After checking out Wired Productions’ quartet of horror games, here’s why they should be on your radar

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:

AGNI: Village of Calamity

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.

“That villain guy is terrify… um, is terrific,” I quickly corrected myself. “He’s really detailed.”

“It’s me,” the creative director grinned in a similar fashion (the in-game version is made uglier and dirtier, thankfully).

“Is it?” I feigned. “Oh yeah, so it is. That’s brilliant.”

The rest of the demo saw Agni trying to escape her cell then being chased by the man through a maze of grimy corridors, all with fixed camera angles in the style of old-school Resident Evil games. There are some wince-inducing QTEs in there (grabbing a sword and trying to push it away from your face as it cuts your hands), but everything was impressively detailed.

The action then switched to another section of the game which instead followed Agni through a more open, outdoor area. In these sections the camera is more like an Alan Wake or Silent Hill situation, following the protagonist from behind as she explores the moody locations.

On paper it may not sound like AGNI: Village of Calamity is doing much different, but there’s always space for a well-made, atmospheric horror game, and the fact that it’s set in Indonesia – with a strong, tudong-wearing woman as its protagonist – should make for a really interesting experience.

AGNI: Village of Calamity is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, but no release date has been confirmed yet, and it feels like it might yet be a while off.

When Sirens Fall Silent

You may remember Martha is Dead, the visually stunning but controversial horror game released back in 2022, which gained headlines when it emerged the PS5 version had been censored.

That was the second game by LKA – an indie studio set in Florence, Italy – after 2016 title The Town of Light. Whereas these first two games were set in Tuscany, When Sirens Fall Silent instead starts on the outskirts of Rome, where a policewoman called Mila is investigating a high-profile case of kidnappings and murders.

Director Luca Dalco doesn’t do straight investigations, however, which is why the demo I was shown very quickly descended into surrealism and extremism, with Mila at one point finding an attacked, nude woman left hanging by her wrists, close to death, then (seemingly) hallucinating as the victim asks her for a kiss.

The demo contained the sort of light puzzle solving seen in Martha is Dead and I think it’s safe to assume that we’re once again looking at a somewhat more involved take on the walking simulator, albeit with more of an emphasis on gathering clues and using them to solve crimes.

I was also shown some art from the game, including the beautiful house from Martha is Dead. That game took place during World War II, whereas this one takes place in the ‘90s – I was informed that while the games aren’t really linked in any way, they do take place in the same universe, meaning those who played the previous games will recognise some of the references.

Martha is Dead certainly wasn’t for everyone and you needed a strong stomach to endure some of its more controversial scenes, but I thoroughly appreciated it for its balls – it felt like the video game equivalent of the Italian giallo films that were most popular in the ‘70s, and often portrayed grotty, graphic content in a strikingly artistic way.

When Sirens Fall Silent look like it could be more of the same, so I’m certainly looking forward to the finished product. The game is only confirmed for PC for now, with no release date yet.

Kumarn: The Wandering Spirit

Kumarn is the debut offering from WereBuff Studio, a developer based in Thailand, and is a single-player horror platformer inspired by games like Little Nightmares, Reanimal and Limbo.

You play as Kumarn, a young child spirit who’s been separated from his shrine thanks to a forbidden ritual. He and his loyal zebra companion Zeb now have to make their way through a nightmarish world to get back to their village where they can once again serve as its guardians.

Along the way you encounter evil spirits, each of whom has their own tragic past. Many of them are based on Thai folklore, and the result is bloody scary at times.

The environments are brilliantly detailed – Kumarn’s only a wee lad, so the world around him is enormous, leading to plenty of Honey I Shrunk the Shrine Spirit situations where you’re leaving over chasm-sized gaps in the floorboards and the like.

The enemies are terrifying too – the demo I played had some stealth moments where you have to sneak past a horrible Medusa-like spirit who’s eating piles of intestines on the floor. If she hears or sees you, she speeds over to you, picks you up and eats you whole, which isn’t a pleasant sight.

Kumarn is another one that’s only confirmed for PC just now, with no release date to speak of yet. Its performance was a little choppier than that of the other titles, but there’s seemingly plenty of time for optimisation.

BrokenLore: Don’t Lie

If you’re not familiar with BrokenLore, it’s an anthology of first-person horror games developed by Tokyo-based studio Serafini Productions.

There have already been four games in the series – Low, Don’t Watch, Unfollow and Follow – all of which were released in the past year and a half, and I got the chance to play a short section of the fifth instalment, Don’t Lie.

In this edition, you play as Junko, a young woman with a psychiatric disorder. The game’s connected to other chapters in that she used to attend a recovery centre with two of the other protagonists, but having not previously played any of the other games I was still able to figure out what’s going on here. Well, sort of.

After all, the point here is that Junko’s health condition combined with her reliance on medication leads to a solid helping of hallucinations, meaning jumpscares and creepy things aplenty.

Of the four horror games I played at Wired Productions’ event, Don’t Lie is easily the closest to the sort of YouTuber-friendly horror game I referred to in the intro of this piece, so I’m wary of its depth – these games are designed to be shorter experiences, and this was certainly more of a walking simulator than the others mentioned above.

I won’t lie though, I’m curious to see where this one goes, and how it fits in with the previous stories, which I also intend to check out at some point. Luckily for you, if you’re similarly curious there’s a demo available now on Steam, and the game itself is out next week (September 10) on PC and PS5.