‘Creatures & Corridors’ Review: When Game Night Gets Way Too Real

I picked up Creatures & Corridors mostly because Andrea Mutti was on the art, and at this point that is enough to get my attention. What I did not expect was for this book to hit such a specific nostalgic part of my brain, because for years I had an RPG group where we would sit around playing campaigns, eating pizza, and somehow lose an entire night without noticing. Some of those campaigns lasted weeks, so a horror story about a group of friends discovering that the game they are playing has suddenly become very, very real was always going to work on me. Thankfully, none of us ever accidentally summoned monsters into the house, although knowing my old group, someone absolutely would have touched the cursed object.

Game Night Gets a Lot More Dangerous

Set in 1992, Creatures & Corridors follows five high school friends playing a rare tabletop RPG that had previously been banned for being “too Satanic,” which should probably have been their first warning. Once an incantation is read from an old book, the game starts warping reality around them. Orcs invade the house, the yard turns into something much less welcoming, and their basement game cave becomes an actual dungeon full of monsters, traps, and challenges while a very sinister Gamemaster watches everything unfold.

The really fun part is that the group begins manifesting abilities connected to the characters they were playing, so all those RPG roles and skills they normally use around the table suddenly become the things keeping them alive. If you have ever played tabletop RPGs, you already know how attached people get to their characters and how dramatic a bad decision can feel during a campaign, but here the consequences are obviously a little more permanent. There is no throwing your dice across the room and making a new character sheet when something goes horribly wrong.

This Hit My RPG Nostalgia Hard

That connection between the players and their characters is probably what made the story work so well for me personally. For years, I had my own group of friends I played RPGs with, and those nights became their own little ritual. We would get food, continue campaigns across multiple weeks, become ridiculously attached to our characters, and spend far too much time arguing over what our next move should be because everyone suddenly had extremely strong opinions about an entirely fictional crisis.

Creatures & Corridors understands that the game itself is only part of why those nights become memorable. The other part is the people around the table and the weird way you learn to work together after spending hours surviving imaginary disasters. Here, that experience becomes genuinely useful because these friends already understand their roles and how each person’s strengths fit into the group. It reminded me of those nights where we planned to play for a couple of hours and suddenly it was ridiculously late, the pizza was gone, and everyone was still debating one decision because nobody wanted their character to die. This book just makes the dying part considerably less theoretical.

Andrea Mutti Fits This World Perfectly

I already knew I liked Andrea Mutti’s work before picking this up, because he’s been behind the art on Haunt You to the End, A Legacy of Violence, Bunny Mask, and Charred Remains, all books where his rougher, atmospheric style works especially well with horror. There is something about the way he draws spaces that makes them feel a little dirty, unstable, and dangerous, which is exactly what Creatures & Corridors needs once the game starts taking over reality. I came into this already expecting his art to be one of the highlights, and it absolutely was.

The obvious comparison is Stranger Things, especially with the young friend group, period setting, tabletop gaming, and something impossible invading their normal lives, but Creatures & Corridors leans much harder into the actual structure of an RPG campaign and gets considerably bloodier along the way. It feels less like the game is simply inspiring the horror and more like somebody has taken the rules everyone knows and turned them against the players.

One More Campaign?

Creatures & Corridors is a very easy recommendation for anyone who has spent far too many nights sitting around a table with friends and getting emotionally invested in people who exist only on character sheets. The fantasy and horror are fun on their own, but the familiarity of that group dynamic is what gave the book personality for me, especially because I could immediately recognize pieces of my own old game nights in it.

It also reminded me how much I miss having a regular RPG group, although perhaps this is not the ideal book to use when recruiting people for a new one. “Come over, we’ll order pizza, play for six hours, and hopefully the basement won’t transform into a death dungeon” is apparently not a great selling point.

Creatures & Corridors: The Lab Portable Edition releases October 20, 2026.

Related Reading

If you like stories about ordinary people being dropped into bizarre fantasy situations with rules they barely understand, our Red Roots review follows two strangers trapped in an entirely unfamiliar world where completing some unknown mission might be their only way home. And our Bug Wars #1 review takes something as familiar as a backyard and reveals an enormous fantasy war happening right underneath everyone’s feet.

FAQ

What is Creatures & Corridors about?
Five high school friends playing a forbidden tabletop RPG accidentally unleash a curse that warps reality around them, forcing them to survive monsters, traps, and challenges using abilities connected to their characters.

Who created Creatures & Corridors?
Brandon Auman wrote the graphic novel, Andrea Mutti illustrated it, Jared K. Fletcher handled lettering, and Bill Sienkiewicz created the main cover.

Is Creatures & Corridors a series or graphic novel?
It was released as a complete original graphic novel rather than a traditional monthly comic series.

Who would enjoy Creatures & Corridors?
Readers who enjoy tabletop RPGs, fantasy horror, monsters, and stories built around groups of friends should find a lot to like here.