It's Not Me, It's My Basement

Keep your basement peaceful

It's Not Me, It's My Basement is a free role-playing video game wherein you must take care of your house while your parents are away. Developed by arcadekitten, this 2D indie horror game is a psychological thriller story that features some disturbing imagery and plotlines—just like in RPG Maker horror games.  

In It's Not Me, It's My Basement, you play as a young child who’s in charge of their house while the parents are away. However, you soon start to realize that their home-alone situation isn’t normal. Unlike most RPG Maker games, this title only has one ending.

You’re in charge now

It's Not Me, It's My Basement features Embry, a young child of ambiguous gender who’s been left all alone inside their house. Their parents aren’t around, and so they must take care of all chores they can do. Most important of all, however, is making food. Not for them, but something in the basement. You must manage what little food there is while keeping whatever’s in the basement sated.

The controls are simple enough, as you’ll just be using your keyboard. The arrow keys are for moving about and selecting choices, while the Enter key or Spacebar key is for interacting with objects, progressing the dialogue, and confirming choices. Meanwhile, the Esc key is for exiting out of a sub-menu and opening the menu during gameplay. There’s no quick tutorial for this, but it’s easy enough to figure out.

In terms of the narrative, the game does well in putting you through the mindset of Embry, who’s just a kid trying to survive. You go through a one-sided view of the situation, so the horror comes from the uncertainty of the situation you’re in. However, it’s disappointing to see that there’s only one ending when there are numerous times you can make choices for Embry.

Not really a flexible narrative

All in all, It's Not Me, It's My Basement is a nice indie visual novel horror game to try out if you like RPG Maker games that only take around 30 minutes to an hour to finish. While it only has one outcome, this means that the gameplay is linear and easy to complete. It makes all of your choices a bit useless, though.