Hear, Resident Evil is clearly an influential collection. It helped mildew the enduring imaginative and prescient of survival-horror video video games, and over the course of its almost 30-year historical past, it has reinvented itself and the style extra occasions than one can depend. There’s even an exciting new Resident Evil title popping out proper across the collection’ thirtieth anniversary, which looks like an acceptable factor to advertise and throw some weight behind. So clarify to me why, as a substitute, there’s a Resident Evil knockoff referred to as Ebola Village taking over time and house on PlayStation’s YouTube web page proper now?
The trailer’s description reads, “A classic horror inspired by the original survival games of the 90s, Ebola Village is a modern take on a first-person adventure where the main character, Maria, investigates a series of mysterious events.” Let me simply say, “inspired” is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. It’s been sitting on the official PlayStation YouTube page for over 20 hours, has amassed over 70,000 views, and roughly 7,400 downvotes. It was noticed on-line by social media gaming news accounts like Knoebel. “What are we doing here man,” reads one of many high feedback.
Ebola Village already launched on PC final 12 months. A part of a whole collection developed by “indie_games_studio” (sure, that’s the studio’s title), it prices $17 {dollars} and the highest Steam evaluations say issues like, “This game is so bad it gave me Ebola irl.” Normally, it’s Unreal Engine asset-flip knockoffs of hit Steam video games which can be losing house on the PlayStation Retailer. This time round, it’s precise junk from Steam that seems to be flowing downstream. The way it ended up with a spot on the PlayStation YouTube channel stays unclear.
The complete trailer looks like a shoddily constructed homage to the Resident Evil collection, and never in a campy, enjoyable approach, both. One of many opening pictures exhibits a personality driving into city, and from the first-person perspective of the scene, their fingerless gloves look virtually precisely like a part of Leon Kennedy‘s Resident Evil 4 fit. In another scene, a zombie (or someone otherwise infected by Ebola???) lobs an axe at the player’s head, and I swear the accompanying sound impact even sounds prefer it’s straight out of RE4.
I’m wondering if this trailer will probably be nonetheless out there on the official PlayStation YT acc after I get up tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/9CKCMwnle8
— Knoebel (@Knoebelbroet) January 7, 2026
To make issues worse (or higher relying on who you ask), there’s additionally an enemy with a chainsaw and sack over their head. Come on, y’all.
RE4 isn’t the one recreation from the collection that’s proven a bit of affection right here, and there are some standout “homages” to the bigger RE collection among the many numerous egregious particulars. For instance, the font used for Ebola Village‘s title appears very similar to that used by the Resident Evil remakes, and the “E” in Ebola here is crimson followed by gnarled white lettering, mirroring the logos for those games. Additionally, the main character, Maria, feels pretty “inspired” by the series’ early feminine protagonists, like some amalgamation of Claire Redfield and Jill Valentine.
In some unspecified time in the future within the recreation, Maria even seems to flee to a distant village to “visit her mother and her ex-husband, Ruslan,” at which level the sport begins to look eerily just like the RE4-inspired Resident Evil Village. There’s a tall crone-like character, a battle with a werewolf, and there are even scenes set amongst distinctly Village-esque cabins. Essentially the most shocking a part of the trailer is definitely the absence of a Girl Dimitrescu analog, however perhaps that’s one shock Ebola Village is saving for these courageous sufficient to truly spend cash on it.
Some commenters on the trailer web page couldn’t assist however theorize that the video’s thumbnail was AI-generated, which might not less than really feel consistent with the rest of the slop currently sitting on the PlayStation Store. In response to the sport’s Steam web page, it was certainly the work of a neural community. Ebola Village is evidently releasing on console on January 23, and I can not wait to see what borrowed methods it has up its sleeves, not less than till Ebola 4 comes out. We’ll see if that one makes it into an precise PlayStation showcase.
