“This is Agnes.” I’m gawking at the most beautifully horrifying hand-painted statue I’ve ever seen in my life as James Macleod, Ritual Tides creative director and CEO of developer studio Vertpaint, beams with pride. Agnes looks like a cross between a humanoid centipede, a fleshy slug with a burst rear end, and the giant baby monster from Resident Evil Village. In short, she’s gorgeous. .

But even without Agnes’ beady yellow eyes watching expectantly from the table, Ritual Tides has been among my most-wanted upcoming horror games for years. All I know going into this preview is what was given up in its brief 2024 teaser trailer – a title, a genre, and some cryptic ink-on-paper artwork – so I’m desperate to find out what kind of nightmare awaits.

Then Macleod throws a curveball: Gamescom chaos has descended and the demo build is fundamentally broken. Luckily, he has a backup plan in the form of a level design build, so I can at least get a feel for what the ex-Rockstar developer has been cooking up since shipping GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2.

“So,” Macleod begins. “Are you a Resident Evil or Silent Hill fan?”

Strange shores

Macleod opens the level build to pan across a gritty grey coastal landscape, my first introduction to the fictional town of Hortus, and I lean closer to the screen instinctively.

I spot flavors of the two survival horror franchises he mentioned in each frame, because yes, I am a huge fan of both. Ritual Tides has the heavy fog-blanketed gloom of Silent Hill, the visceral, first-person immersion of Resident Evil 7 and Village, and a “super dark” narrative that had Macleod drop everything to write it.

“Getting a publisher for this is really tricky – the subject matter is so bad,” he tells me. “You play this woman who wakes up on a beach, and you’re uncovering her past and this mysterious island history. But the more you learn, it’s a horrific history – especially if you’re a woman.”

From Silent Hill f’s powerful abstraction of a woman’s coming-of-age to satirical splatter flicks like The Substance, female-centric body horror is having a well-earned moment. I recall my Agnes statue in all her bloated, man-eating, afterbirth-like glory, and sense its presence in Ritual Tides, too.

Having grown up with five sisters, Macleod explains how the game helped him occupy a different perspective when considering what horror, danger, and safety feels like to different people – specifically, to women versus men. “Me and my sister were walking back from the pub, and she was saying ‘I can’t go down that [dark alley] route’,” he recalls. “And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ I just walk around like a complete idiot. They were talking to me about this, and I thought, ‘I’ve got such a lovely concept for a game here’.”

It’s the little things

Ritual Tides sounds like a horror game from a place of kinship, exploring the harsh reality shared by billions of people who don’t have the luxury of feeling safe in the shadows. But in true survival horror spirit, when it comes to combat, its amnesiac heroine keeps it old-school.

Macleod hands the controller to me as he steers the character onto a beach, warning me that some extra enemies might accidentally spawn into this rougher demo build. Luckily, I have a trusty melee weapon at hand – though Macleod mentions that there is indeed a durability system in this game, so my weapon won’t last forever.

“Running away is the call, really,” Macleod says between laughs as I beat a giant hideous bug – imagine if a facehugger and a scorpion hooked up – to death with my bat. “She’s not a military expert. If she’s picking up a really heavy nine-pound gun, just like I would, she’s not doing it with one hand.” I get to experiment a little with the game’s weighty weapons system in a nearby cave, and can attest to the palpable recoil of each and every shot – though I spend so much time chatting with Macleod that my session ends soon after.

Getting into that cave was most interesting to me, though. Ritual Tides features a super precise climbing mechanic involving holding down the left or right triggers to grab or let go of a handhold, adding to the oppressive, visceral gloom that punctuates each moment and makes it feel like a battle.

The sparse HUD deepens that sense of immersion as Ritual Tides finds innovative ways out of some of survival horror’s biggest clichés; a chalky residue left by sea salt, presumably, leaves white tips on stones and boulders as the game’s answer to yellow paint. These markings indicate rocky surfaces that can be mantled up or across, but still belong to the world itself. Paired with the stunning photorealistic environmental textures, Ritual Tides might be the most painstakingly detailed horror game I’ve seen in years.

I might not have experienced as much hands-on time with Ritual Tides as other lucky Gamescom attendees, but vibes are all I needed. Macleod’s vision shines, even in a rough build that was never intended for the media’s eyes. I’m eagerly awaiting the day Vertpaint see fit to unleash its final form – though as level design builds go, this one was pretty spectacular.

Silent Hill Townfall’s atmosphere is spot-on, but slow-burn terrors leave a tepid first impression