Broadly speaking, it doesn't take much to make something set in a small town in the '90s off-putting. Make the locals a bit standoffish, create a sense of time leaving the place behind, gently suggest there's some sort of mystery to be solved, and you've got a creepy atmosphere. Holstin does all of this in 1992 Poland, and the Eastern European backdrop makes it standout against the likes of The Last of Us and Alan Wake.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ about the project, game director Rafał Sankowski, who's also CEO of developer Sonka, explained why the Polish setting fundamentally matters. "A lot of Holstin is about eeriness of the characters of the world and stuff," he tells us. "Poland is kind of eerie, especially in that period, to people that don't know Poland. So it just adds to the atmosphere."
Even just looking at the trailer and store page on Steam, you can see it. The dimly lit streets and overgrown, rustic buildings and cars. It's a place you can easily feel trapped, and that's what happens to the protagonist, who realizes something's got its claws into the town, and the people still living there.
But despite all this, Sankowski contends Holstin's a "love letter to the Polish '90s." Which may seem odd, but I get it - this mightn't exactly be a tourism ad, but it's still depicting parts of Poland we rarely see, beyond just the country itself, which isn't exactly a mainstay of pop culture.
Doing this grants the game a certain freshness, especially against the misadventures of Joel and Ellie, and Sankowski mentions he wilfully worked against following Naughty Dog's outline. "I really like The Last of Us, but I wouldn't want to play another game set in small town USA," he says. "It works for them, because this is an amazing storyline with [a] big AAA budget. But if you're an indie developer, and you're making a small USA town survival horror, it might get a little bit repetitive."
Beyond the Cordyceps, you have Resident Evil and Silent Hill, both set in the US, and a slew of others. The United States are well-worn when it comes to stories like these; Holstin provides something different, and it's all the scarier for it. You can check out a free demo on Steam now, while a release date for the full game is still to be announced.
