I started Lonely House’s Rental surrounded by uncertainty. I knew little about the game beyond its concept as told by itch.io and steam reviews and social media: Animal Crossing crossed with Silent Hill. Interestingly, I found a certain amount of comfort in this uneasy crossover, as Rental presents an unusual genre-bend: cozy but creepy.
For important context, my partner and I were surrounded by empty walls, sitting on barely padded moving blankets on our living room floor during my initial playthrough of Rental. We were in the middle of the familiar moving process: enclosed in an open space that we once filled with furniture, art, joy, and sound.
That night, we had a little free time, and like all temporary experiences, this is all Rental requires.
A Cabin, a Rabbit, and a Rental Man
Rental, even in its brevity, gave me space to sit with some feelings. I finished my first playthrough in a breezy 22 minutes. I not only finished the game but completed most of the requirements for almost all of its Steam Achievements.
Developer Lonely House immediately places players in an Animal Crossing-esque world. You play as a young rabbit character—think Ruby or Tiffany from Nintendo’s flagship comfort game. Your family of four decides to rent a cabin for their summer vacation. The game starts with a short chat with these other three characters outside of the family van and the cabin.
Of course, things get strange. Like any good parents, these rabbit adults let their daughter enter the rental house first and alone. She quickly meets the Rental Man who does not hesitate to tell her, “Forget your parents! You’ll never see them again anyway!”
The Rental Man then gives our protagonist the core objective: collect a list of items. He disappears and the young rabbit has to gather the candles and decor that remain.
This felt timely if not uncannily familiar.
My partner and I had just packed away the last of our “little things” in miscellaneous boxes. These long forgotten objects resided in the corners of our house, not significant in their own right and maybe not deserving a spot in the limited brown cubes that had littered our floor space. This aimless collection task removes the final material parts of a self from a space. All that remains is dust and ghosts.
This Disquieted Silence
The silence of a near-empty space isn’t all that significant. It can even be a little peaceful until a cat randomly knocks something you forgot you left on the kitchen counter in the middle of the night. The unexpected sound that interrupts the silence, however, leaves a lingering disquiet.
Rental isn’t scary per se. (I think Punished Backlogger and self-proclaimed “scaredy cat” Amanda Tien could play this particular horror game—it is less scary than Alan Wake 2.) However, it is creepy.
While the player is searching for items, the screen will occasionally turn greenish and interrupt the picture with thin horizontal lines across the monitor—like old CRT TV screens. In response, the protagonist rabbit will say, “I don’t feel so well…” As these screens become more common, a creature starts to appear but only during these interruptions. These moments are unsettling, made more so in their disruption of the game’s use of sound (or lack thereof).
Rental is an eerily quiet game. The rabbit’s footsteps are often the only noises heard unless she is interacting with an object or talking with an NPC. The green-tint screen and monster seem to be mostly harmless—I never saw a “Game Over” or death screen—but a high pitch noise marks their arrival.
I found familiarity in this uneasiness—not only in my cats’ early morning exploits but in the other ways that an empty house breathes noise. From the strange noises of a space’s frame (its bones) settling to the random memories that reemerge between the canvas of blank wall space, an empty home does not remain quiet.
That Ghost Named Expectation
Rental sets up two expectations: the monster might catch the protagonist, and this space should only temporarily be hers. The Rental Man’s claim that she’ll be stuck there forever, however, feels a bit empty. I’m sure there’s some players who didn’t find the last cross or candle and quit, thus leaving the protagonist stranded in the digital cabin forever.
Narratively, we expect something to happen in a horror story while hoping to be surprised. My first ten or so minutes with Rental brought to mind a strange media companion: Zach Cregger’s 2022 film Barbarian.
That horror movie similarly sets up a couple of expectations as the protagonist Tess Marshall (played by Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb rental that has been double-booked. The other occupant is Keith Toshko (played by Bill Skarsgård). Barbarian sets up one danger (a double-booked room with Pennywise the Dancing Clown Bill Skarsgård) before revealing the real danger of the monster in the basement’s secret corridor.
Rental almost teases a similar reveal. I kept anticipating that the creature would find its way beyond the interrupting green-tinted screen. I hoped that there was a secret room where the last of the objects might be found and that this room would hold something shocking, enlightening, or revealing. I sat with my expectations for fear or surprise for a long time after Rental. I almost longed for that same feeling that the reveal in Barbarian gave me.
The monster—or any monster for that matter—never became any real threat to the rabbit, but the rental does have a “secret” room full of mirrors. This final space serves as the last corridor between the player and the finale.
The game gave me blank walls with reflective surfaces. These mirrors created a situation where, if I missed a turn, the oversized reflection of the protagonist rabbit appeared. Even worse (and embarrassingly) these reflective moments startled me a little bit.
To be frank, reader, I jumped, just as my heart would jolt a little bit at just the right memory of the home, the city, and the life I was in the process of moving on from came to mind within my own empty house. These walls reflected life back at me.
Yours for a Moment
Rental is a short experience that isn’t for everyone. However, it will sit with me for some time as it is so rare that I find a game that challenges reflection on the mundane transitory moments in my own life. The last time might have been playing Death Stranding at the start of the pandemic (a haunting experience that deserves its own post).
Like Rental’s protagonist, I left my experience in the cabin with a little uncertainty (but a healthy amount of cheerful optimism). What will the next temporary space bring? Will it be a haunted summer home? Could it be more permanent? And what sounds will the house’s bones make at night?
Rental is available to play for free for PC via itch.io or free for PC via Steam.
