Nowhere Preview – Nordic Lore Meets Detective Horror, What More Could You Want?

I’ve generally been a fan of detective-type games going all the way back to Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego? on my grandfather’s Commodore 64 and, most recently, with the Sherlock Holmes games from Frogwares. Games like L.A. Noire only furthered my love of the genre, and when I heard about a first-person, detective-style survival horror game, I was very excited to see how it would pan out. I got the chance to look at an early build of a short section of Nowhere , and there was a lot to take in.

Nowhere , a project from solo-developer Midnight Forge , takes place in a forest in Norway, as you take control of a detective tasked with finding four missing persons that were there to research Norse mythology. Your job is to piece together what happened using the clues you find along your way and make sense of what is happening around you.

The very first thing I found when I loaded into the game was that there was immediately a sense of isolation and foreboding. Nowhere manages to create an atmosphere that makes you feel like you aren’t alone in the forest, even though there isn’t another person in sight. The fog-filled forest combined with low light makes even the simplest of shadows feel like they could be another person or worse. I was absolutely terrified after taking about 6 steps, so that was something to encourage me to keep going.

In terms of controls, there’s not a lot to get to grips with. Nowhere keeps things simple in this regard, using only the WASD keys for movement and a couple of others to manage your journal, camera, and bulletin board, which hold different clues you come across. There isn’t even a jump button, so you are very limited in how you navigate the forest. Not that this is a bad thing, quite the opposite, in fact. The lack of movement options (you do have a sprint button, and I did not manage to run out of stamina, so you appear to be able to run forever) isn’t necessarily a hindrance apart from the diabolically slow walking speed.

“ Nowhere manages to create an atmosphere that makes you feel like you aren’t alone in the forest, even though there isn’t another person in sight.”

I found myself sprinting everywhere just to get to the next location before the second coming. And while we’re on the topic of locations, the environment in Nowhere is something to behold. I rarely find a game that does so much by doing so little. That sense of foreboding follows you everywhere you go in your search, and if the fog was removed, all of the atmosphere would be gone. The trees and bushes you find are well crafted, while the abandoned structures give the feeling that they’ve been there for hundreds of years.

During your investigation, you can take pictures of things you find to add to your journal, as well as find different clues and points of interest, like the camper van the missing people arrived in. Sometimes, you’ll find polaroids of things the missing people saw, and the notes you find tie together with those polaroids. It does feel like you’re following their breadcrumbs, with the notes getting progressively more bleak and hopeless the further you venture into the forest.

“ Nowhere does a wonderful job of creating a world and letting you discover it as you go, with literally nothing to guide you…other than your intuition and courage.”

Nowhere seems to subscribe to the idea of ‘the monster is more scary, the less you see of it”, and the game is all the better for it. I walked around the forest for 15 minutes (the preview build was approximately 25-30 minutes in length) before I even caught a glimpse of something sinister, and when I did, my blood ran cold for a moment. I was genuinely terrified as it stared at me from 20 yards away and then disappeared behind a tree.

From there, I couldn’t take more than 5 steps without looking behind me to make sure nothing was sneaking up on me. The sounds of the forest quickly turned against me as everything sounded like my imminent death. That alone should be a testament to the fantastic environment and atmosphere Nowhere has in store for the player.

I am very excited to play the rest of Nowhere when it releases , and the preview build might have to suffice until then. Nowhere does a wonderful job of creating a world and letting you discover it as you go, with literally nothing to guide you (no map, trail markers, or guide markers of any kind) other than your intuition and courage. Survival horror and the detective genre meet in a fantastic way here, and I really look forward to finding out how the rest of the game turns out.