With Bloober Team’s brilliant Silent Hill 2 Remake finally out, I’ve basically been playing nothing else. As hopelessly bleak as it is, the vibes are simply immaculate in the runup to Halloween, and unlike the original, the gameplay and combat are actually satisfying instead of frustrating. However, there’s a new survival horror game in town giving Silent Hill 2 Remake a serious run for its money: Heartworm, an indie game I’ve had my eyes (and hands) on for more than four years.
I first played Heartworm when its first demo launched as part of the retro-styled Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020, and I remember feeling really good about the atmosphere and overall direction, but also apprehensive about whether it could do justice to the late 90s/early 2000s classics it’s so clearly inspired by. I no longer have those concerns after playing the brand new Heartworm demo as part of Steam Next Fest. Not even a little bit.
Actually, this latest version is one of the most moody, clever, and yes, genuinely scary indie horror games I’ve played in a hot minute. The story about a woman desperate to reunite with her lost loved ones had me instantly hooked, similarly to the way I felt both absorbed and incredibly vulnerable in the small, snowy town in which a house is said to contain a portal to the other side. Its inhabitants, formless humanoids made up of lost signal TV static, are as bad for my blood pressure as the mannequins of Silent Hill.
It’s still early, and obviously I haven’t had the chance to play the full game, which isn’t out until 2025, but I’ve never been more excited about Heartworm than I am now. I just had a great effin’ time with its new demo. I was smiling right from the start menu when I was presented with a list of options to either modernize aspects of the game or keep them faithfully retro. I’m a modern man, so I opted out of tank controls and the pixelated filter, and I toggled on the option that puts you into a first-person perspective when firing your weapon.
…Which is a camera. In a nod to Fatal Frame, your only defense (at least as far as the demo allows) is an old camera that uses rolls of film as ammo. There’s a little reticle you use to target monsters and then you fire off a flash of light and record the bastards’ deaths to film. It takes a few shots though, and with each blast of light the monster dissipates and respawns somewhere else, making combat erratic and tense in innovative way.
Gamepad controls are fully integrated too, which is a lovely quality of life feature for someone who prefers controllers over mouse and keyboard. The handy “survival guide” that walks you through the controls at the start of the demo includes both controller buttons and their mouse and keyboard counterparts so no one is left out.
The only thing Heartworm still has to prove, at least for me, is that it’s the “reverent evolution of 90’s survival horror” it claims to be on Steam. I’m absolutely sold on the “reverent” part. I mean c’mon, it’s a survival horror game about a grief-stricken protagonist traveling to a mysterious town in search of their loved ones and finding it occupied by hostile creatures. Presentation-wise, there’s more in common with fixed-camera Resident Evil, its menus, animations, and perspective bearing an uncanny resemblance to Capcom‘s flagship horror series, but tonally it’s a love letter to Silent Hill.
What I haven’t seen is a whole lot of evolution. In fact, when I’m not busy admiring everything I love about Heartworm, words like ‘derivative’ start to float around my head. I haven’t seen nearly enough to make any definitive judgments, but I do hope the next demo, if there is one, teases a little bit more innovation beyond the unpredictable enemy design I mentioned before.
In the meantime, here are the best horror games to play today.
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