I wrote an entire paen to the Silent Hill series after the sad news that the series' next game was cancelled. Horror video games have definitely lost something in recent years thanks to commercial constraints and a culture shift toward direct action and away from mystery—which is why promising new ones get genre fans easily excited.
Joe Skrebels has the latest interview on Allison Road, a photorealistic horror game that's being called a "spiritual successor" to P.T.—the stunning "playable teaser" that had everyone so eager for the doomed launch of Silent Hills in the first place (this lovely critique of P.T. helps explain its unnerving brilliance).
In the interview, project lead Christian Kessler tells Skrebels that only the atmosphere resembles P.T.—Kessler plans to avoid that game's abstract surrealism in favor of an atmospheric exploration experience influenced by house-centric storyteller Gone Home.
Allison Road never meant to be an heir. But the way it looks so far—bleak color palette, frightening shapes waiting at the ends of long, poorly-lit corridors—easily puts one in mind. And as if an antidote to the bureaucracy and the secrecy of old-world game development and how it's crushed fans and creatives alike, Kessler is offering piqued potential players a transparent look at the game's development on a public Allison Road Facebook page. You can keep up to date til the game's scheduled 2016 launch on PC. Supposedly there might be an Oculus Rift version but seriously who would be up for that oh god
Here's Kessler offering an early (by now dated) look at the beginnings of the first "level":
