During this year’s PC Gaming Show, we had a peek at the upcoming horror game Decarnation from indie developer Atelier QDB. You play as Gloria, a Parisian cabaret dancer pushed to the brink, as you explore this story-driven adventure mixed with traditional survival horror elements.
Gloria’s career and relationships have tanked when she takes on a new job from an enigmatic patron, kicking off this psychological misadventure spread across the physical world and her own subconscious. As you learn more about her life, you’ll be able to take what you’ve learned and use it to help you defeat the monsters that dwell in her nightmares.
The trouble she faces in her real life creates new things to overcome when she sleeps, but facing these metaphorical monsters will give her the strength to handle her waking problems. Sometimes you’ll be literally fighting these monsters and trying to deal with tricky boss battles, but you’ll need to keep your wits about you even when you’re not being hounded by imaginary creatures if you hope to solve the cryptic puzzles and minigames put in your path.
Minigames run the gamut from wee puzzlers to rhythm challenges, like performing a cabaret, and crop up in both the real world and the illusory one. Her nightmares are pretty rough, too, and I don’t know what this weird Cronenberg-Akira monster is but I want to forget I ever saw it.
Decarnation will be the first game released under the new Shiro Unlimited publishing umbrella. You may be familiar with Shiro as the developer behind games such as WarTales—which, coincidentally, featured in last year’s PC Gaming Show—and Northgard, the Viking strategy game.
You’ll have a little while to wait before you can dive into this narrative horror as Decarnation is set to arrive early in 2023. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer above.