There's a moment early in every match of Carnival Hunt where you look down at your own hands, realize they are now made of clockwork and regret, and think: "Ah yes. This is fine. This is a normal Tuesday."
Developed by Beer Night Studio and published by Crytivo, Carnival Hunt is an asymmetric multiplayer horror game where one unlucky soul plays the Carnival Monster and everyone else plays a Bunny — which is to say, a puppet stitched together from spare parts, held together by vibes and a wind-up key, and given exactly one job: survive long enough to climb some stairs. It launches into Early Access on July 23, 2026, which means you'll finally be able to experience the specific horror of realizing your teammate has been "playing dead" for four minutes because they genuinely fell asleep.
The Setup: You Wake Up. That's Already a Mistake.
You regain consciousness on the first floor of a carnival built by someone called the Puppetmaster, which is exactly as reassuring a job title as it sounds. Your body has been lovingly fused with machinery you did not consent to. Your only path forward is up, floor by floor, through an environment the developers describe as "dark, yet hauntingly beautiful and melancholic," which is game-marketing-speak for "you will not be having a good time, but the lighting will be excellent while you don't."
Meanwhile, somewhere else in the carnival, another contestant wakes up with a very different memo: kill everyone, and do it with flair, because apparently even murder needs choreography here. The game is very insistent that everything in this carnival is a performance — the Monster performs, the Bunnies perform, and, per the store page, even death performs. Somewhere a theater kid is furiously taking notes.
The Wind-Up Mechanic, or: Trust Issues, Gamified
Here's the twist that separates Carnival Hunt from your standard "big guy chases small guys" horror formula — you're not just managing stamina, you're managing a literal wind-up charge system, and you cannot fully manage it alone. Move too much and you drain faster. Stop cooperating and you collapse. Run out of charge entirely and the carnival keeps you as a permanent souvenir.
The only fix? Other Bunnies have to wind you back up. Which means the game has taken "can I trust my randomly-matched internet teammates" — already a fraught question in any multiplayer game — and turned it into a literal, mechanical, key-in-the-back act of vulnerability. Nothing says "found family" quite like a stranger named xXGooseSlayerXx cranking a key in your spine while a monster performer bears down on you both.
Playing Dead Among the Actual Dead
Scattered through the carnival are piles of fallen Bunnies — fellow puppets who didn't make it — and your best hiding strategy is to flop down and join them, playing corpse until the coast is clear. It's a wonderfully grim bit of environmental storytelling: your survival tool is literally "become part of the diorama of failure." Just don't hold the pose too long, because staying still too long apparently breaks your own performance too, which is either a clever anti-camping mechanic or the carnival's way of saying "we see you, and we are unimpressed."
Becoming the Monster
If babysitting a wind-up charge sounds exhausting, you can instead sign up to be the thing doing the chasing. As the Carnival Monster, your job is to track, disrupt, and generally ruin the found-family energy of a Bunny squad using unique abilities per monster. Currently there are two Monsters to choose from, which the developers promise to expand — because nothing keeps Early Access players coming back quite like the promise of more ways to be devoured.
The Verdict (Such As It Is)
Carnival Hunt is currently a fully playable core loop with one procedurally generated map and two monsters, and the developers are upfront that Early Access is less about proving the game works and more about padding it out with content, maps, and polish over the next 12 to 18 months. Basically: the carnival is open, but the funhouse mirrors are still being installed.
Should you play it? If your idea of a fun Friday night involves whisper-coordinating with strangers over proximity chat, playing corpse next to actual corpses, and trusting a rando to keep your wind-up key from running dry while a costumed murder-performer stalks the halls — congratulations, the carnival is calling, and it already knows your name.
Bring a microphone. Bring trust issues. Leave your dignity at the ticket booth.
