When Konami removed P.T. from the PlayStation Store more than three years ago, horror fans were not only deprived of one of the best genre experiences available at the time but one of the most harrowing horror games on the platform.
In the time since its removal, games like Resident Evil 7, Layers of Fear, and Visage have attempted to recapture the terror of P.T. And while some have been more successful than others in achieving that goal, nothing has quite compared to the original demo.
Luckily for horror freaks still bitter about Konami’s decision, fans of the demo, including developer and 3D artist RadiusGordello, have stepped into the void Konami left behind.
After months of painstaking work, Gordello has announced that their remake of P.T., Unreal P.T., is finally live on Itch.io. Developed using the Unreal engine, Unreal P.T. faithfully recreates the original experience “down to the pixel” — although the ending has been tweaked “to make beating it more consistent”, according to Gordello.
For those brave enough, Unreal P.T. also includes VR support. Gordello does mention that full-scale VR isn’t currently available and there’s no word on if such a feature will be implemented in the future or not.
This isn’t the first P.T. fan remake to get released. However, it’s one of the few we’re aware of that’s faithfully recreated the source material — and offered VR support alongside it.
As is the case with these sorts of things, there’s no way to know how long Gordello’s version of P.T. will remain live. While this version has been in development for 10 months and other P.T. remakes exist across the internet, Konami did issue a cease and desist for another faithful remake earlier this year. The order effectively killed the game from being released in playable form.
Konami did not comment on the reason for halting development on that specific fan-made demo, or why other demos have been allowed to remain available.
The original P.T. demo for the PlayStation 4 is still playable for anyone who currently has it installed on their console’s hard drive. Despite reports circulating at the end of last year, Konami confirmed (via GameRant) that the demo was, in fact, still playable.
