As someone who’s been a fan of horror for decades, I used to get excited back in the day every time I saw a new horror game being announced.
Whether it was a new Resident Evil or Silent Hill, something from the Fatal Frame or Siren series, or even the occasional film tie-in like Evil Dead or The Thing, every new horror game felt like an event for me.
These days, with the best will in the world, you can’t move for the things. Indie developers – many of whom are no doubt aware that making an over-acting YouTuber shriek like a banshee at the slightest hint of a jumpscare is a great way to get their game noticed by the masses and maybe be the next Five Nights at Freddy’s – have been firing out horror games quicker than Paramount was firing out Friday the 13th films in the ‘80s (don’t bother with Part VIII).
When I was invited at Gamescom to check out a bunch of upcoming games from indie publisher Wired Productions, then, and when I was told that four of them would be horror games, I admittedly wasn’t expecting too much – I’m not at the “fool me once” stage any more with scary software, it’s more like “fool me a few thousand times” at this point.
Thankfully, I came away from all four games eager to see more, proving there’s still life (or, indeed, unlife) in the genre yet if you know where to look. Here’s a quick rundown of what I was shown:
The work of Indonesian studio Separush Interactive – an Indo indie game, in other words – AGNI is a curious mix of Resident Evil and Alan Wake.
The titular Agni is an investigator from a secret agency who drives to the forbidden village Desa Purba in search of her missing partner. It soon turns out the village is home to a gruesome secret, one Agni might struggle to escape from.
My demo of the game opened with Agni in a cell in what appears to be the basement of a large building, with a grotesque, grinning man leering at her through the bars. The facial animations are so impressive and the man so unsettling that I turned to the creative director standing next to me to remark how scary the villain was, only to quickly realise he had used his own face for the character.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/after-checking-out-wired-productions-quartet-of-horror-games-heres-why-they-should-be-on-your-radar/
