Stephen King Meets Home Alone In Twisted New Horror Game

Published Aug 24, 2026, 11:00 PM EDT

Sharmila is an engineer-turned-gaming hardware journalist and freelance contributor at ScreenRant who has been covering the gaming and tech industry since 2021. While she first built her expertise writing about video games, she has since pivoted towards gaming hardware, with a focus on PC components, peripherals, handhelds, and performance-driven tech. When she’s not testing gear or writing about the latest hardware trends, she can usually be found diving into competitive shooters or keeping up with the evolving esports scene.

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A new horror title heading to Steam is taking every kid’s worst nightmare—being left home alone after dark—and turning it into a psychological survival experience. And the plot looks like a blend of Stephen King’s spooky magic with a bit of Home Alone minus the humor.

The game is called AFTER 9PM, developed by KinTstudioDK, and currently slated to land in Early Access sometime in 2027. The setup is simple, which is exactly what makes it unsettling too. You play as a child whose parents have gone out for the night. The house is quiet, familiar, and ordinary—at least until the clock hits nine. That’s when things start to shift and the house “is no longer the same.”

You won’t be playing the role of an action hero or a ghost hunter. AFTER 9PM is upfront about that: you’re just a kid trying to make it through the night, handling small everyday tasks while things you can’t quite explain start happening around you. Sometimes, those strange events are just nightmares, but sometimes… they aren’t. The only rule? “Don’t panic” and wait for morning—which, if you’ve ever actually been a scared kid alone in a dark house, sounds both incredibly simple and completely impossible.

That premise is where the Stephen King comparison comes from. There’s a very It or Christine kind of vibe to a mundane, cozy setting slowly curdling into something wrong, especially once you throw in a child’s perspective and that nagging sense that maybe what you’re seeing isn’t real... or maybe it is. And the Home Alone angle isn’t just about the setup either. It’s just that specific dread of being a kid by yourself in a big, creaky house at night. Except here, nobody’s coming to rob the place, but something else might be approaching instead.

Rather than leaning primarily on cheap jump scares, the developers say they’re building AFTER 9PM around psychological tension and sound design. It’s the kind of horror that gets under your skin through what you don’t see rather than what jumps out at you. According to the official description on Steam, the game will feature mysterious entities that may or may not be figments of your imagination and a whole experience built around not being able to trust your own eyes.

Right now, AFTER 9PM is listed as coming soon to Early Access and isn’t playable yet, so there’s no telling exactly how it’ll hold up after launch. Early Access games are always a bit of a gamble. The developers themselves say they want to use this period to test the atmosphere and core concept with players before building it out further, adding new events and entities based on feedback. Still, for horror fans who like their scares more atmospheric than action-focused, AFTER 9PM looks like one to keep an eye on.

Also, it won’t be free, so you’ll have to pay a price for the Early Access version when it lands on Steam in 2027. The developers have confirmed that the price will be “gradually” increased as more content and developments are added. But the Early Access version will be “cheaper” to encourage community support. The actual launch price, however, has not yet been announced.