Survival horror Maid Of Sker's follow-up is a co-op shooter, for some reason
Made of scare
Last year, Wales Interactive released Maid Of Sker, a first-person survival horror set in a creepy hotel. It's your typical kinda horror experience - a singleplayer romp making you solve puzzles and linger in horrible places while trying to avoid spooks. You might expect that a second Sker-y game would follow a similar formula. Nope. This weekend, the developers announced Sker Ritual, a co-op shooter in which you'll need to survive an onslaught of ghouls.
Wales Interactive call it a "spiritual successor", where up to four players can team up to survive against what looks like hordes of Quiet Ones (zombie-like folks introduced in Maid Of Sker).
Sker Ritual is set to release in spring 2022 on Steam, as well as PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. That's about all the info Wales Interactive have provided at the moment, but I have so many more questions.
Did they plan on going in this direction all along? Was the switch to co-op horror inspired by the likes of Phasmophobia? Did they realise that Maid Of Sker was a bit average and wham guns in to liven things up? I must know.
In her Maid Of Sker review, Alice Bell enjoyed the atmosphere and scenery, but thought it was a little lacklustre overall. She felt like it had borrowed the wrong parts of other horrors.
"This isn't a game made for jump scare compilations on YouTube, nor is it suffused with a creeping, lingering dread," she wrote. "Instead, it lands somewhere in between the weird keys and puzzles of Resident Evil, and the quiet, existential dread of something more like Soma, resulting in a lot of waiting around."
I would imagine there'd be less waiting around in a shooter, so perhaps the new style will suit old Sker. I really enjoy co-op horror stuff, so I'm quite looking forward to seeing what they have in store.