Meet the young makers of Kerala's 3D horror game 'Thekku Island'

A short clip began circulating online recently, drawing people in before they quite knew what they were watching. It opens inside a computer game. A man walks through darkness with a torch in hand and enters what looks like an abandoned house. There is no dramatic build-up, no warning. Instead, a line appears on screen in Malayalam: “Njangalude veetilekku swagatham.” Welcome to our house.

That moment marks the beginning of Thekku Island, an upcoming PC game developed in Kerala. The game is yet to be released, but the teaser alone was enough to spread widely on social media, pulling in attention from gamers and casual viewers alike. For many, the surprise was not just the eerie setup, but the language, the setting and the realisation that this was a full-fledged computer game being built from Kerala by a group of youngsters in their early twenties.

Unlike action-heavy horror titles, Thekku Island is designed as a slow-burn psychological experience. The developers say the emphasis is on mood and tension rather than jump scares. Lighting, ambient sound and a sense of isolation are central to the gameplay.

Set on a remote island in the 1980s and influenced by Kerala's coastal landscapes, the game follows a man who travels to the island after losing contact with his wife. On arrival, he finds the place deserted. The story unfolds in the first person, with players discovering narrative details through exploration, documents and carefully paced encounters rather than direct confrontation.

“All of us have grown up playing video games from childhood,” says Adithyan P S, who handles game operations for 'Thekku Island'. He points out that while mobile games have been developed in Kerala, a PC game of this scale is still uncommon. “From Kerala, of course people have developed mobile games, but a computer game like this would be new.”

The team behind the game consists of five youngsters aged between 21 and 22. Athul George is the game director, Aswin Sunilkumar the creative director, Adithyan P S oversees game operations, Aadhi Gopakumar is the music director, and Aswin P V handles marketing. Three of them, Adithyan and the two Aswins, are MCA students at Saintgits College of Engineering in Kottayam. Athul, meanwhile, chose a different path.

“I started developing games when I was 18,” says Athul. After completing his Class 12, he decided to focus entirely on game development and pursue it full-time. “I taught myself how to develop games, and I have developed games before as well.”

Athul began working on Thekku Island on his own. He says around 20 to 30 percent of the game was already completed before others joined the project. “I initially started Thekku Island. After that point is when the rest of the team came onboard,” he explains.

Adithyan recalls first coming across Athul’s early work through social media. Interested by what he saw, he reached out, and the collaboration slowly took shape. The shared motivation was simple: the absence of a PC game rooted in Kerala.

“I have been playing games forever,” Athul says. “But the thought that from Kerala, something like this hasn’t really come before is what drove me to make a game based here.” He adds that releasing the first trailer became a turning point. “When I released it, that’s when others in the team reached out to me.”

The decision to place the game firmly within a Kerala context was deliberate. According to Adithyan, the team had the horror genre in mind from the beginning. “We had a horror theme in mind, and we thought including Kerala elements in it would work best,” he says.

The game’s title was not the result of elaborate branding discussions. Adithyan says the name Thekku Island was chosen almost casually. “We just wanted some Kerala element. Since it’s happening on an island, we added ‘Thekku’ with it.”

For several months, the project largely stayed within gaming circles. People who closely followed indie games were aware that something was being developed. The wider attention came only after the teaser was released. “Gamers knew about it earlier,” Adithyan says, “but after the teaser, people started reaching out. That’s when more people began to notice the game. The boom has been very recent.”

The response also reassured Athul that there was an audience waiting for such a project. “Just like me, many people in Kerala were waiting for something like this to come,” he says, adding that the reaction gave him further motivation to keep developing Thekku Island.

As the project grew, bringing more people onboard changed how Athul worked. “Truth be told, developing a game from scratch is like making a movie,” he says. “There are so many departments to handle.” With teammates handling music, marketing and operations, he was able to focus more deeply on expanding the game itself. “Once they came aboard, I could concentrate mainly on the game,” he says.

The team plans to make Malayalam the primary language of Thekku Island, with subtitles in either English or Hindi. They are aiming to release the game in February 2026. Adithyan says they are hopeful, not just about the launch, but about what it could signal. “There are a couple of games being developed here,” he says, “but we wanted the first one to be something that is Kerala-rooted.”