Psychedelic horror escape room launches October 29 during Steam Scream V — and its creators say the game has already caused controversy far beyond the screen

August 25, 2026

Nesebar, Bulgaria

Independent game studio iWorlds today announced that Dark Trip, its controversial psychedelic horror escape room, will launch on October 29, 2026, just days before Halloween

The game will release simultaneously on Steam, with full support for traditional flat-screen controls and SteamVR, and on Meta Quest.

The launch will take place during Steam Scream V, Valve's annual Halloween festival dedicated to horror games, running October 26 through November 2.

And Dark Trip may be one of the more appropriate games imaginable for the occasion. Because this is not a horror game about simply running away from monsters.

In Dark Trip, the player is expected to take mysterious substances, enter hallucinations and use altered states of consciousness to solve puzzles and uncover evidence. Some clues simply do not exist until the player changes the way they perceive reality.

Dark Trip puts players in the role of an investigator hired to find a missing woman in a small German town. The investigation leads to an abandoned laboratory filled with grotesque biomechanical machinery, occult devices, disturbing artwork and evidence of experiments that should never have happened. The deeper the investigation goes, the less reliable reality becomes.

Players must explore interconnected escape rooms, collect evidence, decipher strange mechanisms and deliberately switch between ordinary perception and hallucination in order to discover what is hidden from sober eyes.

The result is a deliberately uncomfortable mixture of psychological horror, occult mystery, psychedelic imagery, escape-room puzzles and detective fiction.

The game draws on Lovecraftian horror, surrealism, occult imagery and disturbing visions — while deliberately refusing to treat altered consciousness as merely a visual effect.

“We wanted to make a game where hallucinations are not decoration — they are a gameplay mechanic,” said Andrey Klenin, the creative director and developer of Dark Trip. “The player has to decide when to trust reality and when to deliberately destroy their own perception of it. That is what makes Dark Trip fundamentally different from a conventional horror game.”

Dark Trip has already attracted controversy outside the game itself.

According to Alexander Nasonov, the game’s Producer, while he was involved in a separate legal dispute concerning his right to maintain contact and custody with his 4 years daughter, his former wife made several attempts to initiate criminal proceedings connected with him and the game.

“None of those attempts resulted in criminal proceedings against the game or its creators, but at some point, Dark Trip became part of a real-life conflict that had absolutely nothing to do with game development,” Nasonov said. “And eventually, the plot of the game — in which a father is desperate to find his kidnapped daughter — began to mirror my own life, as I have been dealing with parental alienation for months now.”

Dark Trip Secured Presence on Steam only After a Bureaucratic Nightmare

More than two months of bureaucratic back-and-forth with Steam’s review team needed originally for Dark Trip to finally secure its initial presence on the Steam platform.

Despite the page being merely a "Coming Soon" listing, Steam reviewers insisted on a full demo build due to the game's psychedelic narrative involving Nazi themes.

Without a complete build for review, Steam refused to approve the page’s publication. The most absurd hurdle came when Steam demanded that iWorlds upload the build via SteamPipe – only for SteamPipe to malfunction until the page was first approved. This created a frustrating catch-22, which the developers ultimately circumvented by packaging the build into a password-protected archive and sending it via Google Drive to Steam’s review team.

Dark Trip originally entered Early Access on Meta Quest in February 2025.

Since then, iWorlds has continuously expanded the game, adding new rooms, story content, mechanics, localizations and technical improvements.

The Meta Quest version has already grown into a multi-room psychedelic horror experience, while the Steam version has been developed to support both conventional desktop controls and VR.

The game has also received coverage from VR media including UploadVR, which highlighted its combination of escape-room puzzles, psychedelic horror and hallucination-based gameplay.

This summer the closed playtest was started on Steam:

The October 29 release will bring Dark Trip to a much larger audience.

The launch will coincide with Steam Scream V, Steam's Halloween horror festival.

On Steam, players will be able to experience the complete game using traditional keyboard-and-mouse or controller controls, or enter the nightmare through SteamVR.

On Meta Quest, Dark Trip will continue its evolution as a native VR horror experience and will finally leave Early Access phase.

Whether played on a monitor or inside a headset, the central question remains the same:

What if the only way to solve the crime is to stop trusting your own eyes?

Wishlist Dark Trip on Steam and apply for the closed playtest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3492640/Dark_Trip/

Grab Early Access on Meta Store while you still can: https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/dark-trip/27793698076945636/

Dark Trip is a indie psychedelic escape room where a detective eats pills to solve puzzles and relies on own hallucinations to investigate an eerie crime case.

Enter the Hellraiser themed surreal horror! Welcome to one of the most unique and bizarre escape rooms, where you take on the role of an investigator searching for a missing woman — and are forced to consume drugs during your mission. The boundaries between reality, virtuality, and hallucinations dissolve, immersing you in a Lovecraftian nightmare when in a small German town, the only daughter of a retired businessman vanishes without a trace. Hired to investigate the case, the player discovers a seemingly abandoned laboratory. As you explore room after room, you uncover evidence of twisted experiments, scattered notebooks of employees, and disturbing accounts from test subjects. The gameplay revolves around solving intricate puzzles while piecing together the unsettling truth of the past.

Experience mind-bending psychedelic trips that distort perception and twist your surroundings!

• Solve Puzzles in an Eerie Environment. Dive into a haunting world filled with grotesque biotechnological machinery and the wicked remnants of dark experiments.

• Experiences Psychedelic Trips. Immerse yourself into mind-bending psychedelic trips that distort perception and twist your surroundings.

• Use Hallucinations to Find Missing Evidence. Search for clues, artifacts and diary pieces to discover the dark story behind the gruesome events.

Wishlist Dark Trip on Steam and apply for the closed playtest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3492640/Dark_Trip/

The game is available via Early Access on Meta Store: https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/dark-trip/27793698076945636/

Dark Trip’s official website: https://iworlds.studio/dark-trip

• Follow Dark Trip on Social Media to stay updated:

• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@iTalesVRStudio

• Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark_trip_vr

• X: https://x.com/ItalesVr

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/italesvr/

• Telegram: https://t.me/italesvr

• Discord: https://discord.gg/h5xnewgMXE

About iWorlds

iWorlds is an indie studio focused on creating immersive and engaging games that blend innovative storytelling with cutting-edge technology. Our mission is to redefine the gaming landscape through compelling narratives and unique gameplay mechanics. Like if David Lynch or Terry Gilliam would have started up gamedev studio.

For more information about iTales VR and our upcoming projects, visit https://iworlds.studio/