My idea is Filipino survival folk horror game Liwanag.
It’s a survival horror video game set in Manila named Liwanag. It’s about a girl named Maya who is introverted discovers her town is fluctuated by a folk spirit who haunts by light. The spirits people to people every day via light as everything they touch. She can pick any weapon to choose from. It’s a mixture of a first and third person shooter. The core mechanism—a folk spirit that hunts by light—is a brilliant subversion of typical horror tropes. Where most games utilize darkness as a concealant for terror, Liwanag weaponizes illumination, transforming the very thing that should provide safety into a source of dread. This inversion creates a sophisticated gameplay loop where the player must constantly weigh the necessity of visibility against the extreme peril it invites. Does the protagonist retreat into the absolute darkness of a closet to escape notice, or does she use a flickering lantern to navigate the distorted architecture of her town, knowing that every beam of light serves as a beacon for the entity?
This creates a high-stakes tension between the desire to see what is coming and the instinct to remain unseen. You can further expand this by introducing environmental puzzles where the player must manipulate light sources—short-circuiting streetlights, shielding windows, or using mirrors—to create "safe" paths or distract the spirit. The theme of an introverted girl adds layers of symbolic resonance; her struggle against the spirit can serve as a powerful metaphor for the fear of being "seen" or judged, and her journey toward agency can be tracked through her ability to control or harness that light. The setting, steeped in folk horror, provides a rich, tactile atmosphere where the architecture and town history feel like an extension of the threat itself, grounding the supernatural elements in a palpable, lived-in reality.