First details point the way to Silent Road

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Japanese horror-themed narrative adventure from the creators of Ikai coming to PC in 2026

Being a taxi driver in the city can't be easy, with its long hours, constant traffic and obnoxious passengers. But doing so in one of the world's most haunted regions... well, that's an entirely different kind of challenge, as we'll discover next year in the Japanese horror game Silent Road, from the creators of 2022's Ikai.

Not only do you get stuck patrolling the streets of a "remote Japanese forest region infamous for its history of suicides and supernatural folklore," of course you're put on the night shift as well. Or perhaps we should call it the graveyard shift, as along this stretch of "abandoned highways, mountain passes, and silent village streets," you'll soon discover that "the dead still call out." Your passengers will be "peculiar characters whose stories grow more disturbing with every encounter," their "strange behaviors and cryptic clues" raising tension while  gradually beginning to "unravel the truth behind the forest’s curse." Each new fare brings "chilling mysteries and an ever-growing sense that something is terribly wrong," but there's no shirking responsibility or hiding out in your cab all night. Occasionally you'll need to get out and assist passengers with "simple tasks that never feel safe." With each passing hour, what started as "routine work becomes a descent into psychological horror as passengers grow stranger, roads grow colder, and forces beyond the natural world draw closer." 

As with Spanish developer Endflame's previous game, Silent Road is a first-person 3D adventure inspired by classic Japanese horror such as Silent Hill and Fatal Frame. Here you're unarmed, however, and you'll spend much of your time behind the wheel. You'll manually drive your vehicle through this haunting "suicide ring," though you cannot choose where to go or which passengers to accept. Once you pick up a fare, you'll converse with "whoever (or whatever)" is in your back seat, with branching dialogue choices to make that will shape the direction of the story. When it's time to get out and fulfill your obligations on foot, there will be more decisions to make in walking sim-style sequences, though we'll have to wait to find out exactly what that entails, as studio co-founder Laura Ripoll says the team is still "exploring and prototyping different gameplay twists for every passenger."

There's no target launch date for Silent Road just yet, but the game is on a collision course for Windows PC on Steam sometime in 2026, with a demo expected prior to release.