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The survival-horror genre was born about 30 years ago, when people were scared of long shadows in Resident Evil’s mansion, or of Silent Hill’s medical gauzy fog — but we’ve since moved on to more insidious enemies. There are data breaches from Meta, AI-generated restaurant menus that make burritos look like they’ve been shot with a gun, and other evidence that technology is constantly distorting and desecrating our lives. Upcoming Silent Hill-ish horror game Signal Veil understands the weight of that, so its protagonist uses a little flip phone as her weapon.
Aki, who could pass as another vapid anime schoolgirl if it weren’t for the sleepy bruises under her eyes, looks terrified to be alone in a new trailer revealed during Insider Gaming’s 28 Games Later Horror Showcase. But, even when she’s being pursued by a fleshy monstrosity, she isn’t really by herself — she has her mom’s dainty, vintage cell phone, which players can use to physically attack enemies in a unique combat system.
Developer Time Hunters tells Insider Gaming in an interview, “We grew up loving classic horror games like Resident Evil, but for Signal Veil we wanted to lean much more into psychological horror.” So, as the Silent Hill franchise’s crackling radio did for many of its main characters, Aki’s cell phone shivers and hisses whenever it detects a monster. The sound is enough to make you, the player, paranoid, but Signal Veil’s sanity system takes fear further by giving Aki’s fraying mind gameplay consequences.
“As her mental state deteriorates, the way she fights becomes more desperate, aggressive, and messy,” Signal Veil developers say. Her teeny cell phone can knock enemies’ heads around, or even use its camera flash to stun enemies and leave them open to a parry.
“We really like games with parry systems, so at some point we thought, ‘What if you could use the phone to parry an enemy?'” devs say. “It was one of those ideas that sounded strange at first, but once we tried it, we loved it.” After all, technology is a weapon — if it can hurt us, it should be able to save us, too.
Signal Veil doesn’t yet have a release date, but it’s available to wishlist on Steam.
