The PlayStation 2 pet-simulator horror adventure game Haunting Ground has arrived on PSN in Japan. Haunting Ground, known as Demento in Japan, is a Capcom-published title frequently cited as a spiritual successor to Human Entertainment’s own Clock Tower series. Earlier Clock Tower titles emphasized a sense of powerlessness and paranoia, and the games’ designs generally promoted avoiding confrontations in order to continue to solve more puzzles to progress through the game. While some combat elements are present in Haunting Ground, similar sensibilities that reward evasion are still present in the game. If you’re looking for a pet simulator, you’ll be… very surprised!
Haunting Ground follows main character Fiona and her dog, Hewie, as they awake in a castle and attempt to escape from the fantastically horrific environment. It is among a group of relatively obscure survival horror games like Rule of Rose that came out for the PlayStation 2 when the survival horror genre began to incorporate more action-type gameplay with games like Resident Evil 4. While the genre itself was still strong with franchises like Fatal Frame, Silent Hill and Siren, there’s an argument to be made that the PlayStation 2 era marked a point of departure for what it meant to achieve greater success as a survival horror game.
Haunting Ground was rated by the ESRB for the PlayStation 3 a couple of years ago, but the game hasn’t received a release here since then. Let’s hope that it does come by in some form.
