Dark Trip, independent game studio iWorlds’ mix of psychological horror with a dash of Lovecraft, will launch on Steam and Meta Quest on October 29, which coincidentally is during Valve’s annual Halloween festival, Steam Scream. Currently, the game is in Early Access on Meta Quest, while those PC players itching to check the game out now can apply for the closed playtest on Steam.
The game puts players in the role of an investigator hired to find a missing woman in a small German town. The investigation leads to an abandoned laboratory filled with grotesque biomechanical machinery, occult devices, disturbing artwork and evidence of experiments that should never have happened. The deeper the investigation goes, the less reliable reality becomes.
Players must explore interconnected escape rooms, collect evidence, decipher strange mechanisms and deliberately switch between ordinary perception and hallucination in order to discover what is hidden from sober eyes.
The game draws on Lovecraftian horror, surrealism, occult imagery and disturbing visions — while deliberately refusing to treat altered consciousness as merely a visual effect.
“We wanted to make a game where hallucinations are not decoration — they are a gameplay mechanic,” said Andrey Klenin, the creative director and developer of Dark Trip. “The player has to decide when to trust reality and when to deliberately destroy their own perception of it. That is what makes Dark Trip fundamentally different from a conventional horror game.”
On Steam, players will be able to experience the complete game using traditional keyboard-and-mouse or controller controls, or switch to a more immersive version through SteamVR. Meanwhile on Meta Quest, Dark Trip will continue its evolution as a native VR horror experience, before finally leaving Early Access phase in October.