Ghostly horror set on an alien world, Sylvio: Black Waters arrives in 2024

The next game in the Sylvio series is on the way, set to throw players into an alien world filled with specters of the past.

Talk about a genre mashup

We’re not all that familiar with Sylvio as a set of games, so this might be old news to those who are. But all the same, we can’t get over the fact that the upcoming Sylvio: Black Waters is essentially a ghost story set on an alien planet.

And for that matter, it’s one that works in a version of a very real-world ghost-hunting tool: EVP. Electronic Voice Phenomena, for the uninitiated, is the theory that variating white noise channels on a device like a radio will actually pick up voices from the dead. Whether these are ‘intelligent’ spirits or just echoes of the past is up in the air, but there is actual field research that does have some interesting results that cannot all be discounted.

Showcased yesterday at the DreadXP event, Sylvio: Black Waters translates this mechanic to a kind of handheld TV set. You tune the device, in the game, to pick up on ghosts of the past. Though actually, not all of what you can hear are echoes, as there does appear to be at least one aware shade amongst them…

Sylvio: Black Waters is an atmospheric first-person horror game that strands players on an enigmatic alien planet where the ghosts of the past hold the clues to its secrets. In this unfamiliar world that bears an uncanny similarity to Earth, players will discover a mysterious device that allows them to commune with spirits. One such voice that echoes from the device comes from a man named Lee, who claims to be the sole survivor of this place. 

DreadXP press release

From indie developer Stroboskop, Sylvio: Black Waters is looking towards a console and PC (Steam) release some time in 2024.