Devlog #1: Characters and Sanity

First and foremost, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to those of you who have patiently awaited updates for SOS Recordings and shown us your unwavering support. It truly means the world to us, and it fuels everything we do behind the scenes. Before we dive deeper into what we’ve been carefully crafting, let’s bring everyone up to speed and watch our latest trailer, shall we?

SOS Recordings is an investigative psychological horror set in modern-day Japan, inspired by a real long-unsolved case.

Two hikers vanished amidst a violent storm in the twisting, ancient forests of Hokkaido. During the search-and-rescue operation, a police helicopter spotted something entirely inexplicable: a colossal SOS sign meticulously assembled from exactly nineteen birch trees, each precisely five meters long, arranged flawlessly into three letters. It was proven that the missing hikers had nothing to do with it. So who did? And why?

You step into the shoes of Riku, a Japanese detective assigned to unravel this baffling mystery. Scour the scene, analyze scattered evidence, and piece together fragmented truths while battling creeping paranoia and false memories that threaten to cloud your judgment.

Fortunately, you won’t be walking this path alone. Meet Connor, your sharp-eyed partner and trusted friend. Together, you’ll shine your flashlight to disperse the shadows that desperately cling to the mystery. Are you prepared to do whatever it takes to uncover the truth?

As you navigate low-poly landscapes modeled after of real maze-like woodlands, rushing rivers, and gravel-strewn serene meadows, you’ll need to safeguard your most vital asset — your own sanity.

Your mental state will fluctuate based on every choice you make and every step you take. Discovering hidden clues, witnessing inexplicable phenomena, and deciding which evidence to trust will all shift your sanity meter in distinct ways.

You’ll gauge your sanity by the growing frequency of hallucinations and unsettling “glitches” that warp your surroundings. Push it too far, and the world around you will begin to unravel and distort.

But if you step too far into the insanity and grow too careless and let your sanity shatter completely, you will receive the punishment: your mind will slip into the limbo, where you’ll have to confront sins of your past. Whether you’ll be able to face them or not, the consequences will become irreversible.

Navigating that fragile balance between dread, madness and discovery is exactly what we’ve been fine-tuning, and we can’t wait for you to experience it firsthand. But before we step back into the never-ending cycle of development and refinement, we want to take a moment to share out gratitude towards such a warm reception of our project.

Once again, thank you each and every one of you for standing by us and showing such genuine interest in our game. We truly hope you’re as eager to step into the mystery as we are to bring it to life. Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes updates, detailed devlogs and teasers over the coming months.

Get ready to dive in, Detectives.

PackDev & CRITICAL REFLEX