Bloober Team has established itself as a major studio when it comes to horror games with hit titles like Layers of Fear and Observer. And just last year, Bloober Team launched Blair Witch, a video game adaptation of the found footage horror movie series about people getting lost in the Black Hills Forest and terrorized by supernatural entities.
In the Blair Witch video game, Ellis Lynch and his dog Bullet join a search party looking for a boy who has gone missing in the Black Hills Forest. In typical Blair Witch fashion, Lynch and Bullet get lost in the woods, and soon find themselves face-to-face with spooky imagery and all kinds of other horrors.
The Blair Witch video game is quite easily one of the best things that the franchise has produced, and is exactly what one would expect from a game based on the film franchise. Just like the characters in the Blair Witch movies often find themselves lost, wandering aimlessly in the woods, so too will those playing the Blair Witch video game. The game's forest is purposefully set up in a way so players will find themselves walking in circles, and while it can be frustrating at times, it also gives the experience a unique sense of dread and helplessness.
While Blair Witch players stumble through the Black Hills Forest, they will have to get by stranger monsters that can kill them in a heartbeat. And in typical Bloober Team fashion, these monsters tend to pop out and scare players as part of some well-timed jump scares.
Some horror games tend to rely too heavily on jump scares without building atmosphere, but Blair Witch is the opposite. The game goes to great lengths to build a sufficiently terrifying atmosphere for the player, forcing them to explore a pitch black forest while using music and sound to make it seem like they're not alone, even in instances when they're not in any real danger. All of the scares in Blair Witch are completely earned.
Bloober Team's work on Blair Witch marked the beginning of its seemingly close relationship with Microsoft. Blair Witch was a timed-console exclusive for the Xbox One before making its way to other platforms (with the upcoming Blair Witch VR game for Oculus Quest being the latest version). The Bloober Team/Microsoft partnership is continuing with The Medium, a Silent Hill-inspired survival-horror game that's set to launch on December 10 as an Xbox Series X console exclusive.
Blair Witch is out now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.