A strange, horror-themed teaser for a project named ‘Emio’ has suddenly appeared across Nintendo’s YouTube and social media channels.
Accompanied by the hashtag “#WhoIsEmio”, the bizarre 15-second teaser is already creating speculation that the famously family-friendly company might just be developing (or at the very least publishing) a mature horror game.
The age-restricted teaser gives very little away and certainly shows no gameplay. A human figure wearing a paper bag over their head sporadically appears on screen, with several jump cuts highlighting various features like the bag, their coat, and hands. The Japanese text for ‘Emio’ – meaning to laugh or smile – is then shown at the end.
The Nintendo Switch splash screen at the beginning of the teaser shows that this is indeed a Switch-related project, and the ESRB ‘Mature’ rating indicates that it will in all likelihood be a game.
Nintendo is no stranger to inserting darker or mature themes in its games, but it famously strays from developing games that would require anything more than a ‘Teen’ (or PEGI 12) rating. In fact, there are only a handful of ‘Mature’ rated games Nintendo has published – including Bayonetta 3, Devil’s Third on the Wii U, and GameCube cult classic Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
Whether ‘Emio’ is a project developed internally at Nintendo – or just something the company is publishing – remains to be seen. That said, the game has a bespoke landing page over on Nintendo’s Japanese website, lending weight to the idea that this could well be an internally developed project.
We’ll be keeping a very close eye on the game as more details are revealed. A Nintendo-developed horror game is an extremely enticing prospect, especially given the company’s often-tactful deployment of mature themes in otherwise family-friendly titles.