The Mortuary Assistant studio shadow drops Playable Archive, a free horror game from a cancelled project

DarkStone Digital and DreadXP released Playable Archive on Steam for free on 26 October. It is a 30 to 60 minute horror piece with no saves, polished up from a game that was meant to be the studio'...

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DarkStone Digital, the studio behind The Mortuary Assistant, put out a new horror game with no warning on 26 October, and it costs nothing. Playable Archive is published by DreadXP and is free on Steam for Windows.

It is short by design. The store page says it runs 30 to 60 minutes, has no save system and has to be played in one sitting.

A project laid to rest

The game comes out of something bigger that did not survive. In a post on Steam signed Brian, the developer explains that the project they had spent the past few years on, meant to be their next major title, was cancelled, even after a good reception at PAX earlier in the year. Burnt out, they expected it to sit on a shelf for good. Then DreadXP suggested releasing what was there. The post calls that a way of laying the project to rest rather than leaving it as a lingering ghost, and admits that a good deal of work was left on the cutting room floor. Brian adjusted and polished what remained so it could go out in time for Halloween, and says plans for something new are next.

What is in the archive

The framing is a leak. An anonymous whistleblower has passed on an archive of footage and material about a New England couple who find a mysterious object while renovating their home, and the report notes that no such object was recovered with the footage. The Steam page promises demonic rituals, talking to the dead and multiple timelines. The screenshots show a gutted house lit by lamps, a chalk circle with candles on the floor, and a camcorder screen reading NO TAPE beside a blank mini DV cassette.

PC Gamer sums it up as PT crossed with an episode of Law and Order. Steam's content notes list strong language, violence, murder and references to the occult. The minimum spec asks for a GeForce GTX 960, 6 GB of RAM and 2 GB of disk space, and the game is in English only.

The Mortuary Assistant came out on Steam on 2 August 2022.

Sources

Image: Image: DarkStone Digital / DreadXP