There’s a particular dread that comes from being handed a flashlight that’s already running low, and RESIDUUM, from solo developer Will Nightingale, builds its entire opening stretch around that premise. The first person psychological survival horror game launched today on Steam, dropping players into an underground research facility.
The setup is grimly familiar: you took a job at a facility doing something nobody fully explained, for money you needed badly enough not to ask too many questions, and now whatever experiment was running there has gone wrong in ways the recordings, photographs, and scattered notes only partly explain. All that’s left is a weak flashlight, a faulty heartbeat sensor that doubles as both survival tool and a running reminder of how close you are to not surviving… and whatever else is moving through the dark with you.
Structurally, RESIDUUM plays as a partly open survival horror experience: ration your light, search the facility for keys, supplies, and clues, and work out both how to get out and what happened to whoever came before you. The Steam listing flags low quality depictions of dead bodies and insinuated drug and alcohol use, so this one’s aimed at genre hardened players rather than curious newcomers.
RESIDUUM is out now for Windows via Steam. Its store listing didn’t show a confirmed price at the time of writing, so check the page directly before buying.
