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They Are Here: Alien Abduction Horror is a weirdly titled but extremely promising new indie horror game about alien abduction, and well, it's about time!
I was alerted to They Are Here by its developers, a husband and wife duo, on Twitter, who told me the demo has been downloaded 100,000 times and viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube. I can't verify those stats myself, but the demo has seen some viral success thanks to videos from YouTubers like Hollow, jacksepticeye, and others.
I decided to check out the demo for myself, which includes both a prologue set 30 years before the events of the game, as well as a sample of gameplay from the current setting. Both, I'm absolutely thrilled to report, scared the shit out of me.
Some of my favorite horror games ever are ones where I'm being stalked by something extraterrestrial, specifically Alien: Isolation, Dead Space, and Prey. But for years I've been looking for a game about aliens in a more domestic setting as opposed to those set on some sort of futuristic space craft, which seems to be pretty much all of 'em. I'm a big fan of the movie Signs, and I've always hoped for game like that, where you're just a normal, ordinary dude on Earth being terrorized by aliens.
Following the disappointing Greyhill Incident, I thought all hope was lost, but now They Are Here has firmly reinvigorated my interest in this strangely untapped space. I won't spoil anything, but you play as a journalist investigating reports of alien sightings on a farm. Both short demos made terrific use of lighting, including a night vision feature, to create this really foreboding sense of hopelessness in the face of these other-worldly threats, which you seemingly have no tools to fight back against.
From what I played, They Are Here is mostly an exploration-based game where you find clues and snap pictures to record evidence of aliens, compared to the more action-oriented games I mentioned above. There doesn't seem to be any survival or puzzle elements either, although that could change when the full game becomes available. Either way, I know I'm adding this to my list of upcoming horror games I'll be checking out at launch, which right now is only confirmed for PC sometime in 2024.
