Game: RUNT
Developer: Grimtaste Studios (duo)
Publisher: DreadXP
Genre: Rural Gothic Visual Novel · Mystery
Platform: PC (Steam)
Price: $9.99 (20% off for two weeks)
Status: Out now
Endings: Multiple
⛪ RUNT is out now on Steam. Grimtaste Studios and DreadXP’s rural gothic visual novel mystery has launched at $9.99, with a 20% launch discount running for the first two weeks.
💰 20% Off for Two Weeks Only
RUNT is $9.99 with a 20% discount for the first two weeks after launch. At that price it’s already an easy proposition for anyone who likes their horror slow, atmospheric and character-driven — but the window is genuinely short, so it’s worth deciding sooner rather than later.
Someone, or something, has defaced your late father’s pulpit in the old boarded-up church. An omen has appeared, and a vague countdown is ticking toward the fifth anniversary of his death.
The apocalypse left creatures of supernatural strength outside the walls. Inside them, it’s never been easy talking to your brothers.
RUNT has launched on Steam. You play Runt Stayer, the 19-year-old youngest of five brothers in a dark, violent post-apocalyptic world where humans no longer dominate the animal kingdom — and where an omen on your dead father’s pulpit has started a countdown nobody can explain.
It’s a horror mystery visual novel from two-person studio Grimtaste, published by DreadXP, and it takes an unsettling twist on the traditional format by injecting unpredictable outcomes and genuine supernatural threat into what’s usually a purely narrative genre.
Family Is the Real Horror
👥 Five Brothers, One Countdown
The pitch RUNT keeps returning to is that family dynamics can be as dangerous as whatever lurks outside the town’s walls. You’re navigating complicated feelings about your father, your brothers and yourself while also trying to solve a supernatural mystery — and the game weaves those difficult family dynamics through survival politics rather than treating them as separate concerns.
That’s the smart part of the premise. Post-apocalyptic settings usually externalise the threat; putting the most dangerous relationships inside the walls gives the story somewhere to go that monsters alone can’t reach. Being the youngest of five in a household shaped by a dead patriarch is a genuinely good frame for a mystery about obligation and inheritance.
Developing relationships with the townspeople factors in too, feeding a multi-branch dialogue system that leads toward one of several endings.
🔀 Multi-Branch Dialogue
A smart branching system offering real depth of player choice, with multiple endings depending on how you navigate the town and your family.
👹 Supernatural Threats
The apocalypse left behind creatures of supernatural strength. Unpredictable outcomes mean the danger is real rather than decorative.
🏘️ Townspeople
Build relationships with the people left in your small rural town — and work out who’s worth trusting as the countdown runs down.
⏳ The Countdown
A vague countdown ending on the fifth anniversary of your father’s death gives the whole mystery a ticking structure.
Photography Meets Hand-Painted Art
🎨 A Genuinely Unusual Aesthetic
RUNT’s visuals combine original photography with hand-painted art — a meticulous, deliberately crafted look that sets it apart from the majority of visual novels. For a genre where art style is a large part of the sell, that combination is a real differentiator and it suits the rural gothic tone particularly well.
It’s also the kind of technique that only really works at this scale. A two-person team building something bespoke rather than reaching for a familiar visual novel template is exactly where you’d expect to find an aesthetic like this.
ℹ️ A Note on Content
RUNT is described by its developers as a mature story set in a heavy, violent environment, dealing with difficult family dynamics alongside its supernatural horror. It’s adult-oriented work rather than shock material, but worth knowing the register going in.
📖 Visual Novel
🕯️ Rural Gothic
🔍 Mystery
👹 Horror
🔀 Multiple Endings
🎯 Single-Player
Who Made It
🖤 Grimtaste Studios
Grimtaste is two best friends, Yves and Soren, founded on a shared love of horror, mystery, and — in their own words — “designing for the freaks.” They come from backgrounds in fiction writing and game development, and RUNT is their debut.
💀 DreadXP
DreadXP continue a notably busy stretch in indie horror. RUNT joins the Creepshow anthology and the physical edition of VILE: Exhumed in their recent slate — three very different releases in a short window.
The fiction-writing background is the detail worth noting. For a visual novel — a genre that lives or dies on its prose — a debut team with actual writing experience behind them is a meaningfully better starting position than most.
RUNT is available now on Steam for $9.99, with the 20% launch discount running for two weeks.
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