James Macleod, who previously worked on GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 at Rockstar, is now developing Ritual Tides with his own studio. The project combines psychological horror, survival horror, body horror, Lovecraftian creatures and Anglo-Saxon folklore while openly drawing inspiration from the territory occupied by Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

James Macleod clearly did not leave Rockstar behind to make something modest. After contributing art to GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2, he founded Vertpaint and set out to build a horror game willing to stand in the same conversation as Silent Hill and Resident Evil without simply imitating either series. Ritual Tides blends psychological horror, traditional survival-horror pressure and body horror with Lovecraftian ideas, while Anglo-Saxon mythology and folk horror form another major part of its identity. Its first playable showing at Gamescom 2026 suggests the studio is aiming well beyond a straightforward monster-filled action game.

The project itself has actually been around for a while, even if Vertpaint had revealed relatively little until recently. Ritual Tides was formally announced in 2024, but the studio kept much of the experience hidden before bringing a first hands-on build to the German event. Impressions from Gamescom paint a much clearer picture of its intentions: rather than turning the player into a heavily armed monster killer, the game is being built around uncertainty, vulnerability and a constant sense that the environment is hostile even when nothing is directly attacking you.

A Realistic, Mature Horror Game With Lovecraftian Creatures

The protagonist is a woman who wakes up on a beach with no memory of how she arrived there. Her search for answers gradually becomes an investigation into both her own past and the history of the mysterious island where she has been stranded. Macleod openly acknowledges that the setup itself is familiar, but the team is aiming for an especially dark and mature interpretation. Horror author Adam Nevill also worked directly on the script; his novel The Ritual was adapted by Netflix in 2017, and his involvement reinforces the game’s combination of psychological horror and folk-horror traditions.

Mechanically, Ritual Tides sticks much closer to classic survival horror than to a conventional shooter. Its protagonist is neither a soldier nor a firearms expert, so combat is intentionally awkward and dangerous rather than empowering. Weapon weight, recoil and durability all matter, while melee tools can eventually break and leave the player defenseless at exactly the wrong time. Every encounter is therefore supposed to raise a basic question: is fighting actually worth the risk, or would running away be the smarter choice?

Survival itself forms a central part of the design. Players will need to scavenge for food, ammunition and other resources while exploring the island, avoiding members of the Fallow Parish cult and dealing with the Lovecraftian creatures that inhabit the area. The developers want escape to remain a normal and frequently preferable response, especially because direct confrontation with some monsters is described as little short of a death sentence. Running is not intended to feel like failure; it is part of the game’s basic survival language.

Vertpaint is also pursuing immersion through the interface. Ritual Tides will not use a conventional HUD, and the studio is deliberately avoiding the familiar yellow paint that many modern games use to mark climbable or interactive surfaces. Instead, pale salt deposits on rocks and other objects will subtly guide the player. The information is still there, but it is designed to exist naturally inside the environment rather than constantly reminding the player that they are navigating a game system.

The visual presentation is already one of the project’s most promising aspects. Ritual Tides uses realistic environments, oppressive lighting and a deliberately uncomfortable atmosphere that becomes increasingly alien once its supernatural creatures and folk-horror imagery enter the picture. The goal is not simply to show off graphical fidelity, but to make the island feel fundamentally hostile, a place where its inhabitants, landscape and monsters all seem designed to prevent the protagonist from leaving safely. Gamescom impressions suggest Vertpaint is leaning more heavily on slow-building dread and vulnerability than on an endless sequence of jump scares.

Whether the finished game can sustain all of those ideas remains to be seen. Ritual Tides is still in development and does not yet have a specific release date, although Vertpaint has confirmed versions for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. If Macleod and his team can preserve the same bleak, mature and physically threatening tone throughout the full experience, his post-Rockstar project could become one of the more distinctive new survival-horror releases on the horizon.

Source: 3DJuegos