The Harrowing Game by Antoine Revoy
23rd St. (May 27, 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Antoine Revoy is an award-winning French writer, artist and designer, raised in Tokyo, Japan and Mexico City, Mexico. Revoy has created illustrations for clients such as The New York Times, Der Spiegel and Harvard University. He teaches visual storytelling and comics-making courses at the Rhode Island School of Design and is a thesis mentor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Revoy lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife, author-illustrator Kelly Murphy, and their many animal companions. His newest graphic novel is The Harrowing Game.
The rules of the game are simple. Three ghosts meet in a bathroom. They swap horror stories over three nights, and the one who tells the scariest story wins their freedom. The other two competitors are trapped to haunt the bathroom until they win the game. Two ghosts, an old woman who haunts a mirror and a young boy who haunts the bathtub, have played before. Tonight, a new character with no memory of her death, arrives. Through it all, a mysterious god covered with itchy sores haunts everyone.
This is a clever graphic novel. The framing device of the competition works to keep readers engaged, and allows for three smaller short stories to be told in an anthology format; however, the stories, as we learn, are linked. Furthermore, because they’re told out of time, the suspense is heightened. This tight writing, accompanied by very detailed and heavily stylized art showing influences from Tsutomu Nihei and Junji Ito, makes for a very stunning graphic novel. Horror fans, especially graphic novel fans, will thoroughly enjoy The Harrowing Game by Antoine Revoy.
