New viral horror game has you serving customers while working out if they’re human or not

Shift at Midnight is proving that you don’t need a massive budget to go viral. Just a late-night petrol station, a bunch of suspicious customers, and the constant fear that one of them might suddenly turn into a monster.

This co-op horror game has burst onto the PC gaming scene and has exploded in popularity since launching on July 22, climbing to more than 37,000 concurrent players on Steam by July 27 after spreading rapidly across streams and social media.

Shift at Midnight turns a boring night shift into absolute chaos

Essentially, Shift at Midnight is a bizarre blend of an ordinary shop simulator meets Papers, Please, except instead of trying to get into your country, dopplegangers are trying to blend in while attempting to kill you and your friends.

You and up to two friends work the night shift at a rural American gas station in the 1990s, restocking shelves, serving customers, taking deliveries, cleaning, and keeping the business running to meet that rather unforgiving quota.

Bun Muen

However, while you do that, you need to interrogate the extremely creepy patrons to see if they’re actually human or a murderous doppelganger in disguise. As such, you need to question them, inspect their IDs, compare their answers with the store’s database, and work out whether they’re human before it’s too late.

Should you get it wrong, the dopplegangers attack, leaving you essentially playing the bad part of Five Nights at Freddy’s, hiding in vents, barricading doors, setting traps, and just hoping you survive until morning.

That bizarre mix of mundane retail work and over-the-top horror has helped Shift at Midnight blow up on Steam, with thousands diving into the adventure. And, with player numbers continuing to climb and thousands of positive reviews already on Steam, Shift at Midnight is shaping up to be one of July’s biggest indie breakout hits.