Developer Rock Square Thunder has mashed so many things into I Hate This Place. An isometric twin-stick survival horror about ghosts, mutants, and a haunted ranch, with crafting. But how much is too much?
Inspired by the award-winning comic book series created by Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin, I Hate This Place plunges you into a world where things are not exactly as they seem.
What is I Hate This Place?
In I Hate This Place, you play as Elena, a young woman who comes back to the ranch she grew up on after being contacted by an old friend, Lou. Waking up in a field after a blackout, we are introduced to one of the main mechanics of the game.
Sound.
Every sound you make in I Hate This Place is shown on screen with an 80’s comic book style ‘Thud’ or ‘Squelch’ text like the Adam West Batman, “BANG” or “POW”.
This isn’t just a stylistic choice by the developers, but the key to your survival. You see, every enemy in I Hate This Place is blind and so relies on noises to find their prey, namely you.
If you’re sneaking past an enemy, your footsteps are blue. When you are opening fire with the fully automatic SMG, the “ratt-a-tatt-tatt” is red with exclamation marks. The art style fits the aesthetic, and I feel that the bright colours and cell shading add to the gritty, pulpy feel of I Hate This Place.
Exploring the Ranch
Let’s get one thing out of the way: there are ZERO auto-saves in I Hate This Place. I found this out after losing 45ish minutes to a silly death. There are save rooms that allow you to save your progress, so be sure to make good use of them. Even if you have to run back to one, it’s better than doing it all again.
As you make your way to the homestead, you will uncover all manner of mysteries surrounding your mother’s disappearance, a creepy cult that worships a horned deity, and the fate of your friend.
The ranch is quite big, offering a variety of locales. During the story, you will visit wheat fields, dense forests, burnt-out buildings, secret underground labs, oh, and don’t forget the graveyard. All while the day/night cycle creeps along, causing shadows to shift, keeping you on your toes.
Continuing to lean into the comic book feel, the dialogue is all very basic and to the point; if you were reading it, it would be fine. However, I Hate This Place is fully voice-acted, and the way the dialogue is delivered felt dull and lifeless. I found myself quickly reading the text and skipping more times than not.
Home Sweet Home
Another mechanic that is jammed into I Hate This Place is crafting. As you continue exploring the ranch, you scavenge junk and items from containers that have been left lying around. There are crafting benches that allow you to turn your junk into useful items to help you along your way, like bandages, bullets, and food.
That’s right, you need to eat a lot. The more you do, the quicker your FD bar goes down. At the start, this was a problem, but once you start to plant crops back at the homestead, you will get a steady supply of food coming in.
As you explore, you will find blueprints that allow you to craft resource ‘buildings’ at the homestead that will ‘gather’ resources while you are out exploring. At first, it was cool setting up my little farmyard, producing wood and vegetables. But it got stale very quickly and ultimately felt tacked on by the end of my playthrough.
I Hate This Place also involves a decent amount of time management. Every minute that passes in real time is an hour in-game, and everything has a timer on it, so if you need some wood, it takes two and a half minutes to create said wood. By the end, I had all sorts of stuff being made that I never used, another vestigial element the game could have done without.
I ended up going into the final dungeon with hundreds of rounds of ammo, dozens of grenades, and more health packs than I knew what to do with.
I would have much rather had a system based on upgrading my weapons than this make a base busy work. Have a crafting bench at home, go out, do some quests, find some junk, and return to upgrade your guns. While that may seem formulaic, I feel it would have made more sense with regard to the game’s world and flow.
Kill the Mutant
Combat is a huge part of I Hate This Place. At the start, Elena is armed with a bat and a handgun to defend herself from the horrors that have made their home on the ranch.
Like the buildings, you will find weapon blueprints that can be crafted. There are pistols, shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles, spiked baseball bats, and all the explosives you could ever shake a stick at! Everything can all be crafted, and don’t worry about running out of ammo; you can always make more.
While certain elements of the combat may have been trivialized by the end of the game due to my almost limitless supplies of ammo and healing items, I Hate This Place’s twin-stick shooting felt good and responsive, and I had a great time trying out all of the weapons I could craft.
Verdict
It took me roughly 9 hours to uncover the truth of I Hate This Place. The story, aesthetics, sound design (minus the VA), and combat were awesome. In fact, everything apart from the crafting was fantastic, making I Hate This Place well worth your time. Just don’t expect too much from the crafting and farm management elements.
Gamer Social Club was supplied a copy of I Hate This Place for this review.
I Hate This Place was reviewed on Xbox Series X and will also be available on PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox Game Pass on January 29th, 2026.
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