Killer Frequency

Killer Frequency
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	Team17
Publisher	Team17
Platform	Meta Quest
Device	Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro
Type	Game
Genre	Horror, Puzzle, Adventure
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	June 1, 2023
Price	US$24.99 (Meta Horizon Store, Steam; regular price)
App Store	Meta Horizon Store, Steam
Website	https://www.team17.com/games/killer-frequency

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Killer Frequency is a first-person horror comedy puzzle adventure game developed and published by Team17. The player is Forrest Nash, a late-night radio host in the fictional small town of Gallows Creek in 1987, who has to help callers escape a masked serial killer by giving them advice over the phone. It is the first VR game developed by Team17 itself, the studio best known for the Worms series; the company had earlier published VR titles made by other studios, such as Lethal VR.

The game was released on June 1, 2023 for Meta Quest 2 and, as a flat-screen game, for Windows via Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. Team17 says the VR version was "built from the ground-up for the Meta Quest 2" and runs at 72 frames per second; the Steam version has no PC VR support.

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Developer, publisher, reveal, release and announcement dates, platforms and VR or flat-screen status, Quest frame rate, Steam and Meta store prices, game jam origin and dev-blog quotes, soundtrack and Unity patch dates, Metacritic and OpenCritic figures and the quoted reviews, checked against all cited sources. About review dates.

Gameplay

The game takes place on the night the Whistling Man, a killer believed to have died 30 years earlier, returns to Gallows Creek. With the town's first responders unavailable, the emergency line is rerouted to the KFAM radio station, where Forrest Nash, a former Chicago radio star, presents the late-night show "The Scream" with his producer Peggy.

Each emergency call is a puzzle. The player talks to the caller through branching dialogue options, then searches the station for clues such as maps, newspaper clippings, letters, flyers and faxes, and uses that information to tell the caller how to avoid the killer. Depending on the answers chosen, the caller may live or die. Some prompts are timed. The player also runs the radio desk, playing records and taking callers, while the show stays on air. The station can be explored, and it contains dozens of physics-based objects from the period, including a working cassette player and record player. The soundtrack is original 1980s-style music, and the cast is fully voiced. Choices affect which callers survive and the ending reached.

Development

Killer Frequency began as an entry in the 2019 Adventure Jam, a game jam in which participants have two weeks to make an adventure game. A small group of Team17 developers made a short narrative horror game about a late-night radio host in a town plagued by a killer in their free time. Years later, the project went into full development. The free jam version was distributed on Game Jolt. In the studio's dev blog, game designer Kev Carthew said the 1980s setting was meant to feel "like an American B-horror movie", and that the team first considered a zombie outbreak before settling on a slasher. Game artist Phil Brown voiced Forrest Nash in the jam version.

For the full game, the designers kept the killer, the town, Forrest and his producer Peggy from the jam version and expanded them. Designer Harry Scholefield said the killer's whistle was chosen because it ties into the game's audio-based play, which led to the name "the Whistling Man". He described the full story as running "throughout the six or so hours of playtime" and named Firewatch as an inspiration for the dialogue between two characters who are not in the same place. In October 2025 Team17 released a patch for the game that addressed a security vulnerability identified in the Unity engine.

Release

Team17 revealed the game on June 9, 2022 at the closing of the UploadVR Showcase, with a release on Quest 2 and a flat-screen Steam version planned for later that year. In December 2022 the studio said more information would follow in 2023, and a gameplay trailer in February 2023 gave a summer release window. The June 1, 2023 release date and the console versions were announced in April 2023.

Platform	Release date	VR support
Meta Quest 2	June 1, 2023	Yes, 72 fps
Windows (Steam)	June 1, 2023	No, flat screen only
PlayStation 5	June 1, 2023	No
PlayStation 4	June 1, 2023	No
Xbox Series X/S	June 1, 2023	No
Xbox One	June 1, 2023	No
Nintendo Switch	June 1, 2023	No

As of October 2026, the Meta Horizon Store and Steam list the game at a regular price of US$24.99. Steam also sells a Deluxe Edition that adds the original soundtrack, and the official soundtrack was released there on July 11, 2024.

Reception

On Metacritic, the PC version has a Metascore of 82 based on 8 critic reviews and the PlayStation 5 version 78 based on 7 reviews, both rated "generally favorable"; as of October 2026 Metacritic lists no critic reviews for the Meta Quest version. OpenCritic gives the game a "Strong" rating, with a top critic average of 78 and 90% of critics recommending it, across all platforms.

UploadVR reviewed the Quest version on Quest 2 and Quest Pro and gave it its "Recommended" label. Its reviewer called the game "goofy and schlocky in all the best ways without deflating the thrilling tension in its scariest moments", praised the relationship between Forrest and Peggy and the way the clues build the town's world, and noted that although the information-gathering varies, each emergency call ends in a similar way. Among flat-screen reviews, GameGrin scored the PC version 9/10 and Softpedia 8.5/10, while Push Square gave the PlayStation 5 version 6/10. Softpedia put a first run at about four hours.