Developer Supermassive Video games actually made their mark on the horror recreation panorama with 2015’s Till Daybreak, however the Dark Pictures Anthology actually introduced the warmth by providing gaming’s closest analog to Netflix’s Black Mirror sequence. With the newest installment on the manner, the builders have plans for an formidable return that lastly ventures into sci-fi horror whereas additionally placing gamers in additional direct management of the tense encounters that await the characters on this darkish story.
At Summer season Recreation Fest 2025, we obtained to play a notably fateful encounter from the upcoming Directive 8020, which continues the Dark Pictures saga. We additionally noticed simply how the sci-fi horror journey recreation mixes issues up with extra real-time gameplay encounters that deliver the sequence and its sturdy narrative hooks nearer to a true survival horror expertise.
Going down in the far future, the place Earth is on the snapping point, a crew of scientists and house colonists journey to a distant planet poised to change into humanity’s subsequent residence. However as you’d guess for a horror recreation, the planet is residence to a different malevolent entity, and the crew is pressured to outlive in opposition to a mysterious alien presence that may mutate and take the type of any residing particular person on board their ship.
Actress Lashana Lynch – seen in The Day of the Jackal and Captain Marvel – leads the solid of characters as the pilot of the ship, and her early scenes in Directive 8020 make her such a compelling lead on this bleak story. The sport leans into related themes of paranoia, isolation, and concern of the unknown – which makes for a superb setup for a Dark Pictures recreation. The builders had been notably impressed by sci-fi movies like Occasion Horizon, Alien, and John Carpenter’s The Factor, which helped set up the fashion of horror and sense of dread that Directive 8020 goes for.
In line with recreation director Will Doyle, who guided me by way of the SGF demo, Directive 8020 will nonetheless characteristic lots of the hallmarks of a Dark Pictures expertise. Nonetheless, it is going to additionally mark the begin of extra energetic gameplay sequences and selections that goal to extend the concern issue inside this prolonged episode.
“I’ve had this concept for extra real-time threats in my thoughts for a very long time and all through season one in every of the Dark Pictures, and the essential cause we wished to do it was to extend the concern issue for the video games,” mentioned the recreation director. “There’s nothing extra scary than once you’re in direct management and the creatures try to hunt you down and kill you. That will get your coronary heart pumping, and that was a important a part of our motivation. We additionally wished to increase our viewers with extra participating gameplay. It is nonetheless a cinematic, story-driven recreation, however it does have moments the place you make these selections and actions with extra direct management.”
I obtained to see this real-time motion sequence throughout a story phase the place the Captain and one other crew member had been confronted by their alien impostors. Taking part in as the second crew member, the imposter mutates into a grotesque monster, and I’ve to evade it from inside the upkeep space of the ship. This performed out in a tense and unnerving stealth sequence that felt just like Useless Area or Resident Evil, which lends Directive 8020 a traditional survival horror-like really feel. As that is a Dark Pictures recreation, everlasting demise is a factor, and if I hadn’t gotten this character out away from his imposter, the essential story would have advanced otherwise.
Nevertheless, Directive 8020 heightens the sense of paranoia and stress when making fateful survival selections. On condition that Supermassive Video games’ pedigree of horror journey video games is about making selections to maintain a group of survivors and mates alive to the finish of the story – the added twist in Directive 8020’s story along with your crew being changed by alien imposters presents an unsettling wrinkle.
A fateful second occurred when the Captain returned to the crew and needed to determine the place to shoot a crew member who had seemingly are available contact with the alien entity. Very like the video games from the builders, these flashpoint moments are amongst the most consequential factors in the story. With out giving freely spoilers, I made a resolution that I’d come to remorse. Nonetheless, in keeping with the recreation director, these moments will also be rolled again utilizing the turning level system – which acts as an non-obligatory story tracker and rewind system, permitting gamers to view completely different moments and select a completely different path if they need.
Thus far, Directive 8020 is ready to be a welcome return to the Dark Pictures sequence. And with the give attention to giving gamers extra direct management of the motion whereas additionally heightening the sense of mistrust in your dwindling social gathering of survivors, the subsequent recreation appears to be like to supply one in every of the extra distinctive and game-changing episodes the sequence has seen but.