Krafton is adapting the Korean novel, The Bird That Drinks Tears, into horror game

The makers of PUBG continue to branch out into something different, bringing their expertise into the horror genre. Krafton is developing a new game based on the Korean fantasy novel, The Bird That Drinks Tears. Be warned, it won’t be for the faint of heart. A brief cinematic trailer released today, and the game already looks full of guts, gore, dismemberment, and fantastical swordplay — the perfect horror cocktail.

The Bird That Drinks Tears is a series of fantasy novels by Lee Yeongdo that feature common fantasy tropes mixed with aspects of Korean culture. For example, “dokkaebi,” Korean deities that possess powers to either help or trick humans, replace your typical elves and demons. One of these creatures, a “Nhaga,” is brutally decimated in the trailer when a seemingly important character chops off their head before showing them their flailing body. Now that really sets the mood.

A new fantasy horror game

The Bird That Drinks Tears was initially published on an internet forum, which continued Lee’s tradition of first publishing his work on online forums. After The Bird That Drinks Tears was published as a physical four volume series, Lee released The Bird That Drinks Blood, which takes place in the same universe. As of know, we don’t know how faithful Krafton’s game adaptation will be to the novels. The trailer is simply marked as a concept trailer, after all.

In that sense, the trailer doesn’t actually reveal much in the way of gameplay or lore. But it sets the mood in all its bloody glory, even if Krafton still hasn’t given us the game’s name. I guess that means there isn’t much progress as far as development goes. But whenever this “Unannounced Project” does get its feet off the ground, it promises to be a violent chasm of demon slayer violence and, hopefully, some good scares too.