A spooky new trailer has been released for what appears to be a new horror game… and it seems to be published by Nintendo.
Nintendo is known as the family-friendly option when it comes to gaming consoles, so it’s always surprising when it does occasionally champion more adult titles.
The company previously published Eternal Darkness on the GameCube, along with several Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame) games, but a teaser trailer for a new Switch title might be their biggest swing into horror territory yet.
Posted out of the blue on Wednesday, across all of Nintendo’s worldwide YouTube channels, the 15-second trailer, simply titled Emio, shows a person with a smiley-faced bag on their head, with creepy twinkling music and classic horror distortion effects.
The video, which is titled The Smiling Man in Japan, comes with the accompanying hashtag #WhoIsEmio, along with a teaser website. Emio carries a 18 PEGI rating in Europe and an M for Mature rating in the US.
There’s no further information about the project, including who is making it. However, the implication seems to be that, at the very least, Nintendo themselves are publishing it, considering it’s been posted exclusively across all the company’s social media channels.
The biggest question is whether this is being made by a first party Nintendo team or an external studio. Some have speculated it could a collaboration with Layers Of Fear developer Bloober Team and their subsidiary Draw Distance, who are believed to be working on a Nintendo exclusive game codenamed Project M.
Bloober Team, however, were reported to have ended their partnership with Draw Distance within the past month, with the game still in development, which leaves its fate unknown (and the possibility Nintendo could’ve picked it up to finish off themselves).
The fact Nintendo has made this mysterious marketing push does suggest it is directly involved – so maybe the next Luigi’s Mansion is about to get nasty…
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