Wickhouse

Free early access

Night Rounds: End of Watch

Anomaly horror on the night shift

First-person anomaly horror

A police holding wing on the night shift. Walk the wing, look for anything wrong, and report it at the panel. Get eight rounds right in a row and your shift is over. Get one wrong and the count goes back to zero.

Play free in your browser Download for Windows Follow on YouTube

Play it now

Night Rounds is out in free early access, and it plays in your browser on its itch.io page. A perfect shift is eight rounds and takes about two minutes. Most first shifts take a lot longer.

Price
Free
Plays in
Chrome, Edge or Firefox, on a computer
First load
About 82 MB
Controls
Keyboard and mouse

Play in your browser on itch.io

Getting it running

  1. Open the itch page and press Run game at the top.
  2. Wait while it loads: about 82 MB the first time.
  3. Click to start, so the sound can play, then use the full-screen button in the corner of the game.

The browser version runs with lower lighting and detail than the Windows download. It needs a keyboard and mouse, so it does not work on phones or tablets. It contains jump scares, flashing lights and sudden loud sounds. Headphones recommended.

The full version for Windows

The same early-access game with its full lighting and graphics. For the best picture, play this one.

Price
Free
Version
1.3.5
For
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, and a graphics card with Vulkan support
Download
About 160 MB

Download for Windows on itch.io

Installing it

  1. Download night-rounds-win64.zip from the itch page. It is free.
  2. Extract it: right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and put the folder wherever you keep games. It will not run from inside the zip.
  3. Run Night Rounds.exe in that folder. There is no installer and nothing is added to Windows.

If Windows says it "protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway. That box appears for any game from a studio too small to have bought a code-signing certificate, and it asks once. The itch app does all of this for you.

How a round works

Each round is one walk down the wing: the booking desk, the line-up room, two cells and the interview room. At the far end an airlock seals behind you, and a panel waits with two buttons: ALL CLEAR or ANOMALY.

Report right and the counter goes up. Report wrong and it goes back to zero, and the panel tells you what kind of thing you missed, never where. You may turn back to report. Eight correct rounds end your shift.

Something is wrong

More than thirty things can change in the wing. A man in the line-up stands a little taller. The clock runs backwards. Two signs trade places. A cell that had someone in it is empty. Most of them are quiet, and you have to notice.

Everything you report right goes into the ledger, sorted by where in the wing it happens. Fill all 31 lines and END OF WATCH opens: the same wing, on a worse night.

If you are followed

Not every change is quiet. Some of them come for you, and turning back does not always get you away. If you are followed, get to an airlock. The door will hold.

Get caught and you wake in the first airlock with your count at zero.

Screenshots

The details

Genre
First-person anomaly horror
Players
One
Platform
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, with a graphics card that supports Vulkan: the Windows download, free. Or a browser on a computer: Chrome, Edge or Firefox.
Controls
Keyboard and mouse: W A S D or the arrows to walk, Shift to run, the mouse to look, E or left click to press, Esc to pause.
A shift
Eight correct rounds. A perfect one takes about two minutes.
The ledger
31 anomalies to find, across as many shifts as it takes. Find them all to open END OF WATCH, the hard shift.
Contains
Jump scares, flashing lights and sudden loud sounds
Engine
Godot 4

How it was made

The people in the wing were generated with Meshy AI from the developer’s prompts, then rigged with AccuRig and animated with Mixamo. Most of the sound effects and the menu music were generated with ElevenLabs from the developer’s prompts. The rest of the sound is from Kenney and Freesound (CC0), the textures are from Poly Haven (CC0), and the lettering is Barlow Condensed and Share Tech Mono (SIL Open Font License). The code was written by the developer with an AI coding assistant. Nothing is generated while you play.

Night Rounds: End of Watch is made by one developer at Wickhouse Games Studio. It is single-player, with no live service, no microtransactions and no online requirement.

From the devlog