Heartworm, the late-90s-style survival horror game that has been a PC exclusive since July 2025, is coming to consoles next week. Publisher DreadXP and solo developer Vincent Adinolfi have set October 1 as the release date for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the original Switch. All six versions launch the same day, so this is not a staggered rollout with the older hardware following later.
What Heartworm is
Heartworm follows Sam, a young woman who cannot get past the death of her grandfather. Grief sends her down an internet rabbit hole, where a mysterious forum promises that the dead can be reached. The forum leads her to a house in the mountains that is supposed to be supernatural, and she goes there hoping to make contact with the other side. From there the game crosses into a world built out of memories. By its own description it is a story about grief and loss first and a monster game second.
That framing matters for anyone expecting a shooter. The developer describes combat as limited and puts the weight on exploration and classic puzzle solving. Sam does not arm herself with a pistol and a shotgun on the way in. Her one weapon is a camera: an old 35mm SLR that, according to its in-game item description, belonged to her grandfather. Photographing the things that come for her is how she fights back, which ties the core mechanic straight back to the loss that drives the story.
Built on the Silent Hill and Resident Evil template
Adinolfi has never hidden what Heartworm is reaching for. The game calls itself a love letter to late-90s genre staples, naming Silent Hill and Resident Evil directly, and the screenshots make the lineage obvious. Low-polygon characters stand inside detailed, painterly rooms. There are item boxes, readable files, a map screen and an inventory in which items can be examined and combined. Rooms are framed from fixed camera angles that choose what the player gets to see, the device that gave the original PlayStation horror games so much of their dread.
Heartworm mixes that approach with modern over-the-shoulder aiming for combat, so lining up a shot with the camera does not have to fight the fixed framing. Traditionalists can switch on classic tank controls instead. An optional pixelation filter and other retro effects push the image further toward the look of first-generation 3D consoles, and the game can also run without them for a cleaner picture.
A short game by design
Heartworm is a compact game. Its store listing puts a playthrough at four to six hours, with multiple endings to reward a second run. Story beats come through both pre-rendered and in-engine cutscenes, another nod to the era it imitates, and the game has an original soundtrack. That soundtrack is also sold separately on Steam.
That short running time makes more sense on consoles than it might first seem. A tight, one-evening horror game with more than one ending suits handheld play on Switch and Switch 2 especially well, and it is an easy recommendation for anyone who has worked through the recent run of big-budget horror remakes and wants something closer to the originals in spirit and scale.
Why the console version matters
Retro-styled survival horror has become one of the most active corners of indie development, but many of those games stay on PC for good or reach consoles only years later. Heartworm is arriving on six platforms at once, including last-generation PlayStation and Xbox hardware and both Nintendo systems. That gives it a much wider audience than its Steam launch did.
The timing is also sensible. October 1 puts the game on consoles right at the start of the Halloween season and a week after the latest Silent Hill, which is exactly when players are in the mood for horror.
What we still do not know
The announcement confirms the platforms and the date but does not detail console-specific features. The PC release is available now on Steam alongside a free demo, which is still the easiest way to find out whether the fixed cameras and camera combat work for you before the console launch.
