The next Dark Pictures Anthology episode tackles wicked witches this summer

Interactive horror series The Dark Pictures Anthology plunged into the depths of the ocean in its first episode Man Of Medan. The next horrific tale is headed to somewhere in small town North America to get tangled up in the spooky history of witch hunting. A new trailer hints at some of the dark forces at play: dark magic, religious fervor, and maybe actual demons? No matter what the truth of the situation ends up being, Little Hope looks plenty spooky and grim. It will arrive sometime this summer.

Little Hope seems to have a sort of after school special vibe to it. "Abandoned and all alone, four college students and their teacher become stranded in an isolated town miles from anywhere after their bus crashes in bad weather," Supermassive Games say. "Trapped by a mysterious fog in the town of Little Hope, they search desperately for a means of escape whilst visions from the past haunt them from the shadows." Well, let's split up, gang!

As the trailer explains, Little Hope has a witch-hunting history that's literally coming back to haunt the present somehow. Or so it seems. As with Man Of Medan, I suspect that the second Dark Pictures episode will be a mixture of the supernatural and reality.

In her Man Of Medan review, Sin points out that Dark Pictures is effectively a visual novel with very a very high production budget. It's a horror flick with lots of choices to undermine your instincts. Little Hope will presumably have a similar feel.

Sin played solo but I got the chance to play through Man Of Medan with a friend. We tackled the story together twice attempting to bend the outcomes to our will. I genuinely enjoyed how often it made us question ourselves. We'd try so hard to do things correctly only to find out that, through the conceit of the story, succeeding at the episode's quick-time events didn't always result in the outcome we wanted. I expect that Little Hope will have twists of the same flavor whether they be dubious visions of the past or unknowable supernatural forces.

The next episode will release sometime this summer but Bandai Namco haven't given a specific date yet. It'll be available on Steam, though there doesn't appear to be a store page just yet. Man Of Medan was priced at £25/$30/€30 so we can probably expect the same from Little Hope.