Lock On Games Announces OCCAM '97, A Dispatcher Horror Sim Set In 1997
The design puts the player behind a desk instead of in the field: the horror comes from triage and budget decisions, and the agents' individual weaknesses and mental limits are the resource the player is really managing.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
Publisher Watt Studio announced OCCAM '97, a horror simulation game in development at Lock On Games, alongside an official trailer. The game is set in Terminsburg, a fictional city in 1997, where the player works as a dispatcher for the Anomalous Substance Correction Bureau, reading reports from across the region and deciding which agents to send to which cases and which reports to ignore. It also involves hacking, signal interception, and managing the player's own stress.
The game hands the player a stack of reports and a limited budget rather than a weapon. Anomaly levels in Terminsburg rise when responses go wrong, and the captains sent out have specific weaknesses: one is strong against time loops but panics when left idle, another handles spatial paradoxes but has claustrophobia. Between shifts the player manages their own mental state through radio, coffee, and letters, and their perception of reality can distort under work stress.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.