-head play. The same suffocation rules apply, meaning the goal against a human is identical: out-guess them before the noose finishes the job.
Endless mode and its Curse modifiers
Endless mode is the score-chasing side of the game. You build a run by stacking optional Curses, each one adding a restriction in exchange for a higher score multiplier, so a harder run is worth more points.
| Curse | Effect | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Curse of Realism | Your vision is restricted to the eyeholes of your mask. | 1x |
| Curse of Intelligence | Every opponent is set to the maximum intelligence level. | 3x |
The Endless setup screen shows the curse cards, their descriptions, the resulting score multiplier, and your high score, with a button to start the run once the modifiers are chosen. Layering more curses raises both the difficulty and the potential score.
Opponents and atmosphere
The game is played in first person from a seated position, using a stylized hand cursor to click letters and inspect items, with a mask worn on your own face during play. Opponents are unsettling animal-headed figures in suits, and the reveal footage shows a bird, a rodent, and a fish among them, each hung by a rope across the table from you.
The atmosphere is steeped in dread. Near the end, the lights cut out and eight crimson eyes glow above the table as the timer continues ticking. A barbed-wire title card follows, asking players to wishlist the game on Steam. No release date has been confirmed, so the Steam wishlist page is the current way to keep track.
