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[Bartski]

• Hair-raising tension offered only by the 90s survival horrors
• Face mutated, grotesque monsters and fight for your life, or escape with it
• Totally immersive 3d pre-rendered environment for you to explore
• Gripping sound effects and music that will send shivers down your spine
• Designed camera angles with curated, cinematic frames (even better than the classics!)

About This Game​

Sink your teeth in PHASE ZERO - a modern reimagining of the survival horror golden era classics. The story is told in a series like manner - each chapter stars one of the two heroes. Featuring prerendered backgrounds, fixed cameras and the DNA of the PSX masterpieces, it blends nostalgic design with modern quality-of-life improvements, while honoring its iconic roots.
It’s the best 90s AAA horror coming soon to your PC!

The game is set in Flint Peak, a post-industrial harbor town in the middle of nowhere. It's 1994, and a relentless snowstorm looms on the horizon. To make matters worse, a mysterious illness is spreading rapidly, leaving most of the town's residents grotesquely changed.

Caught in the chaos are two unlikely survivors: Mary, a reporter new to Flint Peak, and Guy, an injured engineer. Armed with only what they can scavenge, they must endure the night. Can they uncover the truth before the break of dawn?

Grotesque, cancerous monsters crawl through the alleys of Flint Peak. Tissue overgrows walls of buildings and meat bursts through the pipes. Empty husks of human skin fill the streets. Will you fight, or will you escape?

Here, at SPINA Studio, we are deeply passionate about the games we create. As a small indie studio made up by seasoned developers, our goal with PHASE ZERO was to craft a unique, modern take on the horrors we grew up playing.

Thank you for playing PHASE ZERO! We hope you enjoy the game as much as we enjoy bringing it to life!

 

[RedC]

I liked everything except the poor Resident Evil voice imitation reading of the title.

Hopefully, this gets a console port.

 

[mansoor1980]

about damn time pre-rendered environments made a comeback

 

[Punished Miku]

Lot of competition in this space from indies. It looks okay. Will keep an eye on it.

 

[Lokaum D+]

Looks good

 

[Badlucktroll]

 

[Bartski]

Lot of competition in this space from indies. It looks okay. Will keep an eye on it.

I don't see that much really. Crow Country and Fear of the Spotlight? Not counting games like Echos of the Living or Post Trauma, I played both and they feel like advanced school projects to be perfectly honest.

 

[Punished Miku]

I don't see that much really. Crow Country and Fear of the Spotlight? Not counting games like Echos of the Living or Post Trauma, I played both and they feel like advanced school projects to be perfectly honest.

Yeah its not infinite. Just feels like a lot. Sorry We're Closed also, Alyssa, Signalis (different camera style). Maybe a couple others I forget.

 

[fart town usa]

I'm down. Style is one thing but it's tricky to nail the gameplay balance for that era of SH.

Of the ones Ive played, the best examples for me are Organ Quarter (VR) and Tormented Souls. Lamentum is up there too.

I didn't care for Crow Country. Found it boring and ugly. Not a bad game by any means but not what I want with "classic era SH".

 

[Bartski]

I didn't care for Crow Country. Found it boring and ugly. Not a bad game by any means but not what I want with "classic era SH".

I didn't play it either but I've seen it getting tons of hype from survival horror gaming outlets. Kind of a game that will inevitably come to gamepass or ps+, it can wait.

Yeah its not infinite. Just feels like a lot. Sorry We're Closed also, Alyssa, Signalis (different camera style). Maybe a couple others I forget.

Sure, Signalis is still probably the best retro indie horror ever but I meant new stuff on the schedule. Tormented Souls 2 is still due out this year?

 

[Punished Miku]

I didn't play it either but I've seen it getting tons of hype from survival horror gaming outlets. Kind of a game that will inevitably come to gamepass or ps+, it can wait.


Sure, Signalis is still probably the best retro indie horror ever but I meant new stuff on the schedule. Tormented Souls 2 is still due out this year?

Im out of the loop on that one. And yeah, Signalis is my favorite so far.

 

[Zacfoldor]

So PS2 Crow Country then?

 

[fart town usa]

I didn't play it either but I've seen it getting tons of hype from survival horror gaming outlets. Kind of a game that will inevitably come to gamepass or ps+, it can wait.

I completely understand why it was praised, and it's all valid, but when I play a throwback to the classic era of SH, I want it to play like a classic era SH game.

 

[fart town usa]

Also, and just because some of us are bringing up other classic-era inspired SH games, The Padre is pretty cool. It has some glitched trophies but it's a fun voxel style game. Really reminiscent of the first AITD and has elements of RE 96.

Spoiler: trailer

 

[Arachnid]

Not a fan of the pixelated nostalgia shit in 2025. Should have gone the RE1make route to not make it look like shit.

Anyway, Day 1.

 

[lh032]

fuck fixed cam.

 

[The Fartist]

 

[Fbh]

Looks fun, though to be honest Ps1 era 3D graphics isn't an aesthetic I'm particularly excited to revisist.
Pre rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles I'm down for, but we could use modern tech to make 3D characters that actually look like they fit into the world instead of replicating the visual inconsistency of the past.

But I get it, they are betting on Nostalgia

 

[Bartski]

What I find interesting is emulating some of that pre-pgxp floating point error "wobble" to the geometry as an effect on top of actual modern rendering under the hood. It's very subtle, but contributes to that PS2 look

 

[consoul]

I'm all for pre-rendered backgrounds making a comeback, but it should be done to enable all available GPU power to go into making great looking characters and enemies.

That was the whole point of the technique.

 

[BbMajor7th]

I love survival horror, but this isn't progress or innovation - it's pastiche. REmake on the GameCube had a more modern look and feel than this way back in 2002.

Crow Country was the same: looked like shit for the nostalgia hit and played exactly like a PS1 game. What's crazy is that back in the '90s small teams like this could kick out a game of this scale every year. SPINA Studio, meanwhile, was founded in 2022 and this is their debut reveal...

 

[Clear]

Sorry, hot take, but I fucking hate fake-Playstation 1 style presentation,

Games of that gen looked the way they did not because it was an aesthetic choice. It was a result of the constraints of the tech, limitations that these modern day poseurs DO NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH.

There's no excuse for artificially degrading the visuals. By all means copy the design choices, tone and mechanics. You know the things that the creatives actually put into the work back then. And stop defacing it with a plastic "retro" patina which is faker than a fucking fleshlight.

To me its like an able-bodies person faking their way into the special olympics.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

modern reimagining​

So pronouns?

 

[Hypereides]

I gotta say, Poland is really growing to the forefront and establishing itself as a powerhouse in the gaming industry. Looks interesting.

 

[Flabagast]

I'm down. Style is one thing but it's tricky to nail the gameplay balance for that era of SH.

Of the ones Ive played, the best examples for me are Organ Quarter (VR) and Tormented Souls. Lamentum is up there too.

I didn't care for Crow Country. Found it boring and ugly. Not a bad game by any means but not what I want with "classic era SH".

Yes I agree. I love all types of survival horror, particularly PSX era, but found Crow County really dull and uninspired. I really do not understand why it got such a positive reception

 

[Killer8]

Looks great unlike a lot of these other PS1-style games. This actually looks like it could've released on the system.

Sorry, hot take, but I fucking hate fake-Playstation 1 style presentation,

Games of that gen looked the way they did not because it was an aesthetic choice. It was a result of the constraints of the tech, limitations that these modern day poseurs DO NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH.

There's no excuse for artificially degrading the visuals. By all means copy the design choices, tone and mechanics. You know the things that the creatives actually put into the work back then. And stop defacing it with a plastic "retro" patina which is faker than a fucking fleshlight.

To me its like an able-bodies person faking their way into the special olympics.

Even if it wasn't by choice it's still created a distinctive aesthetic which a lot of people look at fondly nowadays. It's pure nostalgia goggles but I don't see anything wrong with it. You could make the same argument for the new wave of late 90s-style boomer shooters, or any pixel art game aping the style of an older 16-bit console (and in fact many people do often shit on pixel art).

As I said a lot of these games can look terrible, especially in the horror genre. Stuff like Alisa and Back in 1995 look horrible and many PS1 games looked far better. Part of the problem is they don't actually lean into what the hardware would've been capable of. It just passes off looking shit as 'retro'. They also often don't even fully commit to the bit - at least throw in a nice Trinitron filter like this game is doing.

These Japanese PS1 games like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid also remain so timeless because of their strong art direction. There is lot of tacky 'throwback' shit out there like Tormented Souls (not a PS1-style game but has many of the same problems described, that one is trying to be Resident Evil on the GC).