Ground Zero, the retro survival horror from independent developer Malformation Games and publisher Kwalee, launches on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on April 16, 2026.
Two months after a meteor obliterates South Korea, the dust settles enough for someone to go in and find out what happened. Busan sits in fog and ruin, its shoreline towns, temples, and urban centre reduced to wreckage. But the destruction itself isn't the worst of it. Strange growths have spread from the impact site, and whatever life survived the initial event has been corrupted into something monstrous. The city is quiet in the way that survival horror cities are quiet, which is to say not quiet at all once you start moving through them. Fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds frame the devastation in a deliberately classic style, with optional tank controls for players who want the full retro experience.
The two people sent into this are Seo-Yeon, an elite Korean operative, and her Canadian partner. They're trained soldiers, not helpless civilians, and the combat reflects that. Seo-Yeon can shoot, stab, kick, and counter, drawing on both firearms and martial combat training. The game rewards precision through a system called Genome Points, where cleaner kills yield more points that can be traded for gear upgrades. There's a direct incentive to fight well rather than just fight often, giving encounters a layer of risk calculation on top of the immediate threat. Boss fights push the mutations to their extremes, and the game warns that the deeper into the city you go, the worse things get.
The investigation itself is the narrative thread pulling everything forward. The meteor impact is the inciting event, but the real question is what actually hit Busan and why the fallout has produced these growths and mutations rather than simple destruction. Seo-Yeon and her partner are there to uncover that truth, moving through the ruined city while piecing together what happened. Puzzles sit alongside combat as part of the core loop, and the game includes custom difficulty settings that let players tune the experience. Hidden endings, alternate outfits, and additional game modes give reasons to return after the first run.
Malformation Games has built Ground Zero around a specific vision of what survival horror felt like in the genre's early days, then placed it in a setting that feels distinct from the usual haunted mansions and abandoned facilities.
Busan in ruins, fixed cameras tracking your movement through fog and corruption, a soldier trained to fight but unprepared for what the meteor left behind. Ground Zero puts its horror in a place where the threat isn't just what's lurking around the next corner but what's growing out of the ground beneath it.