Psine Studios’ upcoming mystery game, The House In The Hollow, is a period piece where players are thrust into a first-person experience where they’re tasked with finding out what happened to an occultist and magician named Francis Barrett, who lived as a recluse in a wooded manor.

The game mostly prides itself on highly detailed environments and near photorealistic rendering. Psine’s Phillip Phar explained in the press release that the concept of the game is themed around feeling as if you are there during that time period, experiencing the world through the lens of someone seeing some of these wondrous and fetching images for the very first time…

“Just like watching a classic horror movie, we wanted the player to feel as if they are being carried back in time, to explore a unique location and an intriguing story, but unlike a movie, give the player the ability to be surrounded by an immersive, interactive, first person world.”

Unfortunately the story trailer is a little too long for its own good, clocking in at a minute and a half but basically only telling you that Francis Barrett went missing for a decade and no one knows where he disappeared to.

It’s no surprise that the trailer wasn’t all that well received, but the second trailer featuring the actual gameplay and exploration offers a little bit more for gamers to sink their teeth into.

It’s three and a half minutes of the Unreal Engine 4-powered mystery game.

Still, it looks more like a walking simulator than an interaction-heavy title.

To be honest, if the game is little more than just a walking sim then I can see people being turned off rather quickly, but if it’s closer to the likes of games such as The Beast Inside or Lust For Darkness, then I could easily see it garnering a small but dedicated audience.

Part of the game’s feature list is that it’s physics-based and contains particle simulation, foliage and wind effects, physical based rendering, as well as realistic cloth movement. Hopefully it’s more about interaction rather than a grand visual tour where you get to see but can’t touch.

The House In The Hollow is a long ways off from release, though, as it’s not expected to arrive until the fourth quarter of 2020.

In the meantime you can wishlist it over on the Steam store or follow the game for further updates and news.