New horror game Pager is The Stanley Parable but terrifying

If there's one terror we almost all share across the globe, it's the fear of a first day at a new job. Luckily, horror game Pager is here to capture all of those anxiety-inducing thoughts in one eerie title. In this 1990s-style office, you must climb the corporate ladder to survive - and above all else, obey the pager. Think The Stanley Parable, but more disturbing. Oh, and you can pet a dog.

Horror games can be a hit or a miss for me, especially when it comes to psychological horror. I spent nearly three years, and a whole lot of nightmares, finishing one of the best horror games around, SOMA. While it took a lot of time to work up the nerve to return to it, every time I did, I couldn't look away.

Pager looks like it might end up doing the same thing for me. Its simplistic art style is mesmerizingly eerie, brimming with Big Brother-style eyeballs that follow your every move and empty office spaces that remind me starkly of Severance.

The premise of Pager simple: it is your first day of work, and you have to follow the instructions on your pager. Obey and you'll survive to continue climbing the corporate ladder. That's it. That's all you have to do.

But judging by the trailer, a whole host of weird and unsettling tasks await you, everything from carrying limp human bodies around, to flooding the break room with coffee, to even more disturbingly putting tiny, human-shaped silhouettes into a blender.

Oh, and for a bit of respite, there's a happy-looking dog that loves pets. If that's not enough to convince you, I don't know what is.

Much like The Stanley Parable, from which its drawn inspiration, there are multiple rooms to explore; the Steam page states that there are "60 weird and beautiful floors" to discover, so the trailer probably only offers a small slice of the mildly horrifying things that await you in this office block.

Pager is available on Steam right now for $7.99 / £6.80, at 20% off. Here's a link to the Steam page so you can check it out yourself.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other scares available in our guide to the best VR horror games. Or you can check out the best PC games up for grabs right now.

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