Publisher(s): Fira Soft
Platform(s): PC (Steam)
Release Date: 2025
Kriophobia is a survival-horror game that tells the story of Anna: a geophysicist who is stuck on a cold Russian island. As she explores and tries to survive the bitter cold, she encounters monsters and other horrors that mess with her psyche while she solves puzzles. I had the opportunity to go hands-on with the game at GDC 2025, and you can tell that these Brazilian indie developers genuinely wanted to make a throwback-esque game to horror games of yore. Kriophobia uses static camera angles, just like the first handful of Resident Evil and Silent Hill games (and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem) that shows the different rooms that Anna wonders into. It genuinely felt like I was playing a video game from the 1990s or early 2000s. There is even a ‘tank’ control scheme that perfectly replicates the controls from the first Resident Evil game. Kriophobia really hits the nostalgia horror angle perfectly.
Thankfully, Kriophobia hits the gameplay aspect neatly as well. You have different weapons you can pick up (such as an ice axe or a knife) that you can attack the enemies you encounter as you go through the game. The combat felt right, and the enemy hit boxes seemed to work appropriately. There is also a flashlight you have to equip and use in order to see in the different rooms. Finally, it is cold. You have to worry about things like freezing to death if you don’t stay warm through things like finding and equipping better coats or finding and using hand warmers. All of this adds a degree of depth to the gameplay beyond just solving puzzles that makes Kriophobia really stand out for me.
Kriophobia’s puzzles are so far fairly hit or miss, unfortunately. There are some that are blindingly obvious (find the battery and plug it in), and some that made no sense to me. My biggest issue was that I found an amazing flashlight…but its brighter yellow light washed out part of a color-oriented puzzle for me because the light was yellow. While it may make sense from a real-life perspective, it absolutely did not make sense from a gameplay design puzzle for me. The developers who were sitting with me reassured me they were still working on Kriophobia, and that they in fact had made different builds and updates while they were at GDC 2025!
Overall, I genuinely liked Kriophobia. It had the right amount of spookiness and mystery to it, and it is the type of horror that does not rely upon grotesque gore to freak gamers out. It is coming to PC and Steam this year, and I cannot wait to see how this game turns out, because Kriophobia was seriously one of my favorite games that I was able to demo at GDC 2025.
Are you excited to pick up Kriophobia when it releases later this year?
What kind of retro horror games do you like to play?
Let us know in the comments below!
