Corporeal: A Horror Puzzle Game That Makes Family Photos Haunting Again

In Corporeal, a freshly-announced horror puzzler, you’re not just flicking through a nostalgic family photo album—you’re reassembling cursed memories, and these aren't your typical snapshots. It’s the '90s, and as the sole survivor of a mysterious tragedy, you’re piecing together a haunted family photo album to uncover the sinister events that plagued your childhood.

Using "immersive retro analog interfaces" (which basically means you’re working with old-school tech and creepy vibes), you’ll solve minimalist, tactile puzzles that let you combine eerie photos and unlock new scenes. But beware—these aren’t ordinary family memories. What looks like a harmless snapshot of freshly baked muffins cooling on a windowsill? Nope, it’s actually the Slender Man lurking in the background. That fluffy robe hanging on a door? Turns out it's Great-Uncle Percival, back from the dead because you undercooked the fish during Christmas '93. You know, typical cursed album stuff.

The Steam page gives us more to chew on: "As the sole survivor of unexplained events in the 1990s, search for answers in an archive of photos rescued from the ruins of your childhood home. Manipulate the past, encounter specters, and map out your cursed family history." If that doesn't give you chills, you might’ve forgotten the strange, unexplained events of the '90s—like the Pog craze or questionable fashion choices (T-shirts over long sleeves, anyone?). But in Corporeal, it’s much more about hauntings, specifically of the murdery kind, set in the eerie backdrop of New Zealand.

The game’s aesthetic is both "chilled and chilling," with photos needing to be dragged and dropped into the album by hand, revealing dark family secrets in the process. Sure, it might not be this year’s Immortality—that game set a high bar for interactive storytelling—but Corporeal taps into a similar thrill of rifling through archives, waiting for that moment when you realize that figure in the background isn’t who you thought it was.

It’s shaping up to be a solid mix of eerie vibes and mind-bending puzzles, with enough nostalgic ‘90s charm to keep you hooked. So, if you ever wondered what it would be like to piece together cursed memories from a forgotten family album, Corporeal might just be the nightmare.