Pneumata. It’s in the shadows

Pneumata is a psychological survival horror game developed by ‘Deadbolt Interactive’ and published by ‘Perp Games‘. Pneumata is said to be coming out the 23rd of February 2024 on the Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, PS5 and PC. X35 Earthwalker has experienced many horror games and their sub genres. Judgement of these are included. Pneumata is going for a little hybrid here. Let’s take a look.

Pneumata is set in a place called clover Hill. Things aren’t fine around here… otherwise this wouldn’t be a horror game. The residents are either missing or straight up dying. Chopped into pieces. Yeah, blood is being spilled in clover Hill. Players are the detective who must figure out what’s going on here and solve the situation. On top of that, the detective has problems with his memory. You just “recover your fragmented memories”. Listen to this, “Something happened on that island that your mind is protecting you from. Your memories fractured and fleeting, but nonetheless one thing is true: “Someone, or something killed Jamie””.

Things get even worse in Pneumata. There’s darkness here and we aren’t talking about the murders. There’s horrors moving about in the shadows. The combination of murders plus the horrors in the shadows plus the missing and fragmented memories will make players questions what’s real and what’s not. This should be the psychological survival horror hybrid. Word on the streets is that there’s even alternate worlds too. This should make everything even more complex.

We checked out some Pneumata gameplay and it’s what we expected. Our main ingredient looks like the survival horror aspects. Players will need to scavenge for supplies and weapons. Even with those weapons you can’t fight everything. Your best weapon might be to hide or even run… like the coward you are. The biggest questions is off course the difficulty and how scarce the resources are. It’s different and cool that the apartment building is the main field here. It also has hidden areas and pathways so keep eyes open, if you can. Detective work is actually here in the form of crime scenes, finding clues and piecing things together. Pneumata wants the gamers too survive long enough to solve the mystery.

Overall Pneumata looks like a good game so far. We hear and like that we hear that the AI will be diverse; and that some of them are unpredictable. We hope they successfully pull that off. Unpredictable enemies will make things scarier and force players to use their heads more and think fast. We hear that enemies can even use the environment itself to mess with you through distractions. The goods are here but must be arranged and delivered right. Last of all the enemies need to actually be scary and intimidating. They need to be a problem. Too many horror games are too easy, not scary enough, lack force or wimpy enemies. The developers ‘Deadbolt Interactive’ have done a very good job so far. We at X35 Earthwalker will keep an ear open for this game. Now Pneumata may have a blood filled apartment building but it burns down in the presence of… the ‘Earth Walk!’