Last month Bloober Team, the horror studio responsible for the Silent Hill 2 Remake and The Medium, posted a teaser for an unannounced project. The teaser featured an illustration of a rose, leading some brilliant internet sleuths to deduce that it must surely point to a remake of the cult 2006 survival horror Rule of Rose.
Rose in picture, rose in name of game. Who could fault this theory?
Alas, as cool as a remake of Rule of Rose would be, that's not what the teaser is teasing. Bloober Team CEO has confirmed as much on LinkedIn. "Nice guess, but no," Piotr Babieno posted in response to an article by Twisted Voxel. "It definitely doesn't refer to any remake."
The teaser appeared at the URL remosdneulserorehsoovamceyerd.com. In addition to the suspicious rose there's also the text "some things never leave the walls. They only learn to wait", as well as a counter counting down to 11 days from now: on February 15. Andy Chalk listed all the various conspiracy theories that have arisen from this deliberately vague marketing tactic, in case you're interested.
I'm more interested in Rule of Rose, which is a fascinating specimen from the PlayStation 2 era. It's set predominantly in a British orphanage, which is part of the reason why it raised the ire of European tabloid press and ultimately led to its release being canceled in the United Kingdom and Australia. Rumours of sadomasochistic content featuring children is what led the panic, but no such content actually appeared in the game. Indeed, contemporary reviews of Rule of Rose range from lukewarm (GameSpot gave it a 6) through to damning (our stablemates Edge gave it a 3).
Still: that hasn't stopped Rule of Rose establishing a cult following, because leaving the reportedly quite bad (and brutally hard) gameplay aside, it has a unique atmosphere, and is tonally distinct from other survival horror of the early 2000s. I've embedded a walkthrough courtesy of RabidRetrospectGames below for you to get a feel for it.
Onion Games, the studio behind Moon and Stray Children, expressed interest in re-releasing Rule of Rose on modern consoles in 2021. In the meantime, emulation is probably your best bet, though doing it legally may be difficult: second hand copies of Rule Of Rose rarely go for under $500.
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RULE OF ROSE Full Game Walkthrough - No Commentary (Horror Game) - YouTube
Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.
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