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2 months ago
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Teaser trailer is appropriately unrevealing
Image credit: DreadXP
DarkStone Digital, solo developer of The Mortary Assistant, is making a new horror game based on Paramount's Paranormal Activity films. Titled Paranormal Activity: Found Footage, it's being published by DreadXP and features some kind of reactive haunt system, with scares dialling up and down based on your actions. DreadXP have shared a teaser consisting of some crackly logos against a backdrop of radio chatter. Given that this is a Paranormal Activity adaptation, it's possible the footage harbours spooky secrets. You may wish to experiment with turning the brightness up and down, playing the video backwards, or watching it again at the next full moon, perhaps while standing in a cemetery loudly declaring that ghosts aren't real.
Paranormal Activity: Found Footage - Announce Teaser Trailer
Found Footage is out in 2026. Naturally, it draws heavily upon DarkStone founder Brian Clarke's experiences with The Mortuary Assistant: in the announcement release, he observed that "we're taking what we learned during the development of that title and cranking it up with a more reactive and horrifying haunting system".
There's not much to tell at this stage, but you can make some additional connections between The Mortuary Assistant and the ailing film series' claustrophobic premise of keeping house interiors under remote surveillance for sinister goings-on. In Clarke's previous game, you had to perform embalming tasks involving clipboard checklists and computer files alongside rituals to identify and eventually banish various demons. A nasty blend of job sim and smaller scale escape-room-style horror, then, with a story spanning multiple playthroughs. It feels like The Mortuary Assistant's workaday core loops would suit a Paranormal Activity game - perhaps we'll be asked to set up the cameras ourselves.
Posting on Xitter, DarkStone Digital's Brian Clarke noted that The Mortuary Assistant "will still receive its love and I have much deeper plans for the series", but added that the chance to work on Paranormal Activity "was entirely too important to me to pass up as it shaped much of my taste in horror today." Clarke added elsewhere that Found Footage "follows a different style and approach" to Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul, a VR adaptation from VRWERX.
DreadXP have made a name for themselves as publishers of smaller indie horror titles, beginning with their demo-disc-style Dread X Collections. Our Rebecca Jones (RPS in peace) profiled them back in April 2022. At the time, head of productions Ted Hentschke said that "our slate over the next few years will focus much more heavily on original titles and the collections will remain as more of a fun project for our fans and developers."
If you like the sound of all this, you might also enjoy Alexander Chatziioannou's more recent feature on the next wave of horror games from independent studios, which includes some thoughts on fixed camera perspectives from developers like Hollowbody creator Nathan Hamley.
