The Park is a short horror game set in The Secret World's universe

Park

Roller coasters are pretty scary. Some of them go fast, some of them go upside down. And some of them make your son, Callum, disappear. Well, maybe not the roller coaster itself, but in The Park, a new single-player horror game from Funcom, you play as a mother whose son goes missing in a creepy amusement park. It’s their first single-player game since 2006’s Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and draws upon the existing narrative universe in their MMO The Secret World.

Funcom CEO Rui Casais implies The Park might not actually be the last in potential series of short, single-player experiments in the press release: "[It’s] actually the outcome of what started with a small group of developers experimenting with new concepts and looking at how we could draw upon the universes we have built for our massively multiplayer online games and expand upon them into smaller-scale single-player games.”

While the trailer and release don’t detail how The Park will play, I’m into the premise and idea of pulling stories from existing universes as a place to experiment with shorter narrative games. The Park comes out this October.

James Davenport

James is stuck in an endless loop, playing the Dark Souls games on repeat until Elden Ring and Silksong set him free. He's a truffle pig for indie horror and weird FPS games too, seeking out games that actively hurt to play. Otherwise he's wandering Austin, identifying mushrooms and doodling grackles. 

Latest in Horror
One of Repo's player characters, resembling a yellow pedal bin with googly eyes, encounters a skeletal, open mouthed face with glowing yellow eyes.
After REPO 'kinda blew up', its developer asks the community for advice on how to make matchmaking lobbies
R.E.P.O. screenshots
REPO is my new favourite co-op horror game, which combines Lethal Company's looting loop with Content Warning's zany monsters
Blood Typers
Blood Typers is a budget-priced fusion of Typing of the Dead and co-op survival horror
Phasmophobia Bleasdale Farm rework images
Phasmophobia is getting a big rework for one of its oldest maps, turning the Bleasdale Farmhouse into a horrifying and confusing maze
A ferocious fish-man
Frogwares shows off The Sinking City 2's first in-game footage and launches a Kickstarter safety net: 'After 3 years of this horrid war hanging over our daily lives, we've learned to adapt'
Image of Pinhead from Dead by Daylight
'He came. And now he must go,' and that's why Pinhead is leaving Dead by Daylight in April
Latest in News
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Go ahead and complain the discounts aren't as steep as they used to be, but Steam just had its biggest year ever for seasonal sales
Valve Steam Deck OLED handheld PC
'The future of hardware at Valve is bright': Valve celebrates the success of Steam Deck and Steam OS
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Still image of Bastion holding a bird, taken from Microsoft's Copilot for Gaming reveal trailer
Microsoft unveils Copilot for Gaming, an AI-powered 'ultimate gaming sidekick' that will let you talk to your console so you don't have to talk to your friends
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs