Hollowbody is a Silent Hill-inspired cyberpunk game coming in 2024

There’s seldom been a better time in recent memory to be a survival horror fan than right now. From recent releases like Motive Studio’s Dead Space remake and Capcom’s own remake of Resident Evil 4To highly anticipated games such a The Bunker and AmnesiaAnd Alan Wake 2., there’s a veritable embarrassment of riches to choose from for players who prefer their regular diet of action-heavy thrills with an accompanying side of chills.

Headware Games (aka Nathan Hamley), a Bristol-based developer released on Friday a 5-minute gameplay trailer to its upcoming survival horror title. Hollowbody, and from the looks of it, it’s certainly shaping up to be a game worth looking forward to. Described as a “tech-noir homage to classic survival horror,” HollowbodyPlaces players in Mica’s role as a unlicensed Shipper (i.e. a courier) who is working for a black-market syndicate that is based in a near future Bristol.

The trailer opens with a scene of Mica having crash-landed in a long-abandoned neighborhood on the outskirts of the city’s habitable zone, à la Blade Runner 2049. Mica is faced with limited resources and no means of reaching her employers. Mica has no choice but to brave this desolate area to find a way to repair her car or get to safety.

Headware Games

Her problems will not be solved by solving environmental puzzles or digging through abandoned apartment buildings. As we see in the trailer, Mica is not alone, and in order to survive, she’ll have to wade through an onslaught of shambling post-human nightmares presumably driven mad by invasive black-market technology.

The gameplay appears clearly indebted to that of predecessors like 2001’s Silent Hill 2 and 1999’s Resident Evil 3: NemesisFixed camera angles are used, as well as brief loading screen cutscenes. These scenes can be interspersed with scripted events and resource scavenging. Some of the coolest visual tricks include faded wall animations and item descriptions on screen that can be used as augmented reality display diegetic. It’s a contemporary homage to the Silent Hill series similar in style to last year’s SignalisThis is with an apparent stronger emphasis on scripted fights and scares.

What’s also interesting is the game’s inspirations apart from Silent Hill. The game draws upon current issues such as wealth inequality and class conflict in industrialized nations. “There are many narrative reasons I wanted to frame this game in a near-future setting,” Hamley told NME last year. “But to hit home with the horror elements, I wanted to be able to ground it in something familiar. So I’ve modeled the environments after various buildings and locations in my home city of Bristol. This is a metaphor for post Brexit Britain, if you wish. It wouldn’t be far off.”

HollowbodyIt is expected to be available on Windows PCs in the early part of 2024.