Project Hail Mary Meets The X-Files In New Sci-Fi Thriller

Published Sep 5, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT Tom Wilson is a Gaming Features Writer at Screen Rant. Over the past five years, Tom has worked as the Editor-in-Chief at The Game Crater, as a Staff Writer for GamingIntel, a List Writer at TheGamer, and, of course, as a Senior Writer at ScreenRant. Tom has experience writing reviews, guides, news, and features, and has been responsible for teams of writers, training them and editing their work. Tom graduated with a Masters in Multimedia Journalism, and has since gone on to build up his portfolio of games journalism work. Project Hail Mary proved to be an enormous success with its 2026 film adaptation, something that fans of the books could have seen coming a mile away and a feat that sci-fi enthusiasts will be overjoyed with. However, with great success comes the desire for more, as those who thoroughly enjoyed the frankly phenomenal film will understandably be searching for anything that can fill the Rocky-sized hole it left in their hearts. Fortunately, Project Hail Mary's meteoric success has led to many incredible sci-fi projects just like it being discovered and pulled from the woodwork. There are also numerous new releases that adopt certain aspects of its core narrative and themes, which fans will want to keep an eye on. One such upcoming Project Hail Mary-esque project looks set to be a pretty fantastic spiritual successor, in large part thanks to its blending of the best elements of Andy Weir's magnum opus with the thrills and mysteries of the iconic sci-fi show, The X-Files. This Upcoming Video Game Is Project Hail Mary With Scares While there are a plethora of films and shows like Project Hail Mary, there aren't really any video games that adopt its themes and narrative elements. For those searching for a more interactive and immersive project like the sci-fi blockbuster hit, this can prove to be a bit of a problem. Fortunately, the recently announced video game, ONTOS, looks set to deliver an experience akin to Project Hail Mary, just with, as aforementioned, a dash of The X-Files penchant for the surreal, horrific, and mysterious. ONTOS is a first-person narrative-focused puzzle game in which players explore a repurposed moon hotel in search of answers. What they discover there are unspeakable horrors, a myriad of bizarre experiments, and a shocking, compromised truth that will almost certainly prove to be an astounding revelation. It is from the same studio as the brilliant sci-fi horror adventure game SOMA, which delivered similarly surreal set-pieces and a horrifying world teeming with mystery. Of course, while Project Hail Mary certainly has its tense scenes and abundance of existential dread, it would be a stretch to classify it as a horror film. The similarities between it and ONTOS boil down to their focus on hard sci-fi, isolated settings, and a desire to solve a seemingly impossible problem in a harsh environment that seems hell-bent on stopping you. ONTOS takes Project Hail Mary's themes of isolation and the horrors that come with it and dials it up to eleven by combining it with the aforementioned mystery elements of The X-Files. ONTOS Could Be The Ultimate Sci-Fi Thriller Video Game Steam Page It is this combination that could ultimately make ONTOS one of the best sci-fi games ever made. SOMA proved that Frictional Games (the same team behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent) was capable of delivering a compelling sci-fi universe alongside a mystery that is both fun to solve and ultimately worth solving. ONTOS feels like it will very much be the evolution of everything Frictional Games learned with SOMA and its recent Amnesia titles, which should excite both sci-fi and horror aficionados. Of course, we won't know for sure until ONTOS is released. It was originally intended to drop in 2026, but has now been officially delayed to 2027. A firm release date has yet to be confirmed, so it'll likely be a little while until we can experience the rather tantalizing combination of Project Hail Mary's isolation and The X-Files' approach to mystery. Fortunately, that gives fans plenty of time to check out SOMA and any other Project Hail Mary-esque experiences before diving deep into the surreal world of ONTOS. Systems Released 2027 Developer(s) Frictional Games Publisher(s) Frictional Games Number of Players Single-player Steam Deck Compatibility Unknown