Sci-fi horror Impermanence debuts to the world with eerie new reveal trailer

Nothing ever goes wrong when you try to bring back the dead, right? Horror has a long and rich tradition of people fumbling the answer to this question, and developers Bad Choices Loud Noises and Duckosaurus Games are preparing to put their own fresh take on it, with the upcoming sci-fi horror narrative game Impermanence, which just got its first reveal trailer as part of the Future Games Show Summer Showcase.

Wishlist Impermanence on Steam now

It's a story trailer, so while there's not a clear sense of the gameplay of Impermanence yet, we got a lot of indications about what to expect on a narrative level. A grieving father is building some sort of machine to bring back his lost son from beyond the grave (clearly having not read Pet Semetary recently), only for a moth to land on the controls and... Buzz at him with subtitled eldritch imagery?

I'll be honest, I don't have a clue what's going on there and why a bug is talking like it's trying to audition for the Control franchise, but color me intrigued nonetheless. The idea seems to be to focus less on gory horror and more on the kind of uneasy dread and tension that psychological horror so often thrives in.

If that appeals to you, Impermanence is planned for release in 2027 for PC. If you want more details on the game's development, you can follow the developers' social media accounts on X and BlueSky.

If you're looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.