Coming soon to your nearest Toys “R” Us
Have you wanted to playDead Space, but both the2023 remakeand the 2008 original are just not quite old enough for you? You’re in luck, because now you can playDead Spacereimagined as if it was running on the PS1 via a shortDead Space Demakedemo developed by Fraser Brumley.
The tech demo is only 10-15 minutes long, and itseems unlikelyit will ever get any more extensive than that. I gave it a try, and it… sure isDead Spaceas depicted through chunky polygons and unfiltered textures.
“I’ve been working on this for a lot longer than I planned and the end product is probably shorter than you expect but I hope you have fun playing it,” Brumley said on the demake’s Itch page. “This project was mostly a way for me to learn Unreal and the PS1 aesthetic so look forward to what I’ll be putting together in the future.”
It’s kind of hard to say this is what the actualDead Spacewould be like on the PlayStation 1. It still utilizes the over-the-shoulder camera angle that wasn’t really popular until 2005’sResident Evil 4. It presents some dialogue through a heavily compressed cutscene, and I did find it amusing thatDead Space Demakekeeps pestering you to “shoot off their limbs” multiple times, even after your first necromorph encounter.
Rather than an earnest attempt to fit a modern game on older hardware,Dead Space Demakefeels more like a light-hearted homage. Sort of a fond love letter to bothDead Spaceand the PS1 hardware. In that sense, it succeeds. Just don’t expect anything in the way of fun technical magic.
