Psychopomp is one of the best games you can get for under $10 on Steam, and its newly-revealed sequel looks even better

Surreal horror dungeon crawler Psychopomp teased that it would get a sequel before the credits even rolled, but I didn't expect any news on that front for some time. Developer Fading Club just put out the first trailer for Psychopomp 2, about a year after the first game's definitive Gold version launched.

Psychopomp 1 used the grid-based, first person gameplay of old school dungeon crawlers like Legend of Grimrock to make something that plays closer to a PlayStation 2 survival horror game⁠—you move slowly and can't maneuver very well as you navigate dungeons full of slavering flesh beasts, while instead of spells and dice roll attacks, you just have to be close enough to enemies to whack them with a claw hammer.

Psychopomp begins with its clearly disturbed (maybe divinely ordained?) protagonist spelunking in the nightmare dungeons hidden under innocuous public buildings before descending even further into a subterranean world, and eventually ringing in some kind of an apocalypse with a doppelganger planet summoned above Earth.

There's a lot of Lore here for wiki kids to sink their teeth into, but Psychopomp also works as a pure horror experience you can let wash over you, boasting stunning dreamscapes like very little else in gaming⁠—LSD Dream Emulator and the upcoming Skate Story are the only ones that spring to mind for me.

The sequel has us take over as a new character, the besuited, waifish anime boy teased at the end of the first game, and Psychopomp 2 looks like it will revamp the gameplay with a more standard third-person camera and movement freed from the first game's grid. There are still oppressively claustrophobic and dark dungeons, but also shots of more open areas and even something resembling a peaceful settlement. Developer Fading Club's unique visual style is still very much front and center⁠—the combination of anime-style characters, vaporwave ruins, and body horror is what keeps me coming back to these games.

Psychopomp 2 does not yet have a release date, but you can wishlist it on Steam. Psychopomp 1 does have an effective free demo in the form of its original release from January 2024, which contains about 60% of the game in the $10 Gold version from last fall. Meanwhile, Fading Club's $8 FPS roguelike from 2022, Dreamwild, is one of my favorite games that nobody's ever played.