No April Fools' joke: This co-op horror game where you "get famous or die trying" is like Dark and Darker but you're a YouTuber, and it's free for 24 hours

Apr. 1, 2024



Content Warning surprise dropped with a 100% launch discount

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Content Warning is a brand new co-op horror game where you “get famous or die trying,” andit’s 100% free for its first 24 hours.

Considering I typically associate April Fools' Day with silly pranks from goofy goobers - and especially since Content Warning was released “in the spirit of celebrating April Fools' Day” - I was pleasantly surprised when I went to download it and found that, indeed, it’s really just free. I was half expecting my Steam client to become corrupted and crash my computer or something, but no, I just snagged myself a free game, no silly strings attached, and you can too.

Landfall Publishing describes Content Warning as a “first-person-content-creation, cooperative horror game where you and your friends will irresponsibly explore the entrance to an old forbidden world and try to film silly videos for SpookTube.” It’s totally free until April 2 at 9am PT and will be $7.99 USD thereafter.

“We do this as a special treat to our community so that as many people as possible will have the chance to play the game,” the publisher says.

Content Warning sounds, in essence, similar to survival extraction horror games like Lethal Company in which you’re sent into a dangerous environment to find loot and, ideally, return to safety in one piece. In this case, you and your buds are tasked with taking an elevator down to the Old World in search of cursed relics and artefacts, but the real money’s in SpookTube ad revenue.

See, what you’re really after is that ever-elusive SpookTube fame, and “the more scary stuff you film, the more you go viral.” The more viral your videos, the more money you earn to use on gear upgrades “to film better videos and survive more easily in the Old World.“The game has only been out for a few hours and has already garnered175 Steam reviews, the vast majority of which (172 to be exact) are positive. Considering it’s exactly zero dollars right now, I’d say it’s worth giving a go if you’re at all a fan of the genre.

Either way, here are thebest horror gamesto scare yourself silly with tonight.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.

Borderlands 3 creative director says “co-op has been radically underserved for years” and that’s why Helldivers 2 was such a breakout success

A Deep Rock Galactic player became a real-life explosives miner as “a direct result” of the “silly little dwarf game,” and he couldn’t be happier with his career

Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a surprise update a year after its once-final update, even after CDPR moved basically every dev to other games: “Sometimes, you want to do it ONE MORE time!”