There is something deeply unsettling about an ordinary situation suddenly becoming anything but ordinary. One moment you are going about your daily business; the next, you find yourself trapped in a nightmare designed to exploit your deepest fears. Elevators are hardly the most exciting places to begin an adventure, but Choice of Life: Floors understands that sometimes the most frightening journeys begin somewhere familiar. All it takes is one wrong elevator ride, and suddenly the world you thought you understood starts to unravel.
Developed by Potata Company and Blazing Planet Studio, Choice of Life: Floors is a surreal psychological horror adventure built around decisions, consequences and the increasingly fragile boundary between reality and imagination. It combines card-based storytelling with item collection, encounters with monsters and a mental state system that shapes the choices available to you. There is an unusual sense of humour running throughout the experience, too, with dark irony providing an occasional release from the disturbing situations in which the protagonist finds themselves. It is a curious combination, but one that gives the game an identity beyond simply trying to frighten its audience.
One Elevator Ride Too Far
The premise is wonderfully simple. You step into an elevator in your own home, only to find yourself descending into a world that feels increasingly disconnected from reality. Each floor brings another strange situation, an unexpected encounter, or a potential threat, and the further you descend, the less certain you can be about what is happening around you. The familiar domestic setting provides an effective starting point, giving the nightmare something recognisable to distort.
Rather than following a conventional linear adventure, Choice of Life: Floors places decision-making at the centre of its design. Players are regularly presented with choices that determine how situations unfold, with different decisions opening up alternative possibilities and potentially closing off others. It is a structure that encourages curiosity, although it also demands a willingness to accept that not every decision will have a happy outcome. Sometimes the wrong choice can bring a sudden end to a promising run, and that uncertainty becomes an important part of the experience.
The card-based format is particularly well suited to this kind of storytelling. It breaks the adventure into manageable encounters, allowing players to consider their options before deciding how to proceed. The appeal comes from wondering what might happen if you take a different approach, especially as the situations become increasingly bizarre. It is not simply a case of choosing the obviously sensible response, either, because the game’s surreal nature means that conventional logic cannot always be trusted.
The Fragile State of the Mind
One of the more interesting ideas in Choice of Life: Floors is its mental state system. The protagonist’s psychological condition determines which decisions are available, adding another layer to the choices players make. This cleverly connects the game’s mechanics with its central themes, as the character’s ability to interpret and respond to the nightmare is not necessarily constant. What might seem like a reasonable decision in one state of mind could become unavailable or take on a different meaning as their stability shifts.
The option to play as either a sane or unstable protagonist also gives the experience an intriguing sense of flexibility. It suggests that the journey can be approached from different psychological perspectives, rather than treating the protagonist’s mental condition as a fixed part of the narrative. That is particularly appropriate for a game interested in the relationship between fear, perception and the mind’s ability to make sense of disturbing events. It also gives players another reason to experiment with different approaches when revisiting the story.
Importantly, the mental state system feels like more than a decorative feature attached to the narrative. When a game’s choices are influenced by the protagonist’s condition, decisions become a reflection of both the immediate situation and the character’s ability to process it. This creates an additional layer of uncertainty, as players cannot necessarily assume that every option will remain available throughout their journey. It is an effective concept for psychological horror, where losing control over your own thoughts can be just as frightening as whatever is waiting around the next corner.
Monsters, Fears and Uncomfortable Encounters
Of course, a nightmare would hardly be complete without something unpleasant lurking within it. Choice of Life: Floors features battles against creatures that embody the protagonist’s inner fears and psychological struggles. This gives the encounters a thematic purpose beyond simply providing an obstacle to overcome. The monsters are connected to the character’s internal world, reinforcing the idea that the horror is not necessarily coming from an external threat alone.
There is something potentially quite powerful about confronting physical manifestations of personal fears. It allows the game to turn abstract psychological struggles into tangible challenges, giving the player something more immediate to contend with. These encounters also help break up the decision-based storytelling, introducing moments where survival becomes a more direct concern. The contrast between making careful choices and suddenly facing something monstrous gives the adventure a welcome change of pace.
Key items also play an important role in navigating particularly difficult situations. Finding an object is one thing, but recognising when and where to use it is another matter entirely. The possibility of making a poor decision with an important item adds tension to the experience, particularly when the consequences may affect the direction of the story. It encourages players to pay attention to their surroundings and consider the potential usefulness of what they discover, rather than treating every item as something that can simply be collected and forgotten.
There is a degree of trial and error involved, however. Some decisions can lead to sudden failure, and discovering the correct approach may require returning to an earlier point and trying something different. That can be frustrating, especially when a promising run ends because a particular choice was difficult to anticipate. On the other hand, experimentation is part of the appeal of branching interactive fiction, and the prospect of discovering alternative outcomes gives those failures a reason to exist.
Laughing in the Face of Horror
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Choice of Life: Floors is its willingness to blend psychological horror with dark humour. The game understands that unsettling situations do not always need to be treated with complete seriousness. Sometimes the absurdity of what is happening becomes so overwhelming that laughter is the only reasonable response. That balance is difficult to get right, but it gives the narrative a personality that helps distinguish it from more conventional horror adventures.
The humour is particularly interesting when set alongside the game’s darker themes. The protagonist is navigating a world shaped by fear and psychological instability, yet the story is not afraid to embrace the ridiculousness of its own scenarios. This creates an unusual tone in which moments of genuine unease can sit alongside deliberately absurd situations. Rather than undermining the horror, the contrast can make the experience feel more unpredictable.
The visual presentation supports this approach through its 2D comic art style. There is an effective contrast between recognisable apartment environments and the grotesque, distorted imagery associated with the nightmare world. Character expressions and the overall visual design help establish the game’s strange atmosphere, allowing the ordinary and the disturbing to coexist. It is an appropriate style for a story that wants to be unsettling without taking itself too seriously.
Sound also plays an important part in maintaining that atmosphere. Ambient audio and sudden unsettling cues can make an otherwise familiar environment feel uncomfortable, while more pronounced effects help emphasise the game’s stranger encounters. The presentation does not need to rely on constant shock tactics when the underlying concept already provides plenty of opportunities for unease. The combination of visual weirdness, atmospheric sound and dark comedy gives the adventure a suitably distinctive identity.
Choices, Consequences and the Desire to Try Again
Replayability is central to the experience. With a nonlinear plot, multiple story branches and different endings, there are plenty of reasons to revisit the elevator and see where alternative decisions might lead. A choice that initially seems insignificant can have consequences further down the line, while a different approach to an encounter might reveal an entirely separate part of the story. This makes experimentation feel like a natural part of the adventure rather than something players are expected to do only after finishing it.
The possibility of different outcomes also helps soften the frustration of occasional failures. While an unexpected death can be irritating, it may reveal something useful about the situation or encourage a more cautious approach next time. There is a certain satisfaction in gradually understanding the game’s strange logic, especially when an earlier mistake leads to a much more successful attempt on a subsequent run. Players who enjoy exploring branching narratives will likely appreciate the freedom to investigate different possibilities.
However, the individual paths can feel relatively brief, and the overall experience is more about discovering variations than settling into one enormous, continuous adventure. That is not inherently a problem, but it does mean that expectations matter. Anyone looking for a lengthy survival horror game with extensive exploration and elaborate combat may find the card-based structure rather restrictive. Those who enjoy interactive fiction, unusual storytelling and the appeal of seeing how different decisions change events are much more likely to find something to appreciate.
Final Verdict
Choice of Life: Floors takes a familiar setting and turns it into the starting point for a wonderfully strange psychological journey. Its blend of card-based decisions, item management, mental-state mechanics and encounters with creatures representing inner fears gives the adventure more substance than a straightforward branching story. The ability to approach the narrative as either a sane or an unstable protagonist is an especially interesting touch, while the dark humour helps prevent the experience from becoming relentlessly grim.
It is not without its frustrations. The trial and error involved in certain situations can occasionally feel unfair, particularly when a seemingly reasonable decision leads to abrupt failure. Individual story paths can also be rather short, so much of the game’s longevity comes from revisiting the adventure and exploring alternative outcomes. Nevertheless, these limitations do not undermine the appeal of its central concept.
What makes Choice of Life: Floors enjoyable is its willingness to embrace the strange. It understands that psychological horror can be as much about uncertainty and distorted perception as it is about monsters, and that sometimes the best way to deal with an impossible situation is to laugh at it. The elevator may be taking you somewhere you desperately do not want to go, but there is enough curiosity, personality and narrative intrigue here to make stepping inside worthwhile. It is an entertainingly twisted little adventure that gives players plenty of reasons to question their decisions, their surroundings and possibly their own sanity.
