Welcome back to Insider Gaming’s 28 Games Later: A Horror Showcase. One of the games you saw as part of the show was Signal Veil.
From Serafini Productions and Time Hunters, Signal Veil follows a girl named Aki who began experiencing supernatural phenomena after inheriting her mother’s old phone. Her school, seemingly normal, begins to reveal a disturbing past buried under layers of false memories and silence. Grotesque spirits, broken timelines, and impossible messages force her to choose: suppress the truth…or accept her role as a veil between worlds.
As part of the show, we spoke with Time Hunters about Signal Veil. Below you can find the full conversation. And for more on the game, check out our complete rundown.
Signal Veil – 28 Games Later Interview
Q: How long has the game been in development?
Signal Veil has been in development since August 2025, when we started working on the very first prototypes and testing some of the core ideas that would eventually become the game.
Q: Can you talk about the game’s inspiration?
It actually started as a small proof of concept. We had just finished working on another survival horror game, and we’ve always been interested in combining an anime visual style with genres where you don’t normally see it.
We grew up loving classic horror games like Resident Evil, but for Signal Veil we wanted to lean much more into psychological horror. At the same time, we’re huge anime fans, especially of series like Jujutsu Kaisen and Another, so we started asking ourselves: what would happen if we took the atmosphere and tension of classic survival horror and combined them with the visual language and character-driven storytelling of anime?
That question eventually became Signal Veil.
Q: During the game’s development, has the team faced any obstacles it had to overcome?
Absolutely. One of the biggest challenges has simply been the scale and ambition of the project.
Signal Veil is a much bigger and more ambitious game than many of the projects we’ve worked on before. We wanted to push ourselves in several areas at once, from the size and complexity of the environments to the combat, animations, enemy design, and the number of interconnected gameplay systems.
Moving into a third-person perspective was also an important challenge for us. It changes a lot about how you approach horror, because the player has a much stronger awareness of the protagonist and her surroundings. At the same time, we wanted to combine that perspective with some of the tension and limitations we love about classic survival horror.
It has required a lot of experimentation and iteration, but that challenge is also one of the reasons we’re so excited about the project. Signal Veil has given us the opportunity to try things we simply hadn’t attempted at this scale before.
Q: Was there a “eureka” moment where everything just clicked and started to come together?
We think it was when we realized that Aki’s phone shouldn’t just be part of the story; it should be one of the main gameplay tools.
Once we started building mechanics around it, everything began to click. Exploring in third person, pulling out the phone, having an inventory that doesn’t pause the game, and still being able to hear everything happening around you created this constant feeling of vulnerability.
Then we started taking the idea even further. We really like games with parry systems, so at some point we thought, “What if you could use the phone to parry an enemy?”
It was one of those ideas that sounded strange at first, but once we tried it, we loved it. From there, the phone started opening the door to a lot of new mechanics and became a fundamental part of Signal Veil’s identity.
Q: What features are you the most proud of?
Definitely the phone parry and Aki’s combat system.
We also really love how combat changes depending on Aki’s sanity. As her mental state deteriorates, the way she fights becomes more desperate, aggressive, and messy. She becomes more vulnerable, but there’s also greater potential reward for players willing to take that risk.
We like that her emotional state isn’t just something happening in the story. You can actually feel it through the gameplay, and it can influence the way you approach different situations.
Q: What are you excited for players to experience?
The sanity system is probably what we’re most excited for people to experience.
We want players to see how Aki’s mental state affects not only her, but also the world around her and even the way they play the game.
The goal is for that deterioration to feel gradual and personal, to the point where players begin questioning what they’re seeing, what they’re hearing, and sometimes even whether they can trust the game itself.
We’re especially excited to see how different players react to that uncertainty and how willing they are to push Aki further in exchange for the potential advantages that come with it.
Q: You have 30 seconds or so to pitch to a player who’s looking for a new game to play. What would you say to them?
Signal Veil is our attempt to make you feel like you’re living inside a psychological horror anime.
It combines the exploration, resource management, puzzles, and tension of classic survival horror with a third-person perspective, modern controls, reactive combat, and a story centered around Aki, a girl forced to confront memories and emotional wounds she has spent years trying to bury.
Your phone is one of your most important tools, your sanity can completely change the way you experience the game, and not everything you see can be trusted.
If you love anime and classic survival horror but want to experience those ideas in a different way, that’s exactly what we’re trying to create with Signal Veil.
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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