Teaser trailer is appropriately unrevealing
DarkStone Digital, solo developer of The Mortary Assistant, is making a newhorrorgame based on Paramount’s Paranormal Activity films. Titled Paranormal Activity: Found Footage, it’s being published by DreadXP and features some kind of reactive haunt system, with scares dialling up and down based on your actions. DreadXP have shared a teaser consisting of some crackly logos against a backdrop of radio chatter. Given that this is a Paranormal Activity adaptation, it’s possible the trailer harbours spooky secrets. You may wish to experiment with turning the brightness up and down, playing the video backwards, or watching it again at the next full moon, perhaps while standing in a cemetery loudly declaring that ghosts aren’t real.
There’s not much to tell at this stage, but you can make some additional connections between The Mortuary Assistant and the ailing film franchise’s claustrophobic premise of keeping potentially haunted house interiors under remote surveillance. In Clarke’s previous game, you had to perform embalming tasks involving clipboard checklists and computer files alongside rituals to identify and eventually banish various demons. A nasty blend of job sim and smaller scale escape-room-style horror, then, with a story spanning multiple playthroughs. It feels like The Mortuary Assistant’s workaday core loops would suit a Paranormal Activity game - perhaps we’ll be asked to set up the cameras ourselves.
Posting onXitter, DarkStone Digital’s Brian Clarke noted that The Mortuary Assistant “will still receive its love and I have much deeper plans for the series”, but added that the chance to work on Paranormal Activity “was entirely too important to me to pass up as it shaped much of my taste in horror today.” Clarkeadded elsewherethat Found Footage “follows a different style and approach” to Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul, a VR adaptation from VRWERX.
If you like the sound of all this, you might also enjoy Alexander Chatziioannou’s more recentfeature on the next wave of horror games from independent studios, which includes some thoughts on fixed camera perspectives from developers likeHollowbodycreator Nathan Hamley.
