So this one’s got me divided upstairs but here goes. Microids and veteran adventure game developer Pendulo Studios (Runaway, Yesterday Origins, Blacksad: Under the Skin…) are in the midst of making Alfred Hitchcock – Vertigo, which is set to launch at the end of the year on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One consoles and Nintendo Switch. Here’s the first teaser trailer below. No actual gameplay footage is shown, so I take it the developer is taking the whole “master of suspense” thing to a whole new level, ha and ha:

While the plot is completely different, the game will, according to the developer stay close to its source material:

“Of course, Alfred Hitchcock’s movie was a major inspiration source, whether it’s about the game’s themes, its narration, or even the visual techniques we used that clearly mirror Hitchcock’s recurrent cinematographic techniques” explains Josué Monchan, Narrative Designer at Pendulo Studios. “Vertigo is not our only frame of reference. For instance, the fact that therapy is at the core of the narrative echoes Spellbound, and some characters resemble protagonists from Rebecca, Psycho, and many more.”

As for the story, Writer Ed Miller came out unscathed from his car crash down into Brody Canyon, California. Even though no one was found inside the car wreckage, Ed insists that he was traveling with his wife and daughter. Traumatized by this event, he begins to suffer from severe vertigo. As he starts therapy, he will try to uncover what really happened on that tragic day.

Game features

• An exclusive, original story about obsession, memory, manipulation and madness, freely inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo
• Live a powerful narrative experience paying tribute to the visual and storytelling techniques of the thriller genre
• Investigate through the vision of three characters: everyone has a different story to tell
• Explore several timelines to cross-check the events and separate reality from deceptive memories

Prepare yourself for a disturbing investigation inside the human mind: the truth is sometimes worse than madness…

Of course, as a longtime Hitchcock Hitchcock fan, I want this to work on every level. So I’ll wait for the final version to ship and not get all Psycho or go into a Frenzy over what little info we have so far. Fingers crossed. -GW