The Listening House — A Solo Game of Hearing Things

Two keys. Sixteen rooms. Something in the house that you will never see — you only ever hear how far away it is.

The Listening House is a solo horror game in a single HTML file. You are in the foyer of a house you do not own. The door behind you will not open until you have both keys. Everything after that is you deciding which room to walk into next.

Why this one

• The information is deliberately bad. Each turn you hear a distance — not a direction, and usually off by one. Every third turn you hear it exactly. That rhythm is the whole game: spend the bad readings, save your nerve for the good ones.
• One mistake is the run. Walk into its room and you are dead. No health bar, no second chance, no way to grind it down.
• You can see the keys, not the threat. Both keys are marked on the floor plan from the first turn. You can always see where you need to go. You can never see what is between you and it.
• Five to eight minutes a run. About fifteen turns. Short enough to go straight back in after it finds you.

How it plays

1. The house is a 4×4 grid of sixteen rooms. You start in the Foyer, which is also the way out.
2. Each turn you are told how many rooms away it is, off by one either way.
3. Every third turn the reading is exact and the card tells you so.
4. Then you move to an adjacent room, search the room you are in (2d6, 8 or better), or stand still.
5. After your action it reappears one or two rooms away, every other turn. It does not use the doors.
6. Standing still is quiet for two turns. The third turn in a row, it hears you breathing and comes to the sound.
7. Both keys plus the Foyer and you are out. Walking into its room and you are not.

What you get

• A full run in a single HTML file, no dependencies, no build step, no network requests
• A floor plan that shows the keys and your position at all times
• A reading card that tells you when the number is true
• Three dread pips, so you always know how close you are to being heard standing still
• A full log of every room, every reading and what it cost you

How hard is it

Measured over thousands of automated runs: a player who uses the readings and refuses to walk into a room that might be occupied gets out roughly half the time. A player who walks straight at the keys and ignores what they hear gets out about a fifth of the time. The difference is the game.

Technical

• One HTML file. No dependencies, no build step, no network requests.
• Works in any current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Your run is saved in your browser's local storage. Clearing browser data clears it.

What it is not

• Not a horror visual novel. No art, no jumpscare, no story to click through.
• Not a chase game. It does not follow you; it is simply somewhere, and it changes rooms.
• Not a campaign. One run is one house.

FAQ

Do I need dice? No. The dice are in the game.

Is it scary? It is tense rather than frightening. There are no images and nothing jumps out at you. The fear is entirely in the number on the card being one worse than you wanted.

Can I play it in a stream or a video? Yes. Play it, record it, print the floor plan.

Will there be more? Updates to this game are free once you own it.

Also in the Solo Toolkit. This game is also in the Solo Toolkit — the whole line in one folder, for less than buying them separately.