No More Room in Hell 2

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: August 11, 2026

Typical Match Length: 30–60 minutes

Developer: Torn Banner Studios

A Zombie Game That Knows Exactly Why You’re Here

No More Room in Hell 2 is right down my alley.

I grew up playing games like Left 4 Dead, and I’ve spent more hours than I’d probably like to admit running around first-person zombie worlds like Dead Island and Dying Light. So when you tell me I can grab some weapons, team up with a group of players, and start putting zombies back in the ground, you really don’t need much more of a sales pitch.

And for the most part, No More Room in Hell 2 delivers exactly what I wanted from it.

This isn’t a story-heavy zombie adventure trying to make you emotionally question the meaning of humanity. It’s a game about getting into a match, searching for supplies, surviving with your team, and hopefully making it out alive.

Sometimes, that’s more than enough.

Eight-Player Co-Op Is the Main Event

The biggest thing separating No More Room in Hell 2 from a lot of other zombie games is the ability to play with up to eight players.

That immediately changes the feel of everything.

Four-player co-op has been the standard for this genre for what feels like forever, so doubling that number creates some awesome moments. When eight people are packed into one building trying to hold back waves of zombies, the game hits another level.

There’s gunfire everywhere. People are scrambling for supplies. Zombies are coming through every opening they can find. Someone is probably doing something questionable in another room.

It gets chaotic fast, and that chaos is easily the best part of the experience.

Even something as simple as finally extracting and seeing a helicopter filled with seven other players feels rewarding. You didn’t just survive your own run. The whole group somehow managed to make it out.

Those are the moments I kept wanting more of.

The World Actually Rewards You for Looking Around

The maps are large, and there’s a lot more interactivity than I expected.

Doors can be opened, cabinets can be searched, buildings can be explored, and you’re constantly scanning the environment for something that might help keep you alive for another few minutes.

Ammo isn’t handed out like candy either.

You’ll find plenty of different weapons and firearms scattered throughout the world, but you’re rarely sitting on a mountain of bullets. Health items, supplies, weapons, and other useful materials all make searching buildings feel worthwhile instead of something you’re only doing because the objective marker told you to.

That scavenging loop works really well.

You enter a room thinking you’ll quickly check a cabinet and leave, and five minutes later you’re still digging through the building because there might be one more box of ammo sitting somewhere upstairs.

Zombie games need that feeling.

No More Room in Hell 2 has it.

The Zombies Aren’t Just Target Practice

Even on beginner difficulty, I was surprised by how quickly things could get out of control.

The zombies move fast enough to become a legitimate problem, especially when several start surrounding you at once. Increase the difficulty and that pressure only becomes more noticeable.

This isn’t the kind of game where you can comfortably stand in the middle of a street and casually mow down everything around you.

Resources matter. Positioning matters. Your teammates matter.

And while the firearms are fun, I actually found myself enjoying the melee combat even more.

There’s something timeless about hitting a zombie over the head with a sledgehammer.

I don’t know what else to tell you.

Some things in gaming simply work.

The Movement Needs More Life

My biggest issue is the movement.

Sprinting is obviously faster than walking, but it never feels as smooth or fluid as I wanted it to. There’s almost a slight running-through-mud feeling to it.

It isn’t painfully slow. It just feels heavier and clunkier than the rest of the game deserves.

That becomes even more noticeable when you’re trying to jump over obstacles, weave around roadblocks, or quickly reposition while a group of zombies is closing in.

The shooting feels significantly better by comparison.

On PC, aiming with a mouse feels smooth and responsive. Console aiming is still completely playable, although I found the aim assist slightly awkward at times.

When the combat starts firing on all cylinders, the gunplay does its job. I just wish getting from Point A to Point B felt equally polished.

Objectives Are Good. Waves Are Where the Party Is.

There are two main ways to play: objective-based matches and wave-based survival.

I enjoyed both, but I definitely preferred the wave mode.

Objective matches give you more structure and can generally last anywhere from around 30 minutes to an hour depending on how quickly the group pushes forward. You’re moving around the map, completing tasks, gathering supplies, and eventually working toward extraction.

It works.

But survival gives you more freedom to simply enjoy what the game does best.

Fight zombies.

Eight people defending a location against increasingly aggressive waves of undead is exactly the kind of dumb fun I mean in the best possible way.

No complicated explanation required.

Just give everybody a weapon and lock the doors.

Progression Keeps You Moving Forward

There’s enough progression here to make matches feel like they’re contributing toward something without turning the game into a spreadsheet simulator.

Your character has progression, your overall account has progression, and there are different skills, loadouts, customization options, and stats to keep track of.

Character customization isn’t incredibly deep, but I don’t think it needs to be.

I’m here to survive a zombie outbreak, not spend 45 minutes deciding whether my responder looks better in slightly darker pants.

The systems give you enough to work toward while keeping the focus where it belongs: actually playing.

Don’t Come Here Looking for a Big Story

There isn’t much of a traditional story, and I would have liked a little more narrative to pull everything together.

That said, it’s also pretty obvious that storytelling isn’t what No More Room in Hell 2 is trying to build itself around.

This is a game designed to be easy to jump into.

Find a match. Invite some friends. Meet some random players. Grab whatever weapon you can find.

Start killing zombies.

I have a lot of appreciation for games that understand that not everything needs to become a 70-hour commitment.

Sometimes I want to play for an hour, have a good time, and move on with my night.

No More Room in Hell 2 fits that role extremely well.

Performance Holds Up When Things Get Ugly

Performance was nearly flawless during my time with the game on both PS5 and PC.

I experienced very little screen tearing or noticeable lag, even during matches with seven other players and a large number of zombies filling the screen.

That’s important because this game gets busy.

Really busy.

When enemies are flooding into an area and eight players are firing, swinging weapons, moving between rooms, and trying not to die, performance problems could completely destroy the experience.

Thankfully, that rarely happened for me.

Graphically, the game looks solid without being something I’d call visually groundbreaking. The environments are appropriately dark and grim, and you’ll find yourself relying on your flashlight fairly often.

The audio also does a good job of making the environment feel active around you. When you can hear something moving nearby but can’t immediately see it, the game creates some surprisingly tense moments.

And as someone from Pennsylvania, seeing recognizable Pennsylvania locations and names throughout the game was a cool little bonus.

A Very Good Time If Zombies Are Your Thing

No More Room in Hell 2 isn’t reinventing zombie games.

It doesn’t need to.

What it does is deliver one of the better straight-up cooperative zombie experiences currently available.

The movement could absolutely be smoother. A stronger story would have added another layer to the experience. And if you’re someone who gets bored simply killing zombies over and over again, the appeal could eventually wear thin.

But for the right player?

There’s a lot here.

The scavenging is satisfying. The combat is fun. There’s plenty of loot and weapon variety to discover. Performance held up extremely well in my testing.

And most importantly, the eight-player co-op gives No More Room in Hell 2 an identity of its own.

When eight people are trapped in a building fighting for their lives, or when everyone somehow survives long enough to pile into the extraction helicopter together, the game absolutely delivers.

If co-op zombie games are already your thing, I can easily see this becoming one of those games you keep installed just because you know somebody is eventually going to send the message:

“Zombies?”

And sometimes that’s all it takes.

Disclosure: A review code for No More Room in Hell 2 was provided through Game.Press for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.

Dream Cage Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: September 4th, 2026

Main Story Length: 1 hour

Developer: Hitori De Productions

Turn the Lights Off. Put the Headset On.

Dream Cage is not for the faint of heart.

If you don’t even remotely enjoy horror, this game probably isn’t for you. But I love horror, so naturally I gave it the full treatment.

Lights off. Headset on. Give me everything you’ve got.

I want a horror game to scare me.

And Dream Cage did.

Developed by Hitori De Productions, Dream Cage is a first-person psychological horror game built around five nights of sleep paralysis. You play as Robert, a 50-year-old man dealing with memory issues and increasingly disturbing nightly experiences as the line between reality and hallucination starts to blur.

Almost immediately, the game starts messing with you.

Figures flash across rooms. Doors move by themselves. Something appears where you swear nothing was standing two seconds ago. You open a door and instantly regret having opened the door.

Dream Cage has jump scares, creepy music, unsettling environments and enough “what the hell was that?” moments to keep horror fans on edge.

There isn’t a massive amount of game here, but considering the lower price point and the type of experience Dream Cage is trying to deliver, I can forgive some of that.

What matters most is whether it succeeds at being scary.

It does.

Five Nights Inside an Apartment That Won’t Stay Put

Across five nights, you explore an apartment that continues changing around you while searching for anomalies.

You’ll need to locate a camera, gather film and pills, photograph enough anomalies to progress, and prevent Robert’s scare level from getting out of control.

You only need seven of the ten anomalies available during a night to move forward.

Apparently seven wasn’t good enough for me.

During my first playthrough, I made it my goal to find all ten every night.

The anomaly hunting quickly became one of my favorite parts of the game because Dream Cage does a good job making you question your own memory. You’ll walk into the same rooms repeatedly, studying everything around you and wondering whether that object was always there, whether something moved, or whether you just saw something disappear in the corner of your eye.

Some changes are obvious.

Others make you stare at a room like you’ve suddenly become a paranormal home inspector.

Eventually, you stop trusting anything.

That’s when Dream Cage is at its best.

I only wish the anomalies themselves contributed a little more to the storytelling. Finding one is creepy, but stronger reactions, additional context or more direct connections to Robert’s story could have made each discovery feel more meaningful instead of occasionally becoming a checklist of creepy things.

If You Want the Story, Read Everything

If you care about understanding what is actually happening, collect the notes.

Seriously.

The written notes scattered throughout the five nights are essentially the backbone of Dream Cage’s story. They explain Robert’s situation, provide context for what you’re seeing, and ultimately determine which ending you receive.

Dream Cage features two endings, and I ended up playing through the entire game twice so I could see both.

Getting the better ending requires finding every note across all five nights.

That alone says something positive about the mystery.

The story kept me interested enough that after finishing once, I immediately went back to find what I missed and see the other outcome.

The problem is presentation.

Most of the important storytelling comes through reading, and Dream Cage could have done much more with it.

A few voiced sequences, stronger cinematic moments or short cutscenes would have gone a long way toward making Robert’s story hit harder. The radio sequence toward the end gives you a glimpse of how much stronger the storytelling could have been with more moments like it.

Unfortunately, the text accompanying that dialogue is also ridiculously small.

And I mean ridiculously small.

I shouldn’t need to lean toward my TV like I’m trying to read the fine print on a medication commercial just to follow an important piece of dialogue.

The Apartment Looks Fantastic. The Monsters? Not Quite.

Visually, Dream Cage surprised me.

The apartment itself can look damn near photorealistic at times.

Lighting, shadows, textures and smaller environmental details make the space feel believable, which is especially important when the entire experience revolves around noticing when something suddenly isn’t right.

The better the apartment looks, the easier it is to become immersed.

And the easier it is to become immersed, the easier it is for Dream Cage to scare the hell out of you.

The creature models don’t reach that same level.

They’re still creepy enough when something suddenly appears in front of you—and when I’m busy trying not to jump out of my chair, I’m not exactly inspecting polygon counts—but seeing them up close reveals a noticeable gap between the quality of the environments and the characters.

Thankfully, horror is often more about what you think you saw than what you get a perfect look at, so the weaker models never completely kill the atmosphere.

Still, the environmental work leaves me wanting to see what Hitori De Productions could do with a larger horror project.

The potential is clearly there.

The Game Can Literally Hear You

One of Dream Cage’s coolest ideas is its microphone mechanic.

The game can detect how much noise you’re making through your microphone, with louder sounds increasing Robert’s scare level.

Yes, the horror game is basically asking you not to scream while actively trying to make you scream.

That’s cruel.

I like it.

There’s even a microphone threshold setting that allows you to adjust how sensitive the system is.

I tested it by intentionally talking loudly into my headset, and it worked exactly as advertised.

The problem—for the game, anyway—is that I’m apparently a pretty quiet horror player.

I can get scared without announcing it to the entire neighborhood.

Because of that, the microphone system never became a major factor during my normal playthrough. Someone who screams, yells or reacts loudly to jump scares will probably get significantly more mileage out of it.

Regardless, it’s a creative mechanic and easily one of Dream Cage’s more memorable ideas.

The Camera Is Your Friend. Until You Accidentally Put It Away.

Dream Cage does not make the greatest first impression when it comes to controls.

It can take a little while to understand exactly what the game wants from you, and some of the controller bindings are unusual enough that I repeatedly hit the wrong thing early on.

Sprint on the left trigger?

Using the camera with the right analog click?

Definitely not the first places my fingers naturally go.

The camera system can also become frustrating because pulling the camera out uses a battery. If you accidentally put it away and need to bring it back out, you’re going to need another one.

I learned that lesson quickly.

Once I was ready to hunt anomalies, that camera stayed in my hand like an emotional support blanket.

It’s also important to collect pills before getting too deep into each night. Forgetting them can leave you in a position where Robert’s scare level becomes difficult to manage and you end up failing.

Once you understand the systems, everything becomes much smoother.

Getting there could have been handled better.

Dream Cage rewards players who thoroughly search every corner of the apartment.

If exploring rooms looking for tiny changes sounds boring to you, this probably isn’t your game.

The Bed Sequences Should Have Been Scarier

The apartment sections are easily where Dream Cage shines.

The sleep-paralysis sequences involving Robert in bed?

Not nearly as much.

These moments should theoretically be some of the most terrifying parts of a game built around sleep paralysis, but they ended up being some of the least memorable portions for me.

Compared to walking through the apartment wondering what might appear around the next corner, the bed sections feel slower, more restrictive and surprisingly tame.

That feels like a missed opportunity.

Dream Cage already proves it knows how to build suspense. I wanted these scenes to push that atmosphere even further—to make me dread going back to bed after every night.

Instead, I mostly found myself waiting to get back up and explore again.

For a game centered around sleep paralysis, the moments actually involving the bed probably shouldn’t be the parts I remember least.

Short, Focused and Definitely Niche

Dream Cage isn’t a long game.

One playthrough can take roughly an hour depending on how thoroughly you explore and how quickly you find the camera supplies, pills, notes and anomalies.

I completed both endings and earned the PlayStation Platinum trophy in around two hours total.

For the type of low-cost horror experience this is, I don’t necessarily have an issue with the length.

My bigger issue is replayability.

There’s no real night-select option, which feels like a missed opportunity for a game built around collectibles and multiple endings. If you miss something important, going back means replaying much more of the experience than should really be necessary.

Considering how short the game is, that isn’t disastrous, but a chapter or night-select feature would have made cleaning up missed notes or revisiting your favorite sections much easier.

The endings themselves are also fairly predictable.

If you’ve been paying attention to the clues inside the notes, you’ll probably have a decent idea where things are heading.

The story is interesting.

The payoff is just a little safer than I hoped.

Dream Cage Does One Thing Better Than Everything Else: Scare You

Dream Cage is a very niche game made for a very specific player.

You need to enjoy horror.

You need to enjoy slow exploration.

You need to be willing to inspect every corner of a room.

And you need to be okay with a short experience where atmosphere carries more weight than mechanical depth.

The story is decent. The gameplay systems are simple. The controls can be awkward. The creature models could be better. The bed sequences don’t capitalize on their potential, and the presentation surrounding the story leaves plenty of room for improvement.

There simply isn’t quite enough meat on the bone.

But Dream Cage understands fear.

When I was walking through that apartment with the lights off and my headset on, waiting for something to move, appear or come flying at me, I was completely locked in.

That’s the game’s biggest victory.

It kept me interested enough to play through the entire thing twice, see both endings, hunt down every note and earn the Platinum trophy.

For a short horror game, that counts for something.

Give me this level of environmental detail with stronger models, smoother controls, deeper storytelling and a few more ambitious scares, and Hitori De Productions could have something seriously impressive on its hands.

For now, Dream Cage is a short, creepy experience that horror fans can absolutely have some fun with.

Everyone else probably won’t survive the first night.

Disclosure: A review code for Dream Cage was provided through Press Engine for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.

Lou’s Lagoon Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC

Release Date: August 27, 2026

Main Story Length: 8 hours

Developer: Tiny Roar

Sometimes You Just Need a Vacation

Some games want your heart rate up. Others want you studying build guides, memorizing boss patterns, and questioning every decision you’ve made for the last three hours.

Lou’s Lagoon would rather hand you the keys to a seaplane and tell you to enjoy the view.

And you know what? Sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

Lou’s Lagoon drops you into a bright, colorful cartoon world spread across a tropical chain of islands. Your Uncle Lou, who runs the local delivery service, has disappeared, leaving you to figure out where he went while also helping the island communities recover from a devastating storm.

It’s a simple setup, but it gives the game just enough mystery to keep pulling you forward. I wanted to find out what happened to Lou, and while the story never throws any earth-shattering twists your way, it stays charming throughout and lands with a satisfying ending.

More importantly, Lou’s Lagoon understands exactly what kind of game it wants to be.

A Cozy World That Actually Makes You Want to Explore

The first thing that grabbed me was just how inviting everything looks.

Lou’s Lagoon is bright, vibrant, and pleasant to wander around in. Each island has its own colors and personality, which helps keep exploration visually fresh instead of making the entire archipelago feel like one big copy-and-paste tropical backdrop.

That variety matters because you’ll be traveling between these islands constantly.

Thankfully, getting around is one of the better parts of the game.

Your seaplane isn’t simply a glorified loading screen between objectives. Flying it is genuinely enjoyable. The controls are responsive, the plane is maneuverable enough that collecting things in the air can actually be fun, and you can customize and upgrade it as you progress.

When you don’t feel like making the entire journey yourself, an autopilot option lets you essentially fast travel to your destination.

It’s a smart addition. Flying is fun when you want to fly, but Lou’s Lagoon doesn’t force you to turn every trip across the map into a commute.

Build This, Unlock That — And It Works

Most of Lou’s Lagoon follows a pretty straightforward formula.

Complete a mission. Unlock something. Gather materials. Build something. Upgrade something else. Use that new tool or upgrade to complete another objective.

Then do it again.

On paper, that sounds repetitive.

And technically, it is.

But I don’t really consider that a knock against Lou’s Lagoon because that loop is the game. It knows what it is, and the progression is designed well enough that I consistently felt like I was working toward something useful.

A big part of that comes down to how clearly the game communicates what it wants from you.

Objectives are easy to understand, requirements are laid out clearly, and the pin system does an excellent job directing you toward whatever needs your attention next. I rarely found myself wandering around wondering, Okay… what the hell am I supposed to be doing now?

For a relaxing game built around lots of smaller tasks, that’s incredibly important.

You’ll collect resources using the Swirler—a vacuum-like multi-tool that sucks up scrap, plants, and other materials—then use what you’ve gathered for crafting, repairs, upgrades, and progression.

There are little puzzles, some fishing, light character customization, ship and building customization, and plenty of smaller distractions sprinkled throughout the adventure.

Nothing here is overwhelmingly deep on its own.

Together, though, it creates a satisfying little rhythm.

Find something. Collect it. Build something. Unlock something new. Fly somewhere else. Meet another strange islander. Repeat.

It’s the gaming equivalent of finally getting around to the stuff on your weekend to-do list, except considerably more fun and nobody asks you to clean the gutters.

The Islanders Give the Lagoon Its Personality

Lou’s Lagoon also benefits from a cast that has far more personality than I expected going in.

The different communities you encounter—from the friendly Charneys to the sugar-crystal-mining Gorplins—help give each part of the world its own identity. The characters are fun, their personalities come through clearly, and the writing generally keeps conversations entertaining.

There’s a playful quality to the dialogue that fits the world perfectly.

And while Lou’s disappearance gives you a reason to keep progressing, I found that simply seeing what character or situation I’d stumble into next became part of the appeal too.

There is, however, a lot of talking.

Certain conversations run longer than they really need to, and there were moments where I found myself ready to get back to actually doing things before the characters were finished discussing them.

The dialogue itself is good.

There’s just occasionally too much of a good thing.

Relaxing Doesn’t Mean Nothing Can Be Frustrating

For as polished as the overall experience feels, Lou’s Lagoon does have a few technical oddities.

The camera can behave strangely after catching a fish, and some lifts have spots where your character briefly looks like they’re about to free-fall through the floor before the game thankfully remembers that gravity is supposed to have rules.

Nothing I encountered was remotely game-breaking, though.

Performance itself was excellent during my time with the game, running at a clean 60 FPS with smooth controls and consistently fluid gameplay.

Considering how much time you’ll spend flying, collecting resources, and moving between objectives, that responsiveness goes a long way.

If You Want a Challenge, You’ve Landed on the Wrong Island

This is probably the most important thing to know before buying Lou’s Lagoon:

It is easy.

If you’re looking for demanding puzzles, difficult encounters, complex combat, or anything that’s going to seriously test your skill, you’re not going to find much of that here.

And that isn’t some hidden flaw the game forgot to mention.

Lou’s Lagoon clearly wants to be relaxing.

This is a building, crafting, exploration, and light-puzzle game centered around completing objectives and gradually restoring the world around you. It isn’t interested in beating you over the head with difficulty every ten minutes.

There also isn’t much combat to speak of.

For some players, that will immediately limit the appeal.

For others, that’s the entire reason to play it.

Not every game needs to demand your absolute attention. Sometimes I want something where I can sit down, knock out a few missions, improve my plane, build something new, and fly across a cartoon ocean without preparing myself mentally for a 14-foot monster to kick me through a wall.

Lou’s Lagoon understands that audience extremely well.

Time Well Spent

At roughly eight hours for the main story, Lou’s Lagoon doesn’t overstay its welcome.

It gives you enough time to enjoy its crafting, building, exploration, quirky characters, and island-hopping adventure without stretching its central gameplay loop far beyond what it can comfortably support.

There are a few frustrations. Mission triggers can occasionally be finicky, conversations sometimes run longer than necessary, the camera has its moments, and anyone looking for serious challenge or combat should probably book a flight somewhere else.

But none of those things changed what I enjoyed about the experience.

Lou’s Lagoon is smooth, easy to learn, visually charming, and seriously relaxing. Its progression constantly gives you another small reason to keep moving, the seaplane is more fun to control than it had any right to be, and the mystery surrounding Uncle Lou gives the otherwise laid-back adventure enough narrative momentum to keep it moving.

Most importantly, it never tries to become something it isn’t.

Lou’s Lagoon knows it’s a cozy game.

It embraces being a cozy game.

And it’s a better game because of it.

Verdict

If spending a handful of hours flying between colorful islands, helping strange little communities, crafting your next upgrade, and slowly checking objectives off a list sounds like your idea of a good night, there’s a very good chance Lou’s Lagoon is worth your time.

It isn’t a game built around difficulty, deep combat, or complicated systems, and players looking for those things may come away wanting more. But for what Lou’s Lagoon is trying to accomplish, it succeeds far more often than it stumbles. The progression stays rewarding, exploration remains enjoyable, and the constant stream of small objectives gives you just enough motivation to keep saying, “one more mission.”

A few lengthy conversations and minor technical quirks keep it from being completely smooth sailing, but it never really gets in the way of the experience.

Lou’s Lagoon knows exactly what kind of game it wants to be and never feels pressured to turn itself into something bigger or more demanding.

Disclosure: A review code for Lou’s Lagoon was provided through Game.Press for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.