The Studio Behind Phasmophobia Just Announced Its First Published Games
Kinetic Publishing, a new games publishing label from Kinetic Games — the studio that made the popular horror game Phasmophobia — held its first-ever showcase on August 12, 2026. The event was streamed live on the company's Twitch channel at 20:00 BST / 21:00 CEST (GamesPress). It revealed the first group of games signed to the label, with release dates and platforms confirmed for titles launching in 2027 and 2028 (GamesIndustry.biz).
One of the games shown is Precognition, a story-driven game where you play as Diana, a woman who starts seeing visions of the future after an experimental device is put in her brain (The Verge). The main gameplay involves exploring those future visions, picking out specific moments, and saving them to Diana's memory in the present. The catch: the moment you save a detail to memory, the future changes (The Verge).
That idea is worth pausing on. Most games that let you see the future treat it as a puzzle tool: you look ahead, figure out the right move, make it, and things turn out well. Precognition seems to do the opposite. Simply observing the future alters it, so each memory you save helps you in one way but limits you in another. You are not picking from a set of branching story paths so much as watching your choices reshape what is even possible. It is an unusual approach, and whether it works will depend on whether the consequences feel natural rather than scripted.
The showcase was narrated by a voice actor (Gematsu), which gave the presentation a polished feel rather than the fast-paced string of trailers that most indie showcases use. It aired at 12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET (Gematsu), which was early evening in the UK.
Kinetic Publishing's move into publishing follows a pattern we have seen before: a successful game developer using its fame and experience to help other small studios publish their games. Phasmophobia built a large audience through early access (a model where players buy and play a game while it is still being developed) and through streaming culture. The new label will inevitably be compared to that success. The 2027–2028 release windows suggest these are early-stage projects, not games being rushed out the door.
The broader context here is that publishing labels run by well-known game developers have become one of the main ways smaller studios get funding, quality testing, marketing help, and connections to platforms like Steam and consoles — all without giving up creative control to a big publisher. The question for any new label is whether it offers more than just a recognizable name. For Kinetic Publishing, that will be judged by how good these first games turn out to be.
Precognition is the title most likely to get early attention, simply because its concept is so ambitious. A game where every act of remembering rewrites what happens next could produce a story that feels genuinely surprising and personal, or it could fall apart under its own complexity. The showcase gave us a first look. The real test comes when people can play it.
