Future Games Show trailer reopens the story of banger horror comic I Hate This Place

I Hate This Place, the 2022 horror series from writer Kyle Starks and artist Artyom Toplin, was one of my favorite comics that year. And now, as revealed in the Future Games Show, it’s a neon-colored isometric open-world survival horror game that I’ll probably be too chicken to play.

I Hate This Place — originally announced as Fuck This Place, which is a way better title, but, like, I get it — starred Gabby and Trudy, a lesbian couple who see the cattle ranch they just inherited as their ticket to financial stability. Unfortunately, the family ranch is secretly a locus for every horror genre simultaneously: hauntings, alien abductions, a Strange Entity in the Forest, Secret Knife Killer Hiding Among You, the Place Won’t Let You Leave, Survivalist Cult Apocalypse, and so on. I Hate This Place was kind of like… “Fast Car” meets The Cabin in the Woods.

The new game adaptation is being developed by Bloober Team (2019’s Blair Witch, The Medium), under the company’s new horror imprint Broken Mirror Games, and appears to focus on an original story set in the comic’s titular Place, potentially a prequel. “Players take on the role of Elena, whose fight for survival begins when she unwittingly awakens a malevolent force,” says a joint news release from Bloober Team and I Hate This Place (the comic)’s Skybound Entertainment. The game will feature “retro ‘80s comic book aesthetics,” where the original comic was set in the modern day.

“Each location is lovingly crafted to tell its own disturbing story through stylish visuals that blur the line between reality and nightmare in a world where everything wants you dead.” According to the news release, gameplay will feature “tense gunfights and melee combat that rewards ingenuity over brute force, all while crafting essential tools to survive the harsh and unforgiving wilderness long enough to reach safehouses before nightfall, with the day & night cycle having an impact on gameplay dynamics.”

I Hate This Place is currently set to launch in Q4 of 2025, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch. It’s available to wishlist on Steam and the Epic Games Store, and you could pick up the comic that inspired it on Amazon, Bookshop, or at your local store.