Hairs: Body Horror Game With 9 Different Endings (None of Them Good)

There has been a rise in small indie game developers making their mark in creating fun little games and showcasing their creativity and talent. Horror has been a popular genre with indie devs, with so many horror indie games coming out. Hairs is another one of those indie horror games you can play for free on itch.io, and here’s the world of Hairs.

What is Hairs?

Hairs is a short horror game about exactly what you would think it’s about: hair. You play as a man who has uncontrollable bouts of hair growth, going through a miscellany of unusual happenings while you try to do something about this weird hair growth. Some of the things you experience are weird medical experiments, misogyny, and unusual phone conversations. All this, while you try to contain your hair.

There are 9 different endings players can achieve, and none of them are good endings. The art style is weird (good weird), and it gives off such a chilling vibe. The dev expressed how purposeful he was in narrating everything within the game, stating, 

“There’s so many short horror games I’ve enjoyed that are much more based in visuals or exploring virtual spaces, and I wanted to create a similar feeling with just text. I think interactive narrative in particular is a good way to trap the player in the head of a very particular, unpleasant character,”

He also expresses how this game comments on a societal standard that men convince themselves is tied to their happiness, and is poking fun at this impossible standard. 

A Satirical Body Horror

An important aspect of the game is how heavy the narration is in satire, with an understanding that no matter what you did, everything would go wrong in the protagonist’s life because of the mentality he adopts. He isn’t the most pleasant character to play, which adds to the satire because of how the narration often makes fun of the main character’s dilemma. And the body horror isn’t your typical visual stimulus. It’s all in text. After just one playthrough and being an avid reader myself, it spoke to the Junji Ito groupie in me. It was funny and horrifying at the same time, being witness to this man’s eventual “death”, and I only played once. 

Dev Warning

Given the themes of the game, the dev explicitly labels many warnings for players before playing. These include: misogyny, misanthropy, resentment, sounding like a creep, being a creep, violence against animals, violence against people, bodily harm and mutilation, fires, falls, stabbings, street fights, media sensationalism, uncontrolled hair growth, human experimentation, unhealthy fixations, botched transplants, foul language, despair, obsolescence, doing your own research, disastrous Zoom meetings, uncomfortable phone calls, the medical industrial complex, the unavoidable effects of aging, a creeping sense of your own obsolescence, the horrible knowledge that no matter what, there are things you will never be able to regain in this life, not in the same form.

Hairs is satire-heavy and includes body horror in such an unconventional way. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and commend the dev for making a game so unique and celebrating horror through text. I hope the people who do come across this game appreciate the underlying layers of what this game is about, and also enjoy the hell out of it.