White Knuckle is probably the most unique horror game I’ve played so far this year—maybe even in recent memory. Blending elements of parkour, roguelike structure, and survival horror, White Knuckle delivers an experience that’s just as intense as it is challenging. Even in its current Early Access state, there’s very little to dislike. The game is fun and engaging whether you’re speeding through or struggling to make any progress at all.
The premise of White Knuckle is incredibly straightforward. In campaign mode, you start at the bottom of a silo in the ominously named Sub Structure 17. Above you is freedom at the end of a seemingly endless climb. In front of you is what looks like the world’s most unsafe rock climbing wall. On screen, one simple word gives you all the instruction you’ll ever get: escape.
White Knuckle is a parkour climbing game that challenges you to ascend through the run-down, terrifying silo of Sub Structure 17 before meeting an untimely demise. Along the way, countless hazards, strange creatures, and the world’s most inefficient plumbing system await to make your climb more difficult—or kill you outright. But none of these threats are as important to manage as the one presented by your own body.
The title White Knuckle refers to the only part of your character you see from the first-person perspective: a pair of solid white, disembodied hands. These hands represent you and are your main tool for escape. Using the left and right mouse buttons, you control your grip, latching onto grabbable objects in the direction of the camera. Holding the button maintains your grip. It can be confusing at first, using your mouse the way you’d use real hands—grabbing and releasing to scale walls—but over time, it becomes second nature. I was surprised by how accurately the hands followed my intentions, even with no on-screen cursor.
If you hold on too long, however, you risk losing your grip. Your white hands gradually turn red to indicate fatigue, much like your real hands would when climbing. Grip is only restored when a hand isn’t in use, which encourages short breaks both during and between climbs. Longer climbs become risky as second-guessing your next move can lead to failure and a long fall.
It’s not the fall that kills you, though—there’s no fall damage in White Knuckle. You could theoretically fall from the top of the tower all the way to the beginning if not for “checkpoints” along the climb. These seal the ground below once passed.
Instead, if you take too long to climb, the tower begins to fill with… what I’ll just call water, for spoiler reasons. What was once a soft steel floor becomes a drowning hazard. Whoever conceptualized White Knuckle is something of a nightmare artist. The idea of being trapped in a room slowly filling with water, with your only way out being to climb, is terrifying. I would die in that scenario every time—a terrible, drowning death.
Therefore, both speed and accuracy are essential to progress in White Knuckle. You need speed to outpace the flooding and its many traps. But if you go too fast and lose your grip, you’ll go tumbling down. While not always fatal, every fall wastes precious time you don’t have, as the flooding will not be far behind.
White Knuckle is not only a climbing game but a roguelike. While the first steps of your climb are always the same, the game procedurally generates the path upward using a variety of structures and parkour challenges. Each attempt becomes a completely different climb. Using equipment found across the map is crucial for a safe and speedy ascent. That spear with the rope must have saved me ten hours of falling and climbing all on its own.
I believe the full climb in White Knuckle is 10,000 meters (or 6.2 miles), with different environments as you ascend. I’m not ashamed to admit I didn’t have what it takes to make it to the top. Part of me wishes I could have played the game in VR—what a workout that would have been.
Surprisingly, I didn’t encounter any bugs—aside from the roaches used as currency at vending machines—despite White Knuckle still being in Early Access. If I were to offer a suggestion, I’d say to include some on-screen tutorials at the start of a new climb. Not everyone plays the main tutorial, but it contains important mechanics that, if missed, make the game much harder. For example, just knowing you have an inventory to store items was a huge game-changer. In one run, I got stuck holding a can because I didn’t know I had to put it back into my backpack after eating.
Pros:
- An excellent, utterly unique gameplay loop and concept, combining parkour with a horror element
- Roguelike generation allows for tons of replayability
Cons:
- Not much on-screen information, making skipping the tutorial a costly mistake
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