Smilegate launches Korean psychological horror game 'The Alley' globally on Steam

Smilegate is bringing its Korean-style psychological horror game "The Alley" (골목길: 귀흔) to the global market.

The company said Friday it will officially launch "The Alley" worldwide alongside developer AIXLAB and co-publisher Thermite Games.

The game was first released domestically last October through Stove. After a global version update, it became available to players worldwide through Steam on Friday.

"The Alley" is a first-person psychological horror game in which the player takes on the role of a protagonist named Soyeon, finding herself in a familiar back alley that has twisted into something strange and unsettling. The only tool at her disposal is a smartphone. Players must use the phone's camera to photograph anomalies and determine whether each one is a "gwiheun" — a supernatural trace — or a "heokkaebi," an ominous but explainable illusion.

Players can text their judgments to a shaman grandmother character and receive guidance in return. The more correct the calls, the closer the player gets to the truth — but each wrong answer brings a ghost nearer. With 64 hidden anomalies scattered throughout, every decision is directly tied to the player's survival.

AIXLAB said the game grew out of the idea that "real fear lives closest to home," and that it sought to capture the feeling of a late-night walk home through a familiar neighborhood that suddenly feels alien.

The game recreates the look and sound of a Korean back alley — narrow streets, neighborhood shops, familiar ambient noise — before warping all of it to generate dread rooted in the everyday. The developer said it particularly expects the chase sequences that follow the moment a ghost's presence is detected to deliver a strong sense of tension.

The version launching Friday is the global edition, refined using player feedback accumulated since the domestic release last October.

Specific changes include a complete overhaul of the level structure to reduce fatigue from repeated playthroughs, expanded save points to lower the barrier to retrying, and improvements to puzzle difficulty and accessibility. A sprint function has been added to the stealth and chase systems, and the ghost's reactions and visual form have been enhanced.

A new epilogue mode, unlocked after clearing the story mode, has also been added, along with reworked hallucination and event sequences.

The global version of "The Alley" supports six languages — Korean, English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Russian — and is available through both Stove and Steam.