There are some games where you can identify their influences almost immediately, and Agni: Village of Calamity was one of those games for me. Within the first few minutes of playing it at Gamescom, I was thinking about Resident Evil, Alan Wake, and then, as things became increasingly strange, I started getting a little bit of a Backrooms vibe. It’s an interesting mixture, particularly because Agni is bringing those familiar survival horror ideas into an Indonesian setting.
Developed by Indonesian studio Separuh Interactive, Agni: Village of Calamity follows Agni, an investigator from a covert Indonesian police unit who has gone against orders to search for her missing partner in the remote village of Desa Purba. What begins as a police investigation quickly descends into something considerably more supernatural and psychologically disturbing.
The demo immediately established that Agni isn’t relying solely on conventional weapons to survive. She has a form of precognition, while various items she discovers can grant her additional abilities.
The first of these I encountered was a lantern, followed by a bracelet, with each providing Agni with another tool for dealing with the increasingly bizarre world around her. The lantern is particularly important when dealing with certain enemies. Light can be used to damage or destroy some of the creatures you encounter, giving the game a mechanic that immediately reminded me of Alan Wake.
There are also more traditional survival horror encounters, and this is where Agni feels most familiar. Ammunition is limited, enemies are dangerous and simply running towards every problem with a gun isn’t necessarily the best solution. The game encourages you to think about how you approach encounters, while its psychological horror elements constantly work to make you question what you’re seeing.
The camera also adds to that old-school survival horror feeling. Some areas use fixed or cinematic camera angles, particularly when exploring, before shifting perspective when the action demands it. It’s a technique that works particularly well when the aim is to restrict your view of what’s waiting around the next corner.
Agni’s Indonesian setting is where the game has the biggest opportunity to stand out. The developers are drawing heavily from Indonesian horror films and folklore, rather than simply recreating the familiar haunted mansions and abandoned laboratories we’ve seen countless times before. There’s a distinctive sense of place to Desa Purba, while the rituals, creatures and supernatural elements give the game an identity beyond its obvious influences.
The more supernatural sections are where I found myself most interested. There are moments when the game moves away from conventional survival horror and starts playing with reality, creating environments that feel increasingly disconnected from the world Agni started in. This is where the Alan Wake comparison becomes particularly appropriate, with the game clearly wanting to explore psychological horror alongside its physical threats.
And yet, I did come away from playing a little undecided about the experience as a whole. There are some good ideas here: the Indonesian setting is interesting, the supernatural abilities give Agni something to distinguish herself from other survival horror protagonists, and the mixture of resource management, fixed camera angles and psychological horror shows that Separuh Interactive understands the genre. Beneath all of that, though, the underlying formula is familiar. Very familiar.
That’s not necessarily a criticism. There is clearly still an appetite for classic survival horror, and Agni is doing a good job of putting its own cultural spin on that foundation, but after my Gamescom demo, I wasn’t quite as enthralled as I hoped to be, and I have to hope that the more interesting elements are explored more through later parts of the game.
Separuh have already teased further mechanics and surprises, including ideas aimed at players who remember the experimental mechanics of classic PlayStation-era survival horror. There’s clearly more to Agni than what I experienced at Gamescom and that’s why I’m keeping an open mind.
Agni: Village of Calamity has the foundations of an intriguing survival horror game. Its Indonesian setting gives it a distinctive flavour, while the combination of supernatural abilities, resource management and psychological horror could eventually make for something much more interesting than its familiar influences initially suggest. I just need to see more.
