Resident Evil Village

About Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village is a first-person survival horror game made and published by Capcom, released in May 2021. It is the eighth main game in the Resident Evil series and follows on from Resident Evil 7 biohazard. Ethan Winters and his wife Mia have started a quiet new life a few years after the events of that game, until their home is attacked and their baby daughter is taken. Ethan wakes in the snow outside an isolated village and goes looking for her.

The village is the hub of the game. Its houses are barricaded and mostly empty, and the lycans, fast and hairy beasts that come in packs, chase you over fences and through barns. Beyond the village lie a castle, a house in a gorge, a reservoir and a factory, each the domain of one of the lords who rule the place. You return to the village between them with new keys and tools, opening locked doors and finding treasures to sell.

It plays like a mix of the series' slower survival horror and its action games. You manage a grid inventory, craft ammunition and healing from scraps, and buy weapons and upgrades from a merchant called the Duke. Some sections give you a shotgun and a crowd to fight; others take your weapons away and leave you to hide, run and solve puzzles while something follows you through dark rooms.

The tone is gothic: fog, snow, candlelit halls, old portraits and folk superstition. The scares come from creatures bursting through doors, bosses that hunt you through tight spaces and one long stretch in a dark house where you have no weapons at all. There is also plenty of gore.

It suits players who want a full-length horror game with a lot of variety and some action, and newcomers to the series can follow it, though it continues Ethan's story from Resident Evil 7. The Gold Edition adds the Winters' Expansion, with a third-person mode, more stages for The Mercenaries arcade mode and Shadows of Rose, a short story set years later, plus the Trauma Pack. On PlayStation 5 a free VR mode lets you play the whole story in PS VR2, and a Gold Edition came to Nintendo Switch 2 in February 2026.

How to play Resident Evil Village

1. Move through the village in first person, searching houses and barns for ammunition, crafting materials and treasures.
2. Open your inventory to arrange items in the grid and craft ammunition or healing from what you collect.
3. Fight lycans with pistols and shotguns, or block and back away when a pack closes in.
4. Sell treasures and buy weapons, upgrades and supplies from the Duke, the merchant who appears around the village.
5. Clear each lord's domain, then use the keys and tools you earn to reach new parts of the village.

Tips

• Explore the village again after each new area; locked doors and treasures open up as you get new keys.
• Hunt animals in the village and bring the meat to the Duke for cooked meals that raise your health and defence for good.
• Block when an enemy is about to hit you; it cuts the damage and pushes them back.
• Spend on the weapons you actually use rather than upgrading every gun a little.
• Save at typewriters before boss areas and use the safe rooms to rest.

Questions