Cellar

About

Cellar is a single player casual action adventure game. It was developed by Vertical Skull Games and was released on March 23, 2016. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

"Cellar" is a single-player arcade game with stunning pixel art visuals, offering around 60 hours of playtime. The game takes you on a journey through a maze-like basement as you search for your missing teddy bear, avoiding dangerous traps and monsters along the way. With gameplay reminiscent of Bomberman and Sokoban, "Cellar" is a casual yet challenging experience. The game auto-saves only at the beginning of each level.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

Skip User Reviews

79%

Audience ScoreBased on 105 reviews

gameplay6 positive mentions

music4 negative mentions

The game has a charming retro pixel art style with a well-crafted atmosphere that evokes childhood fears and psychological unease.
Gameplay offers a simple yet engaging maze-exploration and puzzle experience that is accessible and occasionally challenging.
Despite its short length, the game provides emotional depth and nostalgia with a unique, quiet, and tension-building horror ambiance.

Controls feel clunky and tile-based movement can be awkward, leading to frustration especially with slow response times and occasional bad hitboxes.
Sound design is lacking variety and polish, with repetitive royalty-free music tracks and a jarring, immersion-breaking death trombone sound effect.
The game becomes repetitive in later levels due to limited enemy and trap variety, slow pacing in larger maps, and lack of polish with bugs and missing features.

gameplay
34 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
18%
73%
9%
The gameplay is minimalist, featuring simple, maze-like exploration and puzzle elements centered around collecting items while avoiding a monster. While its nostalgic and atmospheric design offers a unique, focused experience, many find the mechanics repetitive, slow, and lacking depth or variety, which may limit long-term engagement. Overall, it appeals to those who appreciate pure, old-school style gameplay but can feel tedious and shallow compared to modern standards.
- “What seems like a simple errand quickly transforms into a surreal, maze-like nightmare that blends nostalgic gameplay with quiet psychological unease.”
- “At its heart, Cellar is a minimalist exploration of darkness—both literal and metaphorical—crafted through simple mechanics and evocative design.”
- “The combination of its nostalgic design, focused gameplay, and psychological undertones makes it quietly effective.”
- “Extremely slow and tedious tile-set walking gameplay.”
- “Every death triggers a trumpet noise and sends you back to the start of the level; even after collecting a collectible, you need to recollect it and then find the key to escape. Repeat until done—that's literally the entire gameplay.”
- “It's not very exciting gameplay, but the thing that really killed it for me is that there are tiles you can only cross once, which then crumble and can't be crossed again. If you mess up once, you botched the entire level and have to restart.”
graphics
22 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
41%
45%
14%
The game's graphics are characterized by a retro pixel art style that many find charming and atmospheric, offering a simple yet pleasing aesthetic. However, some users feel the visuals are uninspired or limited, lacking resolution options and detailed variety. Overall, the art style contributes positively to the game's mood despite its simplicity.
- “+ the graphics are well detailed and have a nice aesthetic.”
- “The gameplay is tight and concise and the pixelated graphics give it quite a bit of charm.”
- “The gameplay was rather simplistic, but the artwork was truly amazing to gaze at.”
- “A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel art as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics.”
- “There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks.”
- “The visuals are uninspired; enemies all look like the same sad glob.”
music
21 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
14%
67%
19%
The game's music is minimal and repetitive, often consisting of one or a few royalty-free tracks looped throughout all levels, which many players find tiring and lacking in variety. While the soundtrack fits the game's simple and eerie atmosphere, limited audio design and repetitive sounds diminish the overall immersion and enjoyment. Adding more diverse music and sound effects could significantly enhance the experience.
- “The sparse soundtrack, punctuated by distant hums, creaks, and the faint echoes of movement, enhances the sense of dread.”
- “I relaxed for 5 minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay.”
- “Nice music and visuals, with occasionally challenging gameplay makes for a pleasant experience lasting about an hour or more.”
- “Sound design is nonexistent, making the environment lifeless and boring. The music gets repetitive as it loops the same tracks for every level.”
- “It's disappointing how all of the tracks are constantly reused. I grew tired of the music before reaching midway through the game, which is a bad sign given the game's short length.”
- “The title screen, main menu, and every level play the same music on loop, leading to a monotonous audio experience.”
story
19 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
26%
58%
16%
The story in "Cellar" is minimal and serves mainly as a backdrop, focusing on a little girl's quest to find her teddy bear. Despite its simplicity, the emotional undertone and unique, somewhat unexpected ending provide a memorable and engaging experience, especially for those who appreciate minimalist storytelling wrapped in eerie ambiance. Overall, it's a brief but pleasant narrative that complements the game's atmosphere and puzzle exploration.
- “For players who appreciate minimalist storytelling and classic puzzle exploration wrapped in eerie ambience, Cellar offers a brief but memorable descent into fear and memory.”
- “Its story may be minimal, but its emotional undercurrent is strong.”
- “The story is really gripping as it seems to make you want to find the teddy bear.”
- “That's about as much as story as you're going to get in Cellar as it's not really a story-driven game, with the story just being there as a backdrop.”
- “Cellar is kind of a dull game, but at least for the story.”
- “I find time constraint/chase games annoying anyway since I like to have time to appreciate the art style and the story, so if you're the same you probably won't enjoy this much.”
atmosphere
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
34%
33%
The game's atmosphere is widely praised for its unsettling, haunting quality achieved through confined spaces, ambient sounds, and a sense of isolation, evoking a nostalgic indie style focused on mood over mechanics. Its gothic and charming art style further enhances this immersive experience, though some players find the overall tone not to their taste.
- “Yet within its modest design, there is an elegance—the kind of purity that recalls a bygone era of indie experimentation where atmosphere and theme mattered more than length or mechanical depth.”
- “Ultimately, Cellar is a modest but haunting indie game that thrives on simplicity and atmosphere.”
- “For an unsettling atmosphere that the game tries to create, the game over screen throws a whiplash of background music.”
- “I bought this game mostly because it looks extremely charming and I was digging the atmosphere in the trailers and screens, but once I started actually playing the game, it quickly became apparent that it was not for me.”
- “It doesn’t rely on dialogue or exposition to build tension; instead, it creates an atmosphere of discomfort through its confined spaces, ambient noises, and sense of isolation that slowly gnaws at the player.”
replayability
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
60%
40%
Replayability is mixed: achievements and alternate solutions add incentive to revisit the game, but overall, many players find little reason to return once completed. The game offers some creative elements, yet its appeal and challenge may not sustain long-term engagement for most.
- “Impressive game, very creative and with replay value.”
- “Not to mention that the achievements increase the replay value greatly.”
- “However, the presence of achievements increases the replay value a lot - they require gathering a few toy collectibles or finding alternate solutions for solving some of the levels.”
- “They tried to add some replay value with the achievements and a new difficulty, but I see no reason why you would want to return to it again.”
- “A good horror game to start your 6-year-old with, maybe, but being not scary enough to fit the horror theme and not interesting enough to play without it doesn't give this game much replayability.”
emotional
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game delivers a strong emotional impact through subtle storytelling, setting it apart from other indie titles. Its cute and casual nature enhances the emotional experience, despite a minimal narrative.
- “Its story may be minimal, but its emotional undercurrent is strong.”
- “It’s this emotional subtlety that makes the game stand out among other small indie titles.”
grinding
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding in the game is described as tedious and frustrating, with a growing maze and restrictive tile-based movement that hampers fluid gameplay and often results in unnecessary deaths. It may only appeal to players interested in farming or repetitive grinding.
- “A maze that gets bigger and more tedious as levels go on, the movement feels really bad as it's tile based so you're running from tile to tile instead of actually having free movement which leads to a lot of unnecessary deaths.”
- “Recommended for game farming.”
- “Tedious and silly.”
humor
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor is a mix of funny and frightening elements, particularly through quirky and ugly monsters, making the game entertaining and enjoyable.
- “The monsters are pretty funny :D”
- “With ugly monsters, it is both funny and frightening. I totally recommend you to play it.”
stability
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game experiences some stability issues, notably bugs causing monsters to glitch outside the map, which may affect gameplay immersion.
- “There are also a few bugs, where the monster glitches outside the map.”
- “Some bugs, including monsters glitching outside the map.”
monetization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The monetization aspect is often criticized for encouraging the creation of low-quality, retro-style games primarily aimed at quick profits rather than meaningful content.