Home / Games / When The Devil Takes Hold
When The Devil Takes Hold
When The Devil Takes Hold is a first-person psychological horror game. Step into the shoes of James Davidson, a fearless content creator whose search for views leads him to a cursed location. Explore the haunted grounds and solve puzzles to uncover the dark past.
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-26.
“---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too…”
— a player, Steam review · 5 hrs played“Hello dev team, thank you for the game. Btw it's a nice game tho, but it really lacks in some points. Like, the MC that's not surprised when his fren is change into LONTONG (u can search this in g-images what is lontong like)... Story so far so good but I think you can do more…”
— a player, Steam review · 1 hrs played“If you value yourself you will kindly pass on this game. It was poorly made with lack of care just utilizing asset packs with no thought. The door still has the asset name showing up in game for instance. Love you!”
— a player, Steam review · 1 hrs playedAchievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-09-26.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Major Update V1.3 (2026.08.25)
Heya, we thought to release an update after 1.5 years, since we learned a lot since the last update and had a bit of free time. Put the Language selector in the ingame settings menu, no need to change
New game announced - The Visit: Mizukawa
Hey everyone! We’re happy to announce that our next game, The Visit: Mizukawa , has been revealed over the past few days. A playable demo will be available in late February as part of the upcoming Ste
The Horror Game Awards 2024
Hello, everyone! We're happy to announce that When The Devil Takes Hold has been nominated for The Horror Game Awards 2024! If you haven’t voted yet, please head over to thehorrorgameawards.com/vote a
Major Update V1.2 (2024.09.28)
First Major update, with the focus on a better performance overall: -Added optimizations once again -Fixed translations in languages: Russian, German and Hungarian -Many, many little changes and fixes
Small Update V1.1.2 (2024.09.20)
-Added optimizations to the game -Fixed bugs with different languages and fonts -Fixed every corrupt save bug we know about
Games like When The Devil Takes Hold
From our knowledge graph — ranked by shared traits, not a black box. Each card says why it's here.
Summer of '58
89.0% · 1,863 reviews
shares Thriller, Cinematic, Dark, Linear
Sanitarium
92.8% · 697 reviews
shares Thriller, Narration, 1990s, Dark
September 7th
85.8% · 643 reviews
shares Cinematic, 1990s, Linear, Psychological Horror
Dollmare
94.2% · 1,180 reviews
shares Thriller, Dark, Linear, Psychological Horror
Bad Parenting 1: Mr. Red Face
79.2% · 1,415 reviews
shares 1990s, Dark, Linear, Psychological Horror
Zort
91.3% · 4,699 reviews
shares Artificial Intelligence, Cinematic, FPS, Linear
KinitoPET
93.1% · 9,717 reviews
shares Artificial Intelligence, Narration, 1990s, Linear
The Complex: Expedition
88.2% · 1,459 reviews
shares Thriller, Cinematic, 1990s, Psychological Horror
Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-09-26.
| Genres | Adventure, Indie |
| Player tags | Horror · Atmospheric · Psychological Horror · Realistic · Cinematic · Thriller · Indie · Demons · Adventure · Retro · 1990's · Dark (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English * , German, Hungarian, Russian, Slovak * |
| Achievements | 8 |
| Official site | https://novakstudios.hu/ |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS *: Windows 7, 8, 10 (64 bit) Processor: Intel i5 / AMD equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 1 GB Video RAM DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 8 GB available space