Nightmare House is a first-person survival horror game from We Create Stuff, the studio behind In Sound Mind, with Black Lantern Collective as publisher. Its new gameplay trailer, which debuted during The MIX Fall Game Showcase 2026, is about 90 seconds long and offers the clearest view yet of how the game plays. It shows a bandaged protagonist hacking through barricades and monsters with a fire axe, crawling through vents, and shooting at pale creatures in fog-choked graveyards.
Quick answer: Nightmare House is listed as “Coming Soon” with no confirmed release date. You can wishlist it on Steam now. The trailer is labeled alpha footage.
What Nightmare House is
The game first appeared in an earlier announcement trailer under the name Nightmare House Reimagined. That trailer credited “the creators of In Sound Mind” and listed music by The Living Tombstone. It also set up the premise with two lines of text, “You thought you had escaped” and “Escape was never an option,” plus a bedroom covered in scrawled warnings like “DONT SLEEP” and “TO SLEEP = TO DIE.”
The new gameplay trailer keeps the sleep theme going. A sign early in the footage reads “NO SLEEPING BEYOND THIS POINT.” The announcement trailer also confirmed a second release. The original Nightmare House mod is coming to Steam for free, separate from the reimagined game.
Nightmare House weapons in the gameplay trailer
The trailer shows four weapons. The axe gets the most screen time, and it works as both a tool and a weapon.
| Weapon | Type | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Fire axe | Melee | Barricades, interiors, graveyard |
| Pistol | Firearm (suppressed version shown) | Tunnels, graveyard |
| Ornate revolver | Firearm, glowing | Misty alleyway |
| Pump-action shotgun | Firearm | Graveyard |
The axe opens the footage by smashing wooden planks that block a passage, before the player pulls open a wire gate. Later it does the same job on enemies. The trailer shows a ceiling drop into a room, followed by close-range kills on pale humanoids and a zombie in a suit.
The melee combat is extremely bloody. Limbs and heads come off, and blood coats the axe blade, the walls, and the camera lens.
The pistol first appears with a suppressor in an underground section, as the player moves through cage doors into a passage lit deep red. It shows up again in the graveyard. That is the only setting where the trailer shows all four weapons being used.
The revolver is the most unusual weapon in the trailer. It is ornate and gives off a glow, which fits the game’s occult themes. The player aims down its sights and fires at a group of pale monsters running toward them through a foggy alley. The shotgun appears only briefly, at the end of the graveyard fight.
Nightmare House enemies shown so far
The trailer shows three kinds of enemies. It also includes a few figures that don’t fight at all.
- Pale humanoid mutants, which attack in groups and rush the player in open areas
- Zombies wearing suits and hats, seen inside the house
- A tall, skinless entity that stands on an attic beam before the floor gives way
- Glowing enemies moving through the fog in the graveyard
The attic scene is the clearest scare in the trailer. The player climbs through a crawlspace, finds the flayed creature waiting above, and then drops through the floorboards. A short scene after the end card shows a shadowy figure crouched on top of a mausoleum. The announcement trailer added a charred skeletal figure with red, glowing eyes, along with a pale girl in a watery blue void.
Locations and traversal in Nightmare House
The trailer opens in a dark forest and moves to the exterior of a mansion lit up beneath an eclipse. From there it heads inside and then underground. The game’s world seems to extend well past the house itself. The footage also includes a misty alley, a cemetery behind an ornate gate, and a coffin burning in the woods.
Getting around involves more than walking. The player breaks barricades, unlatches gates, and drops through broken ceilings and floors. In one scene they crawl through narrow wooden vents right after a barrel bursts open with blood in a gated cell. The cemetery gate is opened by smashing a glowing latch, which suggests some of the game’s obstacles have a supernatural twist.
Nightmare House release date and platforms
There is no release date yet. The trailer’s end card says “Coming Soon” and asks viewers to wishlist the game on Steam. Steam is the only platform named so far. The free version of the original mod is also headed to Steam, but it has no date either.
The trailer opens with a disclaimer that it is alpha footage and does not represent final quality. The visuals, effects, and weapon designs shown could change before launch.
For now, the trailer establishes the basics. Nightmare House combines up-close, very bloody axe fights with a small set of firearms, including one glowing occult revolver. It sends the player well beyond the mansion and keeps its story focused on the danger of falling asleep.
