Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife

The game takes place in a mansion, and focuses on first-person exploration and stealth.

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is a horror game, and is played with a virtual reality (VR) headset. The game is narrative-driven, and is focused on exploration and stealth in a first-person perspective;[1][2][3] although not a focus of the game, it also features combat.[3]

The player takes the role of a wraith,[4] who grows and gains new abilities as they explore the game world,[3] which can be used to interact physically with the environment.[3][5] Abilities include wraithgrasp, allowing the player to manipulate objects from a distance and to change their environment; sharpened senses, allowing them to hear whispers in the distance and to track other spirits; and insubstantiality, allowing them to walk through walls.[4]

The game is set in the modern Barclay Mansion in the World of Darkness, an urban fantasy setting shared with games including Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, where monsters secretly exist within human society.[1][6] The story follows a recently dead person's spirit in the Shadowlands – a reflection of the land of the living, where the dead exist unseen, side by side with the living[4] – who uncovers mysteries of the afterlife after having died in the mansion,[7][3] including the reason for their death.[4]

In the beginning of the game, the protagonist awakes without remembering how they died, and is guided into the mansion by their shadow[3] – a sinister voice representing a wraith's self-destructive aspects and dark subconscious.[3][4] As they explore the mansion, they meet other apparitions and specters.[4]

Afterlife is developed by the Swedish studio Fast Travel Games, and is directed by Erik Odeldahl,[1] designed by Daniel Kihlgren Kallander, and programmed by Casper Renman.[5] It is based on White Wolf Publishing's 1994 tabletop role-playing game Wraith: The Oblivion;[1] and is the first time World of Darkness is adapted as a VR game.[6] It is however still designed to be accessible to players who are new to Wraith: The Oblivion and World of Darkness, intended to be enjoyable by fans of story-driven horror in general and serving as an introduction to the setting.[5]

Odeldahl was influenced by horror games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and Alien: Isolation (2014), and felt that their type of horror would work well in a VR game;[1] the developers described the horror design as psychological and "under-your-skin" rather than reliant on jump scares.[5] Odeldahl had wanted to create this in the form of a World of Darkness game, and thought that Wraith: The Oblivion was particularly well suited, due to its mystique and the richness of its setting.[1] The particulars of VR influenced the game's design: whereas other exploration-based games often let the player find and read documents throughout the game world as a way to learn backstory, this would be less doable in a VR game. The developers also found that cinematic cutscenes do not normally work well in VR, and had to find another way of handling them.[3]

Although Paradox Interactive, the owner of the World of Darkness series, were the ones who approached Fast Travel Games about developing a Wraith: The Oblivion game, Odeldahl had thought about adapting Wraith before, and had written a concept document for a Wraith video game adaptation when Fast Travel Games was formed, although Afterlife ended up using a different concept.[5] As he saw Wraith: The Oblivion as being about personal horror, this was also used as the starting point for Afterlife's story,[5] with the game seeking to explore what it means to be human by letting the player take the perspective of a monster.[1] The game is not designed to follow all gameplay rules from the tabletop game, but does use its lore.[5]

The game was announced in June 2020 with a teaser trailer, and was unveiled at Gamescom in August 2020 with a gameplay trailer.[1] It is set for release in early 2021 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4, with support for the headsets HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR, and Valve Index.[4]

Destructoid liked the game's concept, hoping that the developers would succeed in realizing it,[2] and Rock, Paper, Shotgun considered it a game of interest for those who can handle horror games in VR.[8] FZ looked forward to the game, calling VR horror an effective concept.[9]

• Official website