Indie team Talha Kaya and Jack King-Spooner, known for their surreal, stop-motion animated games, are going for the threepeat: Their third new game in as many years is Abide, an unnerving horror-mystery set in a sinister country retreat for mentally unwell patients.
“You are staying at the St. Boniface retreat situated in the secluded and idyllic countryside,” the devs wrote by way of introduction. “There are mysteries here. Gruesome mysteries.” Our time at St. Boniface will be split in a day-night cycle, with social interactions, chores, and investigations preceding evenings of run-and-hide horror reminiscent of the Amnesia series.
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“One of the rules of the house is that one mustn’t leave their room at night,” wrote Talha & Jack Co “So of course you feel obliged. Your goal is to sneak, spy, survive and access places locked in the daytime.”
It’s all brought together by the pair’s signature art style: Real clay sculptures handmade by King-Spooner and digitized into 3D models. The 3D part is a first for the pair, who previously worked with 2D sprites in 3D environments, similar to the original Doom. In Judero and Mashina, the exaggerated, occasionally misshapen creatures were by turns endearing and unsettling—here, it’s all horror.
Most of your fellow clients look to be more grounded than King-Spooner’s previous creations, but that pivot to more realistic designs adds its own uncanny effect. It’s all set against a backdrop of bucolic British countryside and depressing office chic: Drop ceilings, fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, and faux-wood.
Abide promises to go to some dark places: The trailer shows flashes of claymation gore that had me a bit queasy, while Talha & Jack Co warn of heavy adult themes, believing horror should be “grossly fun but also stomach-churningly appalling.” The duo expressed some concern over going the way of Horses, the experimental horror game delisted from Steam and the Epic Store. “We can’t make this without your support,” the pair wrote. “Horror seems to be under pressure from censorship, some subtle and some blatant.”
Abide is currently fundraising on Kickstarter, just over halfway to a $34,000 goal with 18 days left to go. I still have to check out Mashina, Talha & Jack Co’s 2025 Wall-E-like adventure game about robots rebuilding on a polluted world, but Druidic adventure Judero was one of my favorite games of 2024.
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