"This is Agnes." I'm gawking at the most beautifully horrifying hand-painted statue I've ever seen in my life as James Macleod, Ritual Tides creative director and CEO of developer studio Vertpaint, beams with pride. Agnes looks like a cross between a humanoid centipede, a fleshy slug with a burst rear end, and the giant baby monster from Resident Evil Village. In short, she's gorgeous. .
But even without Agnes' beady yellow eyes watching expectantly from the table, Ritual Tides has been among my most-wanted upcoming horror games for years. All I know going into this preview is what was given up in its brief 2024 teaser trailer – a title, a genre, and some cryptic ink-on-paper artwork – so I'm desperate to find out what kind of nightmare awaits.
Then Macleod throws a curveball: Gamescom chaos has descended and the demo build is fundamentally broken. Luckily, he has a backup plan in the form of a level design build, so I can at least get a feel for what the ex-Rockstar developer has been cooking up since shipping GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2."So," Macleod begins. "Are you a Resident Evil or Silent Hill fan?"
Developer: VertpaintPlatform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series XRelease date: TBC
Macleod opens the level build to pan across a gritty grey coastal landscape, my first introduction to the fictional town of Hortus, and I lean closer to the screen instinctively.
I spot flavors of the two survival horror franchises he mentioned in each frame, because yes, I am a huge fan of both. Ritual Tides has the heavy fog-blanketed gloom of Silent Hill, the visceral, first-person immersion of Resident Evil 7 and Village, and a "super dark" narrative that had Macleod drop everything to write it.
"Getting a publisher for this is really tricky – the subject matter is so bad," he tells me. "You play this woman who wakes up on a beach, and you're uncovering her past and this mysterious island history. But the more you learn, it's a horrific history – especially if you're a woman."
From Silent Hill f's powerful abstraction of a woman's coming-of-age to satirical splatter flicks like The Substance, female-centric body horror is having a well-earned moment. I recall my Agnes statue in all her bloated, man-eating, afterbirth-like glory, and sense its presence in Ritual Tides, too.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/horror/ex-rockstar-devs-chilling-new-psychological-horror-could-be-the-next-silent-hill-even-in-a-rough-design-build/
