The initial thing that struck me about Fractured Mind was its realistic bodycam graphics. Fractured Mind’s bodycam perspective is likely inspired by Unrecord, another yet-to-be-released first-person bodycam game made in Unreal Engine 5. Unrecord‘s March 2023 trailer led the UE5 community to make tutorials outlining how to recreate Unrecord’s realistic bodycam perspective using Unreal Engine 5. It’s not too surprising to see games like Fractured Mind take advantage of this bodycam trend. Like Unrecord, Fractured Mind utilizes a fisheye lens distortion effect with a wobbly camera simulating realistic body movement, though I must admit that playing it in a more or less finished state like the Fractured Mind demo is more impressive than any mere trailer. But enough about Fractured Mind’s inspiration, what does it actually consist of?

Those familiar with Hideo Kojima’s PT will get the gist of Fractured Mind’s premise and gameplay. Like PT, you walk through a continually looping environment that changes oh so slightly every couple of loops, giving you new story hints and stuff to figure out along the way. Instead of a mansion hallway, Fractured Mind takes place inside train compartments. The demo has you walking from one train compartment to the next, essentially looping every time you open the door to the next compartment. The demo only comprises a single chapter of the game, so there are likely other locales aside from just the looping train within Fractured Mind‘s full release. We’ve already seen other environments within the demo itself, such as the rainy outdoor train entrance located somewhere in a Romanian suburb. It’ll be interesting to see other locations around Romania as the player follows the distressed protagonist, Michael, along his psychological journey. Speaking of distressed protagonists, as with PT, Fractured Mind goes all in on its psychological horror elements.

The 30-minute demo provided plenty of moments that made me question what I saw in front of me. The slow progression through the looping train is nicely paced, with very slight changes in each loop giving you little hints as to what is going on in the story and characters. Fractured Mind has a similar slow burn that PT does, with some truly insane stuff occurring just before the end of the demo. This slow drip-feed of info quickly accelerates as soon as you notice something particularly … off. The moment you see that one bizarre element is the point at which the game enters into a surrealist nightmare. Some of the oddities I saw consisted of train chairs stacked on top of passengers, radio broadcasts yelling at me, and the occasional weird demon creature scurrying off the corner of the screen, just to name a few.

If this 30-minute demo is anything to go by, the full game will provide a constant stream of surprises and ‘glitches’, as it were, in the protagonist’s perception. The protagonist already has a pretty in-depth backstory, hinting that we’ll get a character arc or a more complete characterization with the full release. For example, check out the Steam description for this game; it lists the protagonist’s full mental health assessment. There’s a granular level of detail here, complete with believable information such as DSM-5 descriptions of his PTSD diagnosis. This character backstory is shown inside the game as well, through fourth-wall-breaking posters within the train and radio broadcasts fluctuating between local events and voices inside Michael’s head.

Speaking of radio broadcasts, the radio voices are the only element of the game that uses AI tools. It’s too bad real actors couldn’t have been employed for this game, as it could further enhance its worldbuilding and tone, but at least the developer is being transparent about AI usage. The sound in general is appropriately atmospheric with a low-fi train ambiance accompanying the journey. The times when it’s completely silent don’t work as well since all the sound is cut out, though it’s difficult to tell if that kind of thing is intentional or not considering the game’s penchant for messing with your mind. Regardless, it’s a very atmospherically immersive game with the bells and whistles of Unreal Engine 5 to make everything pop.

Oh yeah, there’s gunplay in Fractured Minds too; it’s not merely a walking simulator after all. Of course, the game doesn’t focus heavily on shooting mechanics, as the numerous train posters remind us. The demo doesn’t require you to shoot your gun at all, as far as I know. But if the demon alien thing I saw scurrying away was anything to go by, I assume you’ll be shooting some weird stuff at some point in the full game. Then again, I’ve only seen one of two possible endings in the demo, so maybe there is shooting involved. Regardless, shooting works how you’d expect for a first-person shooter.

You have a pistol with limited ammo and can aim down the sights for added accuracy. There’s no HUD except for crosshairs when viewing an interactable element of the environment. Aiming down the sights while turning your character has some weight and momentum to it that I appreciate, but there’s no run button to speak of and no mobility other than a small jump. Another gameplay element Fractured Mind consists of is puzzles. I didn’t encounter any puzzles during the demo, but there are documents that you can pick up which contain clues and numbers. Even the posters on the windows say to pay attention to numbers so you can get through the ‘lock’, whatever that is. So, expect some hidden object puzzles with the full release of the game.

Fractured Mind currently has a release date of September 2024 on Steam, though I wouldn’t be too surprised if it got delayed considering it’s a one-person team. We don’t know what price the full game will get or how long it’ll be. If the demo is anything to go by, Fractured Mind will provide a deep psychological horror story with constantly evolving revelations concerning the main protagonist. The gameplay has room to flesh out the shooting mechanics and puzzles, providing something a little more involved than PT and traditional walking sim games. There’s even potential for multiple forking routes similar to Stanely Parable, though this might require some kind of dialogue choice feedback, which hasn’t been present in the game yet. If you’re a fan of psychological horror games, walking sims, or PT-style experiences, Fractured Mind is a game worth keeping an eye on.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

FIRST HUNTER ENCOUNTER (DEAD SPACE)

Dead Space is a horrifying game that tries to scare you to your wit’s end in a number of different ways- which, of course, include specific sections where you have to escape from a terrifying stalker enemy in the form of the Hunter. The first time this happens is one of the scariest sequences in the game. After quickly realizing that wasting your ammo on this thing is going to do you no good and dashing out of the room in a panic, hearing the thing’s lumbering footsteps slowly moving in your direct can induce quite a panic.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

BLACK MESA

Perhaps the most well-known (and also probably one of the very best) fan remakes to have ever been released. Black Mesa, which only recently launched after years of development, is a full-on remake of Half-Life 1– and without the shadow of a doubt, it is the best way to experience that all-time classic. That it not only understands and perfectly encapsulates everything that made Valve’s shooter so good, but also actually makes it better in many ways is a testament to its impeccable quality.

Whatever that next project will be, at this point, will likely stay shrouded the depths of secrecy for at least a little while longer, but surely with the unfinished tale of whatever Silent Hills was going to be likely still scratching around in the back of Kojima’s mind, the odds are good that his next game will be of the Survival Horror variety. He clearly has a soft spot for the genre, and has shown his acumen for pulling it off. Assumptions and logical hunches aren’t all we have though, last November the revered game designer tweeted some musings about what he is seemingly up to:

“As to make the scariest horror game, I’ll watch the scary movies in order to awaken my horror soul. THE EYE is the Thai horror movie I rent when making P.T. but was too scary to finish watching. The package is scary so I rented the disc only. Will I be able to finish watching?” 

Outside of a couple of translation side effects that mess with the grammar, it’s fairly obvious what Kojima-san is saying here. It doesn’t take a forensics expert to see that he is at least considering working on a horror game, if he’s not already doing so. Along with the text of the tweet he also included two pictures of what appears to be a physical copy of the movie The Eye but not the American version with Jessica Alba, no, this is the original 2002 Hong-Kong and Singaporean horror film directed by the Pang brothers. A quick reverse google search of the images turns up nothing, so that points to the idea that these images were possibly taken by Kojima himself, which must mean he’s serious about watching this movie. The link between Kojima and The Eye is one that we’ve seen before.

With P.T. being heavily inspired by The Eye’s tone and feel, at least in terms of its visual representation, and much of the latter half of the Playable Teaser being populated by spinning eyeballs all over the place, it seems this is a link he’s likely trying to stick with, so we can probably expect a similar tone with this next horror game, assuming that’s what we’re going to get.

And for fans of P.T. like myself, that’s a very exciting proposition. P.T. was not only an incredibly scary and fun experience that succeeded at frightening and disturbing it’s players more than most full-fledged actual horror games, but it set gaming on fire after its release with its claustrophobic setting and outrageously unsettling imagery, which took some cues from asain horror films as well as some twisted ideas deep in the untapped recesses of Kojima’s own mind.

With horror games starting to feel somewhat derivative of each other with the Amnesia and Outlast tropes getting recycled for the last several years, there seems to be a strong case supporting the idea that gaming really needs a full horror game from Kojima-san for several reasons.

Most obviously is just the fact that P.T. clearly wasn’t meant to stand alone forever. It was just a taste of what was supposed to be a new Silent Hill game. As a series that has lost its way even worse than James Sunderland lost himself in the fog of Silent Hill’s streets, Hideo Kojima was the perfect choice to bring something of value to the franchise while bringing it back to it’s atmospheric and intangible roots. Since the falling out between Kojima-san and his employer of over 20 years, Konami, went down the way it did, Silent Hills was sadly never realized to it’s potential. Fans of the series are still to this day, left with the Playstation Vita dungeon crawler as the most recent cannon entry to the series.

With many more recent discoveries about P.T. being made that seem to point to much more detail in the world than the player even having access to during the teaser, it’s now beyond obvious that there were certainly extensive plans for this adventure. However, whatever those twists and turns were supposed to be, clearly aren’t going to happen now. So to have Hideo exume whatever those ideas were, to whatever extent that he can without triggering a lawsuit from Konami, would be a nightmare come true for horror fans everywhere. It might even serve as some form of closure for Kojima himself, as I’m sure he still probably feels some type of way about the abrupt career shift and how it all went down.

But while Kojima-san may or may not need this horror game to exist for himself, the horror scene in gaming certainly needs it the most. We are all thankful that the genre was revitalized with the slew of excellent first person horror games over the last decade or so, but that format has largely been brought to its logical conclusion several times over now.

With games like Alien Isolation and SOMA serving as nice examples of the pinnacle of this style of horror game, and not much since then really topping them, the genre once again seems primed to benefit from another dose of energy and new ideas. Hideo Kojima could be the one to reanimate the horror genre, much like what he was originally attempting to do with the Silent Hill series. With his connections to hollywood and other circles of excellent actors around the world, as well as Guillermo del Toro, it’s tough to imagine anybody else more well-positioned to take the horror community by storm and deliver a ghostly knock-out punch to everyone who enjoys it. An added bonus is that, those who weren’t in love with what Death Stranding was trying to do would probably see this new game as a reset or sorts for Kojima as it is a totally different type of game, so he wouldn’t be alienating anybody.

So between the tweet, his obvious love for P.T., and the obvious love of P.T. that horror fans have, there is little else that needs to be said to make the case that Hideo absolutely should pursue this path for his next game. It would not only sell well right off the bat but it would do so much good for the horror scene with it’s own unique ideas but also by inspiring many more experiences to come after it.

That seems to be how the horror genre survives; Every once in a blue moon, one big earth-shattering game comes along and shifts the tide, and other games follow up with their own shades of that until the next tectonic transformation presents itself. Not only could Kojima make that next evolution for the horror genre, if he really pulls all of his connections and experience together, it could be one of the best things to happen to the genre, and to gaming, since Resident Evil and Silent Hill revolutionized it their way 20 years ago.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Though we’ve been waiting for Dreams to come out for years now, thanks to its ongoing beta, many players have had the chance to try out its extensive creation tools. Media Molecule games are, of course, pretty much known for the versatility they offer by way of user generated content, and Dreams seems to be their most ambitious project yet in that regard. How ambitious?

Of the people currently playing the Dreams beta, a few have recently taken to Twitter to showcase clips of stuff that they’ve created using the game’s tools. First off is Twitter user Sergeant Bike, who has made a surprisingly impressive recreation of the iconic PT hallway, complete with the spooky sound effects and radio broadcast in the background. Another user, Cal Gee, showcases a clip of another user (@RhodoTweet) having given similar treatment to survival horror fan-favourite Dead Space. Both of them evoke the looks and styles of the actual games surprisingly well (though of course are not 1:1 accurate).

Considering the fact that both PT and Dead Space are now dead in the water, this is the next best thing we can hope for right now. Take a look at both of them below- they’re quite impressive. They also go to show just how much depth and flexibility the creation tools in Dreams will offer- though I’m pretty sure we were all expecting that to be the case either way.

https://twitter.com/sergeantbike/status/1086841845009793024

https://twitter.com/thecalgee/status/1087717462538358785

The Last Of Us – Clickers

Out of the variety of zombified fungal terrors that make players slowly peak around every corner in the last of us, none is quite so terrifying as the Clicker. The telltale clicks that gave them their namesake are how they see, and how the player knows to be very careful, if they see Joel, not only will they immediately jump him, easily ending the game, but they have a terrible aggro screech that makes us jump every time.

PT- Seeing Lisa for the first time

Nobody was even quite sure what PT was or what was going on at first, so the creepy atmosphere, abandoned house, radio spouting strange stories about murders and some really disturbing imagery in the sink was creepy enough, but the single moment that would put the Playable Teaser over the top and on this list would be the first time we encountered Lisa, the horrid spectre that stalks the player and restarts the game if they make the wrong move.

While it’s been a couple of years since we first saw PT, it turns out we’re still finding out things about the game that never was. The demo for a game called Silent Hills was released to great fanfare but it was soon announced the partnership between Konami and Kojima had fallen apart.

Despite the fact that we’ll likely never see any more progress in the game, it turns out a group of dataminers have datamined the demo and found some interesting objects. While datamining, a number of models and images surfaced, including a couple that hadn’t been seen before.

Powerupgaming got their hands on a number of the images and now you can check them out below. Of course, if you’re the sentimental type, you might not want to look at these images because they’ll remind you what could have been. Maybe Konami will follow through on their claims the Silent Hills series isn’t entirely dead.

The announcement of P.T. a.k.a. Silent Hills, the Kojima helmed reboot of Konami’s former flagship horror game property, was a delight for a lot of people- not many people were expecting it, and to see Kojima helming it instantly associated prestige and confidence with the project.

It also helped that a lot of big names were attached to the game, in addition to Kojima, that is- Guillermo Del Toro, the famed filmmaker, and Norman Reedus. You know Norman Reedus. Daryl, of The Walking Dead fame? Yeah, that Norman Reedus.

However, in a recent Reddit AMA, he confirmed that he hadn’t done any ‘heavy stuff’ work for Silent Hills yet, which implies that real work on the game hasn’t begun yet. Which makes sense, considering that Kojima is currently working on The Phantom Pain.

Here is what Reedus said:

“I’m super excited to be a part of [Silent Hills]. Both [Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro] are geniuses at what they do. We haven’t shot the heavy stuff yet. Kojima approached me right after Guillermo did.”

Okay, let’s hope they get down to it soon.