Village Gamer

Newly greenlit on Steam is Vancouver project The Ritual On Weylyn Island, a first person survival horror from indie developer zemaGamez inc., currently raising additional development funds via Kickstarter. Driven by a bold script, amazing visuals, spine-tingling sound design and edge-of-your-seat gameplay, this game takes place on the remote Weylyn Island, where 22 year old Moira Weylyn has travelled to her Grandfather’s home to meet her remaining family members and witness the reading of his last will and testament.

Upon arriving at the Pacific Northwest island, the young heroine discovers that her family has disappeared and a sinister evil has awakened on the island — an evil that begins with a neo-pagan cult and ends with something far more dangerous – something that is ready to consume the world. Moira realizes her very fate lies in solving the larger mystery at the heart of Weylyn Island – a place with an ancient, dark history.

Moira must follow the breadcrumbs left by her family and navigate through the pitfalls of the wild island while avoiding the twisted cult members bent on doing her in. Can she stay alive long enough to reunite with her family and unravel the mystery? That will be up to you, because when you stand against evil, you stand alone!

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSGgdjAksqQ]

The Ritual On Weylyn Island is set in the early 1980’s, and true to the time period, the story and game is devoid of technology. No GPS, no calling for help, no weapons to fight back against the enemy and no easy way out of the situations you’ll find yourself in. You’ll need to stay focused while under intense emotional and physical stress as your enemies try to confuse and kill you.

The main objective of the game is to find your family, collect information and unravel the evil plot that surrounds your bloodline. During the game you can expect to do the following:

• Traverse the vast island and explore its richly-detailed, unique and treacherous environments.
• Solve small puzzles and objectives to progress through the story and reveal what lies ahead.
• Discover and protect family members as you find them during the game.
• Collect tapes and clues left by your Grandfather that add additional layers of backstory to the dark tale.
• Survive the island, as well as the twisted cult members and their demon-possessed followers to reach the end alive.

Weylyn Island is filled with creepy cult members and demon-possessed followers who are led by a satanic necromancer. Not just mindless enemies doing predictable things – each serves a significant and important role in building the story. You can expect both physical and psychological attacks as you work towards your objective. To this end, players will search for family members who have been scattered across the Island, each experiencing their own terrible predicament at the hands of the cult. It will be up to the player to rescue them when possible, as well as keep them safe from harm as they make their way across the island.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtrAEWWYSWA]

The story was written by horror mega-fan and Award-Winning Film Writer / Director Kody Zimmermann. It’s filled with great twists, some subtle homages to classic horror films (for true fans of the genre) and delivers an ending that you’ll never see coming. Kody speaks more to this point in the video above and is featured in an interview on the studio’s development blog.

The developers also believe that audio design in horror games plays a critical role in setting the right mood – or punctuating the right moment. When used correctly, it will get your heart racing – or make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. A talented team of composers, sound designers and engineers will be creating the perfect, dynamic soundtrack to squeeze the most emotional impact out of each new location, scene and event. Plus, at release the game will be voiced in English but feature subtitle options for French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Russian. Ritual on Weylyn Island will be released on PC, Mac and Linux.