THE INPATIENT

Developer Supermassive Games Publisher SIE Format PSVR Release TBA

First came campy teen slasher Until Dawn, then PSVR horror-coaster spin-off

Rush Of Blood – yet Supermassive still isn’t done with the scares. It’s back to the butterfly effect for The Inpatient, a psychological horror set 60 years before the events of Until Dawn in the Blackwood Sanatorium asylum in which Supermassive’s BAFTA-winning horror was partially set. If it doesn’t sound terribly original, that’s because it isn’t. Our demo soon reveals the triple whammy of amnesiac protagonist, flashbacks and cheap (but effective) jump scares. Dialogue choices are made using head-tracking controls, with key decisions leading to different outcomes at the end of the three-hour runtime. There’s a glimmer of proper dread when our left ‘leg’ is punctured by a syringe – but it’s not the first time we’ve had something stabbed into our thigh in VR. Capcom’s Kitchen demo still gives us nightmares; hopefully Supermassive has something new to bring to Resident Evil 7’ s heaving table of virtual-reality horrors.