The White Rabbit Signal: a mysterious smorgasbord of messages broadcast from deep below the Earth’s surface. Dead relatives, old friends, familiar voices… all of them imploring the listeners to perform the same task:

DIG.

Off Black Creations’ and Oro Interactive’s MOLE is a puzzle horror game that puts you in the nearsighted shoes of Viktor Kaminsky: crewmember of the titular MOLE. As navigator of a massive drill bound for the aforementioned signal’s origin, it’s your job to get things back on track! The problem? Your ride has seen better days, your fellow crewmates seem to have taken an early vacation, and something is definitely trying to communicate with you… oh, and you might be going crazy.

To say you’re under a lot of pressure would be an understatement.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

For a demo, MOLE really knows how to get someone immersed. Navigating menus by stuffing cassettes into a computer, the game wastes no time in introducing its mechanics. After a brief, disconcerting introduction to your mission, you wake up an inordinate amount of time later in a dark, cramped room and an alarm clock blaring in your ear. Another day, another dollar, right?

Standing alongside Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation and Visceral Games’ Dead Space, MOLE‘s design choices are to die for. No space is wasted on the MOLE, and every system onboard has just the right amount of clunkiness to really immerse the player. Wandering a claustrophobic digging machine, it’s hard not to get distracted by how much scenery Off Black Creations managed to stuff inside. Notes and propaganda posters litter the walls and desks, dark terminals glow with command prompts and charts, and even the bathrooms feel lived in. All this coupled with impressive dithering and lighting effects puts MOLE in a category of its own… and what a category it is! If this is the demo, I can’t wait to see what the developers do with the rest of the game.

Did You Try Turning It Off and Back on Again?

As you might’ve gathered, MOLE’s design choices aren’t just for show. Seamlessly blending with the puzzle gameplay, every task in the demo feels like an actual task for an alternate-history giant drill crewman. Like the games mentioned above, MOLE takes place in a world where the problem doesn’t go away with the push of a button. Want to start the drill’s autopilot system? You’ll have to manually plug in the coordinates on the cockpit panel. Power’s out? Simply follow the step-by-step instructions on the fuse box. While puzzles in other games sometimes seem contrived, MOLE’s feel right at home… just the right amount of clunky for a giant box of bolts.

Being an appetizer, the MOLE demo runs you through a gauntlet of hoops that will carry you through the rest of the game. Fortunately, you’re never on a time limit or under much duress during these tasks, but that might change in the final release. There are a few moments that required backtracking, but ultimately, I have nothing but praise for this eerie romp. If these are MOLE’s beginner puzzles, I can’t wait to see what shows up later on.

What MOLE Can I Say?

As mentioned above, I didn’t run into any bugs or glitches when playing MOLE. At risk of being proven horribly, HORRIBLY wrong later, the game feels pretty complete as-is! The controls are responsive, the graphics are crisp, and aside from a strange experience where I temporarily fell out-of-bounds at the demo’s end, MOLE was polished like the finest drill bit.

As for critiques, I think MOLE could benefit from making items and interactables a bit more obvious. The drill’s filled with clutter–some of it’s just trash, but some of it’s important. As you might expect, some of it tends to blend together. It sounds silly writing it, but I nearly missed a lightswitch in the beginning of the game due to how dull its green highlight was. I feel like I say this in every review, but adding a Resident Evil-esque ‘shine’ effect wouldn’t go amiss. With all of MOLE’s set-dressing, it’s easy to assume most of it is just there for show.

No MOLE Mister Nice Guy!

In conclusion, I couldn’t Wishlist this game quickly enough. MOLE OOZES style, spunk, and fistfuls of promise. The story’s got me hooked. The aesthetics are amazing. I feel like the developers have a lot of wiggle room to play with in this one. The demo only takes about an hour or so to complete, but it left me hungry for more–ravenous, even.

A demo like this doesn’t come by often. if you’re a fan of puzzle horror games like Frictional Games’ Penumbra series, you won’t want to miss this! 

The MOLE demo was featured in Steam Next Fest: February 2026. As of publication, the demo is still available. Check out the game’s official Discord HERE, to keep up with the game’s progress. It has a possible release date of Q2 2026.

Read all of our coverage in our Steam Next Fest February 2026 page.