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About This Game

Some doors were never meant to be opened. Grief makes us reach for them anyway.

Shattered Rites is a narrative psychological horror game about grief, guilt, and how far a person will go for someone they've lost. Set in the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest of the early 2000s, it follows a man who stopped believing in his own stories, until one of them starts to come true.

Nathaniel Cheng is a professor of folklore and mythology, hollowed out by the death of his wife. Searching for a way back to her, he uncovers a forbidden scripture: an occult rite said to call a soul home from the dead. The ritual does not go as written. His young daughter, Melody, vanishes.

Two months later, a letter slides beneath his door, offering a way to begin the ritual again. To bring Melody back, Nathaniel must lead others through trials that force each of them to face the guilt they've buried. And as the disappearances mount, a detective closes in on a truth no one is ready to name.

A Ritual Born from Folklore

Inspired by the Cantonese Taoist ceremony "Breaking the Hell's Gates" (破地狱), the ritual at the heart of the game is a work of fiction: a reimagined occult rite, not a depiction of any living tradition. Its roots run deep into Chinese myth, carried by a family that fled a curse across an ocean.

Grief, Walked Backward

The story is shaped by the stages of grief, but not in the order you'd expect. As those around Nathaniel move toward acceptance, he unravels in reverse, and the two paths quietly mirror one another.

Face What Haunts You

Solve environmental puzzles, explore places that shouldn't exist, and survive encounters with the things that live between realms. A jade mirror lets you glimpse what hides just beneath reality: the objects, and the dead, that others cannot see.

Two Sides of the Same Truth

Step into the shoes of more than one soul caught in the ritual. What looks like salvation from one perspective looks like something far darker from another.

A World Between Memory and Reality

Dreamlike, romanticized memory collides with a harsher present. Distorted environments and dramatic lighting blur the line between what happened and what a grieving mind chooses to remember.

Content note: This game contains mature themes and disturbing imagery, including depictions of grief, self-harm, suicide, and bullying. Player discretion is advised.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Shattered Rites is a narrative psychological horror game that explores heavy and mature subject matter. Before playing, please be aware that the game contains:

Violence and death: combat against supernatural entities, depictions of blood, and scenes in which characters kill or are killed, including the use of weapons.
Suicide and self-harm: these are central, recurring themes. Multiple characters — including the player character — contemplate, attempt, or die by suicide over the course of the story.
Grief, guilt, and depression: the entire narrative centers on characters processing loss, including the death of a child and of loved ones.
Bullying and its consequences: a supporting character's storyline involves bullying that contributes to a death.
Disturbing horror imagery and psychologically distressing situations throughout.

The story references a same-sex relationship as part of its narrative but does not contain sexually explicit content.