Silent Hill 2 Remake Studio Says It’s Done Making “Walking Sim” Horror Games

Bloober Team, the Polish studio famous for games such as Layers of Fear, The Medium, and the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, said it will no longer make the sort of psychological “walking simulator” horror games it’s largely focused on to date. Instead, the studio will shift into “mass-market horror,” which presumably means games with more combat and gameplay mechanics than its past works.

Speaking to Engadget, studio co-founder Piotr Babieno said the team is moving into what is internally referred to as “Bloober Team 3.0,” with the recent reimagined Layers of Fear (2023) marking the end of Bloober Team 2.0, which itself began with 2016’s Layers of Fear.

“We focused on the story, we focused on the mood, we focused on the quality of graphics and music, but we didn’t put a lot of attention on the gameplay mechanics,” Babieno told the outlet. “It wasn’t our target. But we decided that there was a ceiling that we couldn’t break if we did not deliver something fresh, something new.”

Now, Bloober is ready to try something different. “We decided that our next titles should be much more mass-market oriented,” Babieno said. “We’d like to talk with more people. We’d like to deliver our ideas, with our DNA, not by environment or storytelling, but by action. So all of our future titles will have a lot of gameplay mechanics. They will be much bigger.”

It wasn’t just Layers of Fear that exemplified this now-past version of the studio. Virtually all of its games since 2016 have been of the “walking sim” mold, from Observer and Blair Witch to Layers of Fear 2 and The Medium, the latter of which came closest to having gameplay elements that go beyond simply moving through a world, interacting with light puzzles, and maybe occasionally dodging actual unscripted threats. Game-over screens have been rare in Bloober Team’s games to date, as they’ve played more like A-to-B horror museums rather than survival-horror games, but that trend will likely come to an abrupt end with the launch of the Silent Hill 2 remake, to which it’s been given the reins by Konami, though no release date has yet been revealed.

Beyond the lofty remake project, horror games will continue to be the focus for the studio, Babieno said, even as the studio reimagines itself for a second time. “I would like to deliver some new milestones of horror, our niche.”