Deadly Premonition[a] is an
open world survival horror video game developed by
Access Games. Set in the fictional, rural American town of Greenvale,
Washington, the story follows
FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan as he investigates the murder of an eighteen-year-old woman, which bears similarities to a series of murders across the country.
Deadly Premonition was originally released in February 2010 for
Xbox 360 and in March 2010 for
PlayStation 3; the Xbox 360 version was published by
Ignition Entertainment in North America,
Marvelous Entertainment in Japan, and
Rising Star Games in Europe. Marvelous Entertainment released the PlayStation 3 version exclusively in Japan. A
director's cut edition for PlayStation 3 and
Microsoft Windows was released worldwide by Rising Star Games in 2013. A port for the
Nintendo Switch,
Deadly Premonition: Origins, followed in 2019.
Deadly Premonition is a
reboot of Access Games' earlier video game
Rainy Woods. In production from September 2004 to October 2007,
Rainy Woods was cancelled soon after its debut at the 2007
Tokyo Game Show due to technical issues.
Deadly Premonition combined its assets with a new game scenario and protagonist, Francis York Morgan. Gameplay is divided into York's detective investigation into Greenvale and its inhabitants, and supernatural combat sequences in which York must battle or evade otherworldly beings. Development on
Deadly Premonition's setting was guided by an intention to imbue the game with a sense of realism: the
non-player characters follow an individualized 24-hour schedule, and the scale of Greenvale is intended to replicate that of a rural American town. Issues with memory allocation, various lighting and shadow aspects, and the
physics engine PhysX were faced during development.
Deadly Premonition received wildly varying critical reviews and holds the
Guinness World Record for the most critically polarizing survival horror game. Although the original release has not been commercially successful,
Deadly Premonition has garnered a
cult following and has been cited as an example of
games as art. A sequel,
Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise, was released on the Nintendo Switch on July 10, 2020.