The list ofVR horror gamesgets longer today, asDune: Awakeningco-publisher, Level Infinite, has dropped an announcement for their new VRsurvival horror game,Dread Meridian.
I don’t have to tell you personally that there’s no shortage of VR horror games out there, but many of those are just spin-offs of existing titles, such asResident Evil,Half-Life AlyxorPhasmophobia, while others are loosely inspired by familiar franchises, such asThe Exorcist Legion VRorThe Walking Dead Saints & Sinners.
Having said that, there’s also no denying that horror hits differently in VR. It’s more personal, more felt and more engaging, even though its visual quality needs to catch up with its non-VR cousins.
Who’s Developing This Game?
While this might be Level Infinite’s first foray into VR publishing, they’ve partnered withKUKRGAME, a Chinese VR/AR game dev based in Chengdu, Sichuan. The studio has been creating VR games since 2020 and already has a few titles released.
You might not have heard of them before, but they were known for their VR FPS game, Mercenary, which achieved the top spot for pay-to-play content on HTC Viveport years ago. They followed that up with Silicon Rising, a cyberpunk VR game, but unfortunately, this game was delisted from Steam in 2021.
To be honest, I think KUKRGAME luckily landed a big ticket with Dread Meridian. This is a game developer with only 3 games under their belt, and having secured backing from a large publishing house like Level Infinite is a huge deal that comes with the baggage of expectations. That’s because even if they have the experience of developing VR games from scratch rather than simplyporting over existing games, horror is a different challenge altogether.
In Dread Meridian, you will step into the shoes of Daniella, a researcher who’s looking for her lost twin sister on the remote island of Oglanbyen, a fictional island that’s spiraling into madness in the vein of The Evil Within or Outlast.
The sixty-second trailer doesn’t show us a lot, but it shows us enough to know what to expect. Fair warning, though, that what you see inside this trailer might not be the same as what you’re going to experience in the final version of the game. VR needs a lot of processing power, so if you see something crisp in the teaser, know that you should keep your expectations at a level.
The game features intense VR combat mixed with some decision-making, where resource management becomes crucial for survival. When you’re low on ammo, and you will be, because this is a classic survival horror, you’ll need to get up close and personal using just a knife to deal with whatever nightmares or creatures are lurking in this frozen wasteland.
In Dread Meridian, you will step into the shoes of Daniella, a researcher who’s looking for her lost twin sister on the remote island of Oglanbyen
Dread Meridian is still in early development and no release date has been announced yet, butcommunity testing will be scheduled later this year,as the devs are actively seeking player feedback before they commit into a full launch.They’re also developing a co-op PVE mode so you can share your screams and fears with another, hopefully willing, victim.
Horror holds a very special place in VR gaming because it succeeds in what we all truly wanted for a movie, or a video game, and that’s to know or share the feeling of actually “being there”.In the horror space, that means stepping into eerie environments and surrounding yourself with the kind of danger that, as the saying goes, “you only see in the movies.”
