Paranormasight re-emerges this month with The Mermaid's Curse

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Sequel to Square Enix's popular 2023 urban legend horror adventure coming to Steam on February 19th

Some games appear suddenly, out of the blue. In more ways than one, that is certainly true of Square Enix's upcoming Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse, sequel to the popular 2023 urban legend horror adventure due to make a surprise launch later this month. 

While the original game, The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, incorporated multiple different real-world urban legends, the new one seems to be more of a spin-off focusing on just a single myth: mermaids. Far from Tokyo this time, on the "remote island of Kameshima, nestled in Ise bay," a pearl diver named Yuza Minakuchi spends much of his time underwater with his best friend Azami Kumoi. That ends abruptly when Yuza experiences a "bewildering supernatural encounter with another version of himself on the ocean floor." From that point on, the entire island begins suffering from "a series of curses" that entwine the fates of strangers, including a "girl of unknown origins" who washes ashore, a "treasure hunter from a foreign land, and a mysterious housewife investigating a drowning." Between them, they must "salvage the truths from the depths of the sea" in order to break the curse and reveal the "secret of the Mermaids of Ise, a legend that has been obscured by the fog of history for so long."

In many ways, The Mermaid's Curse is very different from its predecessor, telling a "brand-new story that starts with a new location, new supernatural legends and a new cast of characters." There will also be "numerous new gameplay systems and mechanics," one of which will be a diving minigame. And yet for returning fans, there will be plenty that seems familiar as well, with writer Takanari Ishiyhama, character artist Gen Kobayashi, and musician/composer Hidenori Iwasak all returning in the same roles here. Also just as before, environments will consist of "faithful reproductions of real locations and vistas," created here in "collaboration with Mie prefecture." In between freely investigating "360-degree backgrounds for clues," there will be plenty of visual novel-styled dialogue with multiple playable characters as you "unravel their different perspectives on the case" and discover the truth for yourself.

Perhaps most shocking of all is just how soon we can dive into Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse, as the game is due to launch on Steam on February 19th.