PANICORE

I keep coming back to one specific moment people describe when talking about PANICORE: someone whispering frantically to a teammate while sawing a plank in a dark corridor, holding their breath, then dying because a friend on the other side of the map laughed too loud. That is the game's entire soul, compressed into a single run. It is a first-person co-op survival horror built around one genuinely clever idea: the AI-driven entities do not just track footsteps, they hear your actual voice through your microphone, treating every yelp, cough, or Discord-bleed as a dinner bell. Two brothers at ZTEK Studio built this, and for what it is, the craft behind that audio detection hook is impressive. The loop is lean and deliberate. Up to five players drop into an abandoned location, scatter across poorly lit rooms, and scavenge for items that unlock one of two possible exits per map. Tasks like cutting wood to build a ladder or repairing an elevator are time-sensitive and loud, so the team has to coordinate who draws attention and who completes the objective. Permadeath applies per run, with limited medkits as the only lifeline, which means a single panicked shriek can end a session in seconds. The randomized item placement gives each attempt a different rhythm, and learning the layout well enough to mentally map likely spawn locations is its own quiet satisfaction. The friction points are real, though. There are only a handful of maps at launch, and once you know them the novelty of discovery shrinks fast. The entities, while visually distinct, share a core behavior set that amounts to "hear sound, pursue," which limits the strategic variety over time. The voice recognition system, PANICORE's crown jewel, also has a rough edge: mic calibration can feel inconsistent, with some setups triggering detection even during near-silence, and multiplayer connectivity has caused frustration in community reports. The story is functionally absent, collectible files exist but feel disconnected from the setting, and the UI carries the marks of a small team working within tight constraints. Who should actually play this? Horror fans who already have a regular group of three to five people and want something that will produce genuine, chaotic, memorable moments. It sits comfortably alongside Phasmophobia and Lethal Company as a "screaming-with-friends" experience, but its specific microphone mechanic gives it a texture those games do not have. Solo players and those expecting a story-driven crawl through atmospheric lore will bounce off it hard. The developers have shown consistent post-launch engagement and have signaled new map content and voice chat improvements in their updates, which matters for a game at this price tier. It is rough in the ways that small, passion-built horror games are rough. It is also genuinely tense in ways that much bigger games are not.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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