Allison Road is the intriguing successor to P.T. – the “Playable Trailer” horror game that made waves when it debuted as a free download on the PlayStation Network in 2014. P.T. ended up being a clever way to promote the next Silent Hill game, which was ultimately canceled. The free mini-game, designed by Hideo Kojima, was actually pulled from the PlayStation Store by Konami, leading to its very existence becoming a rare commodity.
Enter Allison Road. Some P.T. fans and developers gathered together to make a first-person horror title heavily inspired by P.T. A photo-realistic house to explore, a demon-girl stalking you, and no weapons to speak of (sometimes called a “walking simulator”).
Unfortunately like P.T. the game ran into some development snags. During its Kickstarter campaign last year a publisher, Team17, stepped up to fund the game. That’s normally a great thing, and the well-trending campaign was canceled in favor of the traditional publisher.
In June of this year they suddenly announced that the game had been canceled, with no explanation provided.
“It did take a bit of soul searching to find the drive again to work on Allison Road and to simply make a call on what to do next,” Christian Kesler, Allison Road creator told IGN. “I started making a few (in my opinion) necessary changes to the story and the flow, little bits and pieces here and there, and before I knew it, it sort of naturally came back to life.”
Kesler co-founded a new company with his wife and business partner called Far From Home. He plans to continue work on Allison Road as a solo project – which it initially began life as.
“For our gameplay trailer [above], I did all the modeling, texturing, shaders, lighting, etc,” Kesler told IGN. “A lot of the mechanics are already implemented from the previous development phase, so I can comfortably take the game forward by myself.”
It’s still too early to know any of the new changes let alone a release date, but horror fans of P.T. and Allison Road can look forward to a glimmer of hope in the latter’s revival.
