Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios and Palworld publisher Pocketpair have revealed Dead Take, a psychological horror game that’s all about “the gilded rot of the entertainment industry”.
As first revealed back in January, the game will be the inaugural effort of Pocketpair’s new publishing wing, and more games will be coming from this arm of the studio in the future as well.
Dead Take is described by Surgent and Pocketpair as a “first-person psychological horror” in which you play as an actor who must look for their missing friend in a “dark, opulent mansion” filled with “mysterious humanlike figures”.
In gameplay terms, you’ll be solving “object-based puzzles” as you explore the mansion, and you’ll also be discovering video clips that you’ll need to edit together if you want to “unravel what really happened within these walls”.
Surgent is promising “opulent and meticulously hand-crafted 3D rooms” filled with “tools and props inspired by real-world film sets”, as well as a score by Helldivers 2 composer Ross Tregenza. I’d imagine his work on this one will be significantly less bombastic than on Arrowhead’s game, though.
The announcement of Dead Take will doubtless come as a relief for Surgent Studios. Back in October, the studio announced that it had put its team “on notice for redundancy” following disappointing sales of the Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: Zau, which served as Surgent’s first game.
Surgent is also currently talking to other publishers about funding its other projects, including Project Uso, which it describes as an “Afro-gothic action-horror RPG set in the Tales of Kenzera universe”.
Whether or not that project comes to fruition remains to be seen. For now, though, you’ll have to content yourself with Dead Take, which you can wishlist on Steam right now. There’s no word yet on whether the game will be coming to consoles or not.
