Overview
Unhinged is a point-and-click interactive horror game from Night School Studio, published through Netflix and released on June 30, 2026. The premise is lean and effective: a stormy night, a power outage, an apartment building, and one woman who thought she was alone. Ava, voiced by Zoë Kravitz, is the character players guide through a thriller that slides steadily into something much darker. The game runs across Windows, Steam, PlayStation, iOS, and Android, with Netflix subscribers accessing it as part of their existing plan.
The experience clocks in at 30-plus minutes, which makes Unhinged feel closer to a playable horror short film than a traditional game. That is not a criticism. The runtime is deliberate, and the pacing reflects a story that knows exactly how long it needs to be. There is no padding, no filler side content, no reason to stretch it out. The 18+ maturity rating signals that Night School Studio is not softening the horror to reach a broader audience.
Gameplay and mechanics
The defining mechanic of Unhinged is its phone controller setup. Players use a smartphone as their primary input device, and the game treats that phone as something more than a gamepad replacement. Within the fiction, it functions as Ava's lifeline to the outside world, which means every interaction carries a layer of narrative weight that a standard controller would not provide. Key features of the control system include:
- Phone used as both controller and in-world object
- Point-and-click navigation through the apartment
- Single-player, one-session structure
- Available via the Netflix Game Controller App
- Supports TV and web browser play
This setup is the kind of design decision that either lands completely or collapses immediately. Night School Studio, the team behind Oxenfree, has enough experience with atmospheric narrative games to understand how to make a mechanic serve a story rather than distract from it.
Unhinged
World and setting
The apartment building during a blackout is a familiar horror setting, but Unhinged earns its atmosphere through specificity. A single location, a single character, a single night. The claustrophobia is the point. Ava's apartment becomes a space the player learns intimately, which makes the gradual realization that something is wrong all the more effective. The storm outside is not just weather; it is isolation made physical. No one is coming to help.
Zoë Kravitz's voice performance anchors the whole thing. Ava feels like a real person reacting to real fear rather than a horror-game protagonist who exists only to be scared. That distinction matters enormously in an experience this short and this contained.
Unhinged
Innovation and unique features
What separates Unhinged from other interactive horror games is the deliberate collapse of the distance between player and character. Using a phone as a controller is not new in isolation, but framing that phone as the character's actual connection to the outside world creates a specific kind of dread. The device in your hand mirrors the device keeping Ava alive.
Night School Studio has consistently built games around the idea that the medium itself can be part of the horror, and Unhinged pushes that further than Oxenfree did. The point-and-click format strips away any action-game safety net. There is no combat system to retreat into, no skill checks to pass. The tension comes entirely from the story and the atmosphere, which puts enormous pressure on the writing and performance to deliver. Based on the setup, both appear to be up to the task.