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Surgent Studios and Pocketpair Publishing have announced the former’s brand-new game, a psychological horror game called Dead Take.
Dead Take is a psychological horror game where you play as an actor exploring a dark, spooky mansion, solving puzzles and splicing together video clips to get to the heart of the mansion to find and save your friend. It’s said to be a single-player game “shaped by real experiences in the entertainment industry,” with players able to “[discover] the monstrous cost of creation for yourself.”
Surgent Studios/Pocketpair Publishing
Here’s how Surgent Studios describes the game:
In Dead Take, you play as an actor who becomes uneasy when your friend won’t answer the phone. Delve into the gilded rot of the entertainment industry and show up at the last place he was before he went quiet: a dark, opulent mansion.
Haunted by mysterious humanlike figures, you advance into the house by solving object-based puzzles and splicing together the video clips you find along the way. Oddly quiet for the site of a glamorous party just hours before, the house is now populated by the figures that seem to turn up where you least expect them.
As you advance toward the heart of the mansion, the fate of your friend rests in your hands. Will you find him and uncover the truth about what happened last night?
The game marks the second release for Surgent Studios, the game development and multimedia studio founded and operated by actor Abubakar Salim, best known for his roles in games like Assassin’s Creed Origins, and in television shows like Jamestown, Raised by Wolves, and House of the Dragon. It comes after the studio’s previous game, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, failed to see commercial success despite its critical acclaim, with the studio suffering a wave of layoffs shortly after the game’s release.
“We’re being secretive for a reason,” Salim said in a press release. “The subject matter of this game is delicate, and it hits close to home. When it comes out, and it won’t be long until it does, I want players to think, ‘I can’t believe they actually did this.'”
Dead Take is being published by Pocketpair Publishing, the fairly recently established publishing arm of Pocketpair, the developer of Palworld, which surpassed 32 million players earlier this year. It comes as Pocketpair is embroiled in a legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, with the Pokémon publisher alleging Pocketpair infringed on many of its gameplay patents.
No release date or console platforms have been announced for Dead Take, but the game is currently available to wishlist on Steam, with its release date said to be “coming soon.”
