Demo offers first glimpse of next month's One-Eyed Likho 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Full version of black-and-white folk horror based on dark Slavic fairy tales coming to PC on Steam July 28th

We're told from a young age not to play with matches, but you'll want to start lighting them up in abundance next month to ward off the darkness in Morteshka's upcoming folk horror adventure, One-Eyed Likho.

The titular character from Slavic fairy tales is represented as an "embodiment of evil fate and misfortune ... a creature with one eye, often depicted as an old, skinny woman in black." Definitely not the sort of person you'd want to willingly head towards. Unless you're a nameless blacksmith, who pounds back the booze whenever he's not pounding iron with his hammer to help ease the dullness of his life. After passing out drunk and seeing an ominous vision of a raven, the smith decides to head into the dark forest, accompanied only by the town's old tailor, in order to seek out the meaning behind it. Soon, however, he comes to understand that he's plagued by a curse and can no longer turn back from the path. And so, what "begins as a journey for answers soon turns into a fight to understand the curse" and hopefully escape his dark fate. 

The game's indie developers are no strangers to folk horror tales inspired by Slavic mythology, having first exposed players to The Mooseman in 2017. While sharing similar inspirations and grim, gloomy atmospheres, One-Eyed Likho is a much different experience than its side-scrolling predecessor. Here there's even less colour, as the game is presented entirely in "stark, monochrome" black and white. In an even bigger departure, you'll explore the "dense forests and decaying cottages" of an "unsettling and twisted" version of nineteenth-century rural Russia in first-person, free-roaming 3D, thrusting you directly into the action. You'll engage in a bit of dialogue and acquire some items along the way, but for the most part you'll be armed only with "a few matches" to help you "navigate the shadows, using fire to solve puzzles and fend off the darkness." As you progress, you'll find notes and poems and other manuscripts left behind as you gradually begin to "uncover hidden truths and piece together the full story." 

The complete version of One-Eyed Likho is only a month away from launching on Steam for Windows PC on July 28th, but you can take your first steps into its eerie nighttime forest right away through the playable demo already available to download.