Summary
Aired as part of the preshow for Gamescom 2024’s Opening Night Live, the gameplay trailer for developer Pulsatrix Studios’AILAshowcased a frighteningly original spin on survival horror. While the brief and bloody trailer featured genre tropes like eerie enemies and crumbling castles, it’s the premise in which they’re presented that makesAILAlook so unique. Placing players in the role of a game tester exploring these unsettling environments through the lenses of a VR headset, this indie title’s mix of terror and technology looks to be following inBlack Mirror’s surreal, sci-fi footsteps.
Although the grisly gameplay on display in its Gamescom trailer was decidedly more macabre than the cerebral horror at the heart of manyBlack Mirrorepisodes,AILAis clearly taking some cues from the hit show. Just asBlack Mirroroften highlights the unexpected terrors unleashed by rapidly advancing technology,AILAhopes to show the horrors that can happen when virtual reality becomes far too real. If Pulsatrix can deliver on this pulse-pounding premise and deliver a game that embraces both its sci-fi and horror influences, it could makeAILAone of thescariest survival horror titlesin years.
AILA Offers a Dark Take on Black Mirror’s Familiar Formula
Whereas evenBlack Mirror’s most unsettling episodestend to rely more on building up tension than body counts,AILAappears to be taking a much darker approach to sci-fi horror. From a character painfully pulling themselves off a cross to corridors filled with corpses, the Gamescom trailer featured a deluge of dark and disturbing scenes. This emphasis on violence and viscera doesn’t meanAILAwon’t offer up someBlack Mirror-esque critiques of technology, though.
According to an overview provided onAILA’s website, developer Pulsatrix wants to use its upcoming survival horror game to examine the impact thatincreased interactions with AIcould have on humanity. Although forcing players to fight through hordes of horrifying enemies might seem like an odd way to approach such a heady concept, one ofAILA’s core gameplay mechanics offers an intriguing way to explore its central theme.
Players Shape Their Own Horror Experience in AILA
Rather than subjecting gamers to only one sort of scare throughout its runtime,AILAappears to be aiming to deliver a more wide-ranging horror experience. To this end,AILA’s Steam page states that players will experience multipledifferent genres of horroras they progress through the game’s various virtual worlds. What makes this genre-hopping approach especially interesting is that players will play a role in deciding the sorts of scary scenarios they experience, which could provideAILAwith a high level of replayability compared to some other horror titles.
Sticking withAILA’s premise of beta testingAI-generated games, players will select from a series of prompts before each stage that help determine how the level plays out. From psychological horror to the sorts of action-oriented fare popularized by games likeResident Evil 4, the overview provided onAILA’s official website suggests that players will have numerous options when it comes to shaping their horror experience. How and if these choices will affect the ways in which the game’s virtual worlds bleed into the “real” one as hinted at in the trailer’s closing moments, though, remains to be seen.
If Pulsatrix can successfully blend the same sort of suspense and horror it delivered with its previous game, 2022’screepyFOBIA St. Dinfna Hotel, with the sci-fi stylings ofBlack Mirror,gamers may be in for a treat. While plenty of questions remain about its overall structure and the extent to which players’ choices will actually influence their gameplay experience,AILA’s attempt to intertwine technology and terror could make it a truly unique and unsettling survival horror experience.
