The demo for this upcoming horror-RPG-FPS built in the Doom engine might already be the most terrifying thing I play all year, and I can't wait for more

pcgamer.com:

I knew I was in for a stomach-churning time with Divine Frequency's demo after I finally acquired my first weapon. I came up to a fenced hallway in the game's vast industrial underbelly and spied an ominous figure looming way down the hall. The light above it cut out, I turned around, and there it was: a horrible faceless mannequin an eyelash's length away.

I panicked, started blasting, and swore so loud my girlfriend heard down the hall. Sike! The mannequin is actually completely harmless, and I just wasted precious ammo and weapon durability on a prank. Divine Frequency punked me.

This horror-FPS-RPG launched its first Steam demo during 2023's Realms Deep event, a former mod project now getting reworked into a full game. It's built on GZDoom, the ubiquitous source port of id Software's classic, and it's one of those Doom-based games that makes you say «wait, you can do this in the Doom engine?»

It's looking like a game with some capital-L Lore, casting you as some kind of agent plumbing the depths of a vast and terrible nightmare realm. There were peeks at some distinctly SCP-flavored background text here and there giving that delicious contrast of banal agency-speak trying to wrangle the unknowable horrors around you. It never felt like I was getting beat over the head with all that Lore, but instead it gave me the great feeling of witnessing the tip of a storytelling iceberg.

The shooting and exploration reminds me most of System Shock 2, of all things. You creep along these utterly vile, rusted underhalls ready for freakish creatures to jump out at you from any corner⁠—these things always seem to be positioned right in your blind spot on entering a room. They go down with just one or two hits from the satisfyingly