Forget Dead Space remake, there’s a Dead Space demake that reimagines the game as a PlayStation 1-style survivor horror game.
It doesn’t cover the entire game, rather it features a twenty minute or so tweak but this Dead Space demake is still an impressive feat. It manages to feature full Necromorph dismemberment, instead of taking the cop-out route and just having enemies collapse.
In other words, we could well imagine this having existed way back in 1998, four years into the PlayStation’s life. It does make use of cutscenes from the original Xbox One and PlayStation 3 game but that’s wholly authentic too. PlayStation games would regularly feature cutscenes that were far superior to the in-game graphics.
The demake is the work of Fraser Brumley and began life as a way for them to learn Unreal engine. Is it ever going to turn into a full, complete, Dead Space demake? No – the project’s basically done. But it’s a great gaming curio, a vision of what might have been.
You can download it for the PC, free, via Brumley’s Itch.io page. It’s under 200 MB to download and should run on most PCs. It begins with Isaac picking up the Plasma Cutter and while it’s seemingly missing his trademark stop it’s rather fun.
And if, after that, you want to investigate the Dead Space remake, check out our review here.
