Video Games
DreadXP Announces Lo-Fi Psychological Survival Horror Title ‘Heartworm’ for 2025
Developer Vincent Adinolfi has landed some extra help with his upcoming retro Survival Horror game Heartworm. After running into difficulties with the original publisher, DreadXP has stepped in to fill the publishing void for the survival horror game, which pays tribute to the low-fidelity look and feel of 90s genre classics Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Dino Crisis.
Aiming for a 2025 release on PC via Steam, Heartworm is described as “a nostalgia-wrapped nightmare” about one girl’s battle with grief and the otherworldly manifestations that may hold the key to the afterlife. Players assume the role of Sam, who driven by her obsession the deaths of those closest to her, spends her days crawling the internet looking for something to alleviate her pain. Sam’s morbid research takes her deep into the dark web, where she stumbles upon an internet message board that talks about a mysterious house in the mountains that supposedly has a connection to the afterlife. The board states that no one who has visited the house has ever returned. Consumed by her grief, Sam seeks out the house in desperation.
Heartworm is a game about the memories we keep and the ones we wish we could forget. These themes are expressed through the title’s narrative and its use of old-school Survival Horror aesthetics, including cinematic fixed camera angles, low-resolution retro 3D graphics (with optional pixelation and retro effects), and optional tank-style controls. It all takes place in a surreal suburban setting, where players will face various enemies with a weaponized camera (with over-the-shoulder aiming) and puzzle-solving. The game also features in-game and classically-styled pre-rendered cutscenes, and multiple endings.
If you’re keen on checking things out before the game’s release, Adinolfi has a demo available on Heartworm‘s Steam page.
Video Games
‘DreadOut Remastered Collection’ Announced for PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, Coming Later This Year [Trailer]
While it’s not a sequel to DreadOut 2 that some fans were hoping for, developer Digital Happiness and Singapore-based publisher Soft Source Publishing have announced the next best thing with DreadOut Remastered Collection, which is set to head to the PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch later this year. This remaster will include the original DreadOut, and the standalone game DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark. Details on just what the remaster includes have yet to be revealed.
“Having worked on bringing DreadOut 2 to consoles, the team at Soft Source Publishing were enthralled by the idea when Pak Rachmad CEO of Digital Happiness threw out the idea of bringing back DreadOut and DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark to consoles,” says Soft Source Publishing director Sameer Pandit in a press release (thanks, Gematsu!). “It’s an immediate thought that we want to be a part of this new project. DreadOut is an iconic IP in Asia and has been spreading its wings in the rest of the world with the release of DreadOut 2 on consoles.”
For those who don’t know, DreadOut (which you can find on Steam) is a third-person supernatural horror game that was released back in 2014 where you play as Linda, a high school student. When the group of high school students Linda was a part of became lost while on a field trip, they stumble across an abandoned town. However, the town holds a dark secret that has left Linda fighting to get out of the town. Using a similar mechanic to Fatal Frame, Linda is equipped with a smart-phone and an SLR camera, which she will use to battle against the horrors in the town and solve puzzles.
Meanwhile, DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark is a “missing chapter” from the original game, where you will help Linda face off against more ghosts and challenges in The Mirror Realm: a portal of worlds that connects it to eight haunted dominions where horrific ghosts are ready to greet her in the most terrifying way possible.
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