PCWhere to buy
Unnatural: Benighted is a 2024 indie action-horror game developed and published by the small studio VD Games. Released on January 11, 2024, for PC via Steam, it is an incredibly low-budget, highly janky, and completely unofficial homage to the hit CW television series Supernatural.
Core Concept and Story
The premise of the game will sound instantly familiar to anyone who has ever watched a single episode of the show it is legally dodging.
You play as Sim, a man whose wife suddenly goes missing. He quickly discovers that she has been kidnapped by a powerful demon who begins blackmailing him. To save her, Sim enlists the help of his best friend, Dan, who also holds a personal grudge against the demon. Together, they hit the road to hunt down the supernatural entities responsible.
“Sim” and “Dan” are blatant, unapologetic stand-ins for Sam and Dean Winchester. The in-game character model for Sim looks hilariously identical to actor Jared Padalecki. Knowing exactly what they were doing, the developers placed a massive, highly amusing disclaimer on the game’s store page explicitly stating that the game is merely “inspired by American urban legends,” and that any resemblance to TV series, movies, or real people is “purely coincidental.”
Gameplay and Features
Built in Unreal Engine, Unnatural: Benighted attempts to deliver a third-person survival horror experience on a shoestring budget:
- Monster Hunting: As you progress through the linear story, you explore dark villages, dense forests, and abandoned homes, encountering a variety of zombies, monsters, and demonic entities.
- Basic Combat: The game features rudimentary third-person shooting mechanics. You are given a basic arsenal to blast away at the creatures of the night, complete with a surprisingly graphic gore system that allows you to shoot off monster limbs.
- The Atmosphere: If there is one thing the game actually succeeds at, it is capturing the gloomy, blue-tinted, backwoods aesthetic of early-2000s CW horror television.
Reception and The “Jank” Factor
Unnatural: Benighted launched at a $4.99 budget price and currently holds a “Mixed” user rating on Steam.
The community’s response is heavily divided into two camps. On one side, die-hard fans of Supernatural have praised the game purely for its unintentional comedy and B-movie charm. They appreciate the goofy, Russian-developed attempt to create a playable version of the Winchester brothers’ adventures.
On the other side, anyone looking for a functional video game was left deeply frustrated. The game is the textbook definition of asset-flip indie jank. The combat is universally panned as stiff and awful, the boss fights are notoriously poorly balanced, and the game is absolutely riddled with bugs. Players frequently report soft-locking issues, such as spawning into a new level completely missing their weapons, or the game simply refusing to register mouse clicks when trying to shoot enemies.
Quick Note
Unnatural: Benighted is the ultimate “we have Supernatural at home” meme in video game form.
In short: If you are looking for a polished, terrifying, mechanics-driven survival horror game, you should stay far, far away. But if you are a massive fan of the television show, have five dollars to burn, and want to spend an hour or two laughing at an incredibly clunky, legally distinct bootleg of Sam and Dean Winchester, it delivers exactly the B-movie mess you would expect.
