An old cellphone that reacts to spirits no one else can see sits at the centre of Signal Veil, a newly announced third-person survival horror game from Chilean independent studio Time Hunters and Tokyo-based horror publisher Serafini Productions. The game is in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Players take control of Aki Mizuno, a teenage girl whose mother disappears without a trace. The only thing left behind is that phone, her mother’s final gift. When a string of disappearances begins at Nishikawa High School, Aki finds herself drawn into a mystery buried beneath false memories and silence, which she must piece together through exploration, ritual-like encounters and a mind that grows more fragile as the story goes on. The experience is pitched as a hybrid between psychological terror and emotional storytelling.
The phone is as much a tool as it is a plot device. It signals the presence of supernatural entities through vibrations, static or distortions, its flash can stun enemies, and its camera can reveal hidden objects or imprints. Dealing with a spirit for good takes more than a few well-placed hits, too. Each encounter follows a ritual-like sequence in which Aki must detect the entity, provoke it, stun it, expose its essence and then purge it permanently.
Resources are deliberately thin. Medicine, ammunition and mystical weapons are all scarce, and Aki often has to rely on improvised weapons, so the developers want each fight to reward strategy over brute force. Every entity has its own behaviours, which means observing enemies and using the environment to her advantage will be key. Her sanity adds another layer. As Aki’s mind slips, the world around her changes, enemies become harder to predict and her own fighting grows more desperate.
Exploration uses a classic fixed camera with preset angles that restrict what players can see, an approach inspired by Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Its visual style also seeks to evoke the tension of those classic survival horror titles with a 90s anime aesthetic, drawing inspiration from psychological horror series such as Another and Jujutsu Kaisen.
