They Hunger: Lost Souls

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January 2025

This mod for Source is no longer being developed.

They Hunger: Lost Souls was a cancelled game based off of the original They Hunger series by Black Widow Games developed on the Source Engine. It was meant to be Black Widow Games' first commercial title, unlike the original They Hunger Trilogy, which were free mods commissioned by PCGamer. The game was first announced in October of 2005 with the last official piece of information being released in February of 2008. The game would've been released in episodes, with an "Episode 0" that was going to be a prelude to Lost Souls planned to release a few months before Episode 1. Unfortunately, Lost Souls ceased development sometime in 2008 due to Neil Manke, The leader of the project and the founder of Black Widow Games, not being involved in the project anymore due to personal issues, which people have mostly rumored to be him falling deathly ill. However, Robert Briscoe, one of the developers for Lost Souls, stated in an Email in response to YouTuber Falconer02 that Neil was well the last time they had been in contact.

Story

The game was to be set during the early 1960's in North-Eastern Europe, presumably Sweden. The game would've began with the main character in a taxi driving around the Scandinavian landscape, with the taxi driver, who would've been dropping some exposition along the ride before getting involved in a deadly accident after getting hit by a train. The Player would wake up inside of a Beachside restaurant before finding shelter in the "Sacred Hills Monastery" before finding out that the Monastery was filled with zombies. The player would be travelling within many other settings besides the Monastery, However, mainly being "a zombie-infested salvage operation, an isolated farming settlement, wilderness areas with meandering river beds, lakes and waterfalls, fog shrouded swamps, and others".

Gameplay

One of the games' most noteworthy features was the exclusion of a traditional HUD. The player was going to be carrying a "biometer" which would've tracked the players health, and the player would've had to physically count the bullets within their guns' magazines.

The Leak

In 2019, 2 builds of They Hunger: Lost Souls from 2006 and 2008 were leaked online. The builds are noticeably broken and missing a lot of content from the most up-to-date version of the game.