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Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and Silent Hill scared the crap out of gamers in the 90s with their fixed-camera angles, clunky controls and low-poly enemies. For Swedish indie developer Krufs Productions, those horror titles are now more “cosy” than scary, but they hope to inject fear back into the classic era of survival horror as much as they can.
Set to release sometime during the 30th anniversary year of Resident Evil, Krufs’ upcoming indie game Meavy Metal Death Can is decidedly more Resident Evil 3 than Silent Hill. After growing up with the Resident Evil 0 and the original Resi Remake on the GameCube, Krufs Productions developer Toby explained that they would “always come back” to the fixed-camera angles of the classic formula instead of the third-person action games that came later.
“When RE 4 came out it blew me away and became one of my all time favourites, but I would always come back to the previous games,” he explained. “Something was lost when switching over to focusing more on action and that is an itch we aim to scratch with Heavy Metal Death Can!”
Heavy Metal Death Can isn’t the first game to bring players back to the fixed-camera angles of classic PS1 survival horror. Recently, Signalis and Crow Country did so spectacularly, and there’s a number of duds that have attempted, and sadly failed, to capture that feeling. Alongside being inspired by the aforementioned games, the team at Krufts simply knew that AAA gaming won’t touch this style of game ever again, and it’s up to smaller teams to bring the genre back.
“I don’t think there will be a AAA take on classic survival horror again,” the team explained. “The power of indie and AA is that we’re able to serve niches and not worry about having mainstream appeal. We’re able to take a gamble without risking hundreds of livelihoods and we’re part of a community that values authenticity over production values.”
The team at Krufs don’t have any lofty goals for Heavy Metal Death Can other than just making a great tribute to their favourite games. They’re not going for an entirely PS1 look, more a “how you remember those games looking. Kinda retro, but with a lot of modern enhancements”. The only goal is to be “embraced by the survival horror community” and make sure it’s successful enough that they “get to make another one”.
At the end of the day, that’s really all a passion project is, and Heavy Metal Death Can is as passion project as they come. Working in the “struggling” Swedish games industry after the closure of their past employer, the small indie studio just wants to finally deliver the game they’ve been dreaming about for years.
“I love classic survival horror for many reasons,” Toby told us. “One is that they’re just kinda cosy to me. In many ways, they’re point-and-click adventure games with a fail state, light combat and resource management. I love the feeling of unravelling an adventure game, adding in a tense atmosphere and occasional jolts of adrenaline – it’s just a great time!”.
The team explains that “diversity of opinion in what made those games great to begin with”, and that’s true. Any time a PS1-like survival horror game rears its head, there’s always some nature of contention about whether it’s really a true game of that era, but there’s a lot of variation to the formula. Silent Hill was slower and moodier, Alone in the Dark was all over the place, Parasite Eve was a JRPG.
Heavy Metal Death Can is just one take on what classic survival horror can be, and I’m incredibly excited for it. Slated to release some time in 2026, there’s a long wait until we get to play it, but it’s definitely one for the wishlist.
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