If I remember correctly, Zeno Clash was the first game that I bought on STEAM. I was mesmerized by that weird and surreal world, a prehistoric and complex painting full of bizarre characters. After seeing a picture of the Father-Mother, I knew that was a game I needed to try. And I was right, because playing Zeno Clash game felt like punching through a Dalí painting. Years later, Zeno Clash 2 was released, expanding the world and mechanics with a more open formula.
The ACE team is the Chilean company behind the development of Zeno Clash. The company was founded in Santiago by three brothers: Carlos, Andres, and Edmundo Bordeu. Over the years, the ACE Team created more and more unique and interesting universes. For example, Rock of Ages is a series of three titles that allow the player to bring more destruction into another surrealist world. In this case, the player controls a colossal boulder, rolling around the peculiar landscapes while destroying everything in their path.
The peculiar characters of Zeno Clash around the giant Father-Mother
The ACE Team developed many other titles, including the roguelike Abyss Odyssey, and the shooter inspired by the 1950s sci-fi Deadly Tower of Monsters. However, in the following interview, I will focus on their last two titles: The Eternal Cylinder and Clash Artifacts of Chaos.
The Eternal Cylinder is an interesting and innovative survival game, where the player is in charge of evolving and keeping alive a tribe of small creatures: the Trebhum. But of course, those creatures live in a highly predatory world full of monsters, where a colossal cylinder is smashing everything in its path. The game is set in a proper living ecosystem, with so many creatures to face and avoid by using the multiple strategies driven by the unique capacity of the Trebhum to mutate their bodies based on the environment.
Clash Artifacts of Chaos is the spiritual sequel of Zeno Clash, set inside the same world, but in a very different time. The game also evolved for the gameplay, moving toward a third-person view and with more Souls-like elements. The world is as rich and colorful as never before, with so many places and paths to visit, both during the day and night. The dichotomy between the many characters, Pseudo and the Boy, helps to shape this big and epic journey.
Since you probably already realized how these two games were some of my favorites from the last years, today I had the great opportunity to ask some questions about them to Carlos Bordeu from the ACE Team. Together with Carlos, we will discover secrets, curiosities, and developmental details of both Eternal Cylinder and Clash Artifacts of Chaos. So if you are a fan of these games, I highly suggest you read the following interview.
Q1: Thank you Carlos for the opportunity to interact with you. Your games are characterized by sharing surreal and bizarre worlds, providing the feeling of being inside a surrealist painting. Which art pieces and artists influenced you the most in the creation of your worlds?
A1: Our games have been inspired by diverse artists from different time periods. We have been influenced by the works of John Blanche (Fantasy Illustrator of the 1980s), as well as Harry Clarke (late 1800s) and also Hieronymus Bosch (1500s).
Gemini from Clash could be a part of some very disturbing paintings
Q2: In your most recent game, Clash Artifacts of Chaos, every important battle is introduced by a ritual, a minigame which provides bonus or malus to the following battle. I personally find this idea brilliant, not only for the gameplay but also for how it is rooted in the world-building. At which point during the development, did you decide to introduce this ritual? Was it always supposed to be like the actual dice-based game?
A2: We are big fans of the “choose your own adventure” role playing books of the 1980s. These books not only had different routes by leading you to unique pages of the story depending on your choices, but they also had combat that had to be resolved by throwing dice (like D&D). So, from the conception of the game, we wanted to somehow add this role playing element but into the fiction of the real world. This is how the ritual was born.
Q3: Clash Artifacts of Chaos features a peculiar day/night cycle, including huge changes not only in the enemies but also in the protagonist. How are these changes reflected in the nature of the world? Why did you decide to include this gameplay-element?
A3: This feature came to be because the game was originally meant to have an “invasion” type multiplayer feature (like Dark Souls) – where players could enter in PvP… however this was not going to work if everyone was playing as the same character / protagonist. We basically had a ‘God of War’ type game where we needed Dark Souls invasions. You can see it wouldn’t work to have several “Kratos” fighting each other in God of War if they added a PvP option. And because of this we needed our protagonist to see himself as a sort of “puppet” (a blank slate) in his dream form. We obviously incorporated this heavily into the narrative, but it was an unused feature which prompted this design choice.
At night, the world of Clash becomes more mysterious and dangerous
Q4: The lonely Boy, the creepy Gemini, and the mysterious Golem: the world of Clash Artifacts of Chaos is full of peculiar characters. If you would have the opportunity to do a spin-off to expand the story of one of the characters, which one would it be and why?
A4: I would love to do a game where you play as Golem. I’ve always wanted Nintendo to do a Zelda game where you play as Ganondorf instead of Link, so maybe that’s why. 😛
Q5: The Travelling Players, a cult/theater production, are a brilliant piece of storytelling, world-building, and meta-gaming, fitting perfectly into Clash’s world, but also strikingly going outside of it (for the readers: you can read more in my analysis HERE). How the idea of such a peculiar gang of bandits was born?
A5: All credit for the idea of the Travelling Players and their part of the story goes to Jonas Kyratzes – the writer of the game. At the beginning the Travelling Players were more of solution to a problem we needed to resolve… so I’m very happy their chapter ended up being so strong. For a game with this many unique enemies, it is typically a massive challenge to get as many characters created as those needed for the design. So, we usually try to reserve a “slot” for a faction of foes which are easier to produce and homogeneous in their design, and therefor more repeatable as enemies. Most games don’t have this issue. No one will find it weird if you fight 200 times the same alien type in Halo or the same soldiers in Call of Duty (they can all look the same). But enemies in Clash aren’t monsters… they are unique characters… and because of this they cannot be cloned over an over again. That’s quite the challenge for an indie studio. So having a group of enemies that share a common template allows us to expand the roster with less production time. I’m super happy that despite this, the Travelling Players ended up being some of the best characters once Jonas helped us give them a great story and background for the game.
The Travelling Playes is definitively an unconventional group of bandits
Q6: Your previous game, The Eternal Cylinder features a big open-world, with an insanely complex and variegated ecosystem, from gigantic peaceful creatures to the malevolent Servants of the Cylinders (check more in my article HERE). What were the rules you followed to create such a complex and yet organic world?
A6: For The Eternal Cylinder we had a vision of creating an alien world which is being consumed by this unknown force – the Cylinder. Since the planet had to be alien; all the creatures and flora were designed to be something unique and foreign to our human world. If we would have created the servants of the Cylinder as “additional alien beings”, it would have been hard to separate them from the local fauna. That is why they have these earthly designs that separate them from the beings of the planet being invaded.
A disturbing Servant of the Cylinder hunting the Trebhum
Q7: An ominous, indestructible, potentially sentient, and colossal cylinder, is not a very common antagonist in gaming media. And yet, after escaping it for the first time, players realize that it is a purely and terrifying being. How did you end up with the idea of creating such a unique main enemy?
A7: During the development of Zeno Clash 2 we drew inspiration of surreal paintings where giant shapes can be commonly seen as “elements” in the background. Giant blocks or spheres exist in several works of surrealism, and when I thought of how a Cylinder would feel – it immediately struck me that such an element would have obvious “gameplay” implications if it were to exist and move. It would be like a giant roller pin, and I found this to be fascinating.
Q8: In a world as big and complex as the one of the Eternal Cylinder, were there some creatures that you conceptualized but then they didn’t end up in the final release?
A8: Yes, but these were later incorporated in the update we did once the game launched on consoles and we added Raytracing. The Gharukuk and the Buddugh Gropp were both designs we couldn’t get in time for the game’s launch but were added with the update. But there are definitely some sketchier creature ideas that never got too developed that we never incorporated in the game.
The colossal Mathematician in front of the mastodontic Cylinder
Q9: Between the open-world structure and the many creatures to encounter (or escape from), the Eternal Cylinder is potentially full of secrets. Do you think that there are still some secrets that the community hasn’t discovered yet (who knows, maybe on both sides of the cylinder)?
A9: I think there are secrets that the great majority of players won’t find during their playthroughs, but I doubt anything that is so hidden that no one has found it yet.
Q10: Thanks again for your time, Carlos. Before concluding, I am just curious if you could hint us something about your future projects. Do you have some new IPs that you are already working on, a DLC for Clash, or maybe a sequel to a previous game?
A10: We are deep in development of a new title, but I can’t say anything other than that. 🙂
Final Remarks:
I would like to thank Carlos for his time and very interesting answers. As a big fan of the ACE Team, I am very glad to have an interview with them, and knowing more about two of my favorite games of the last few years was a unique opportunity. If you didn’t play games from the ACE Team, start with Zeno Clash and go all the way down. And if you are mainly interested in the games covered in the interview, you can find both the Eternal Cylinder and Clash on STEAM.
If you were playing video games in the ’90s, you surely know about DOOM and Quake. They are milestones in horror FPSs, games that shaped a genre, and franchises still active right now (at least DOOM). Hell was never so real before DOOM, and the grotesque abominations infesting the twisted levels, from the Cacodemon to the Spider Mastermind, became iconic. Now let’s talk about H.P. Lovecraft, father of cosmic horror, and of some of the most disturbing creatures ever created. His works spawned the most aberrant abomination, and the Great Old Ones he created are still part of every artistic medium. But why am I talking about these two different topics? What do they have in common? Well, surely one thing that they have in common is Sandy Petersen.
Sandy Petersen is a giant in the gaming industry. In fact, not only he worked on DOOM and Quake but he also created the first horror adaptation of Lovecraft’s mythos into TTRPGs. Exactly, Sandy also created Call of Cthulhu, which was published by Chaosium in 1981. After working at Chaosium, Sandy moved to ID software, where he worked as level designer for DOOM, DOOM2, and Quake. From hellish landscapes to cosmic horror, Sandy created levels, creatures, and implemented the now “insanely” famous sanity system in gaming.
In 2013, Sandy created a Kickstarter campaign for Cthulhu Wars, which achieved 3500% of the original goal. This moment marks the beginning of Petersen Games, a company focused on bringing horror to board games. Cthulhu Wars was their first game, a huge battle between armies of Lovecraftian entities, especially praised for the size, quality, and quantity of miniatures inside the game. Cthulhu Wars is truly a parade of eldritch entities, with more than 50 miniatures, including colossal Great Old Ones. Planet Apocalypse is one of the last games released by Petersen Games, bringing back hellish settings and grotesque demons, this time inside a board game. As for Cthulhu Wars, Planet Apocalypse is also a joy for the eyes, featuring hyper-detailed miniatures of disturbing demons, and also including amazing art pieces for their cards.
The disturbing demons of Planet Apocalypse
I am very glad to have this opportunity to interact with Sandy Petersen. Together with Sandy, we will explore his career, from his first session as Game Master of Call of Cthulhu, to some secrets during Quake development and how to literally “unleash hell” inside a D&D campaign.
Q1: Thank you Sandy for the opportunity, it is really an honor to speak with you. Let’s start from the beginning. Before Call of Cthulhu, horror was mainly missing from TTRPGs, focusing more on high-fantasy themes. How was it to bring horror, or better, cosmic horror, inside TTRPGs for the first time?
A1: My answer was that horror needed to be more or less contemporary so instead being set in a fantasy universe, it’s in the “real world” of the 20th century, though many of the games are set in the 1920s that’s still recent enough to have relevance.
Another answer is that the game is not about combat – in a horror movie or story, you don’t go fight the werewolf. It’ll kill you. You have to use your brain, not your guns. So in Call of Cthulhu this is also the case. I sought to replace combat with exploration and research and mystery.
Lovecraftian creatures from the board game Cthulhu Wars
Q2: I imagine you have veteran experience as a Game Master, and I am very curious about it. Could you tell us something about one of the first horror-oriented adventures that you mastered for Call of Cthulhu?
A2: The very first game that I ran after developing the Sanity system, I explained the rules to the players. Then, in the adventure, they decided to cast a summoning spell (they’d convinced themselves this would call up the creature haunting the house, which it did not). I said, “you hear creaking noises, and a kind of door seems to open in the air. A hideous claw reaches out.” Then the players did something totally unexpected by me. One said, “I’m covering my eyes.” Another said, “I’m going to the room’s corner and facing it.” A third said, “I’m running upstairs and out of the basement.”
I was stunned. No one would EVER try to avoid seeing a monster in D&D – knowledge is power. You see, I thought that the sanity rules would simply give monsters another weapon to harm investigators. What I did NOT realize is that it would make players behave as if they were scared. At that point I knew the Sanity rules were on to something and I got excited to keep working on the rules to make it creepier.
Q3: How did your personal views and passion for Lovecraft influence the creature and level design of Doom and Quake?
A3: Well obviously there are heaps of Lovecraft bits in the games. Basically my idea was to give players a creepy scary world to crawl around in, and then when a monster appeared in a kind of jump scare, the player would be freaked out (I hoped). I also showed the artists some of my books from the Chaosium days with cool horror art, which influenced monster production, particularly in Quake.
Q4: Quake definitively had more “cosmic horror and eldritch” elements in it, compared with the more hell-themed Doom. Did you have a role in this switching of the main atmosphere?
A4: The Doom engine and backstory was mostly done when I joined the team, so I didn’t really get a chance to affect it. But I was in on Quake from the start. The existence of Shamblers, Formless Spawn, and Shub-Niggurath speaks for itself.
Shub-Niggurath, Outer God from Lovecraft and final boss of Quake
Q5: Quake was one of my favorite games back when I was younger. There was something in the atmosphere and enemies that was unique for the time. And after more than 25 years, I need to know more about it. Could you tell us something unique during your working at Quake? Maybe something that was supposed to be there, a drafted idea, or a cut-out element?
A5: The original concept of Quake was that it was going to be an RPG-type game in which you played a dude named Quake and a fantasy D&D world was bleeding into our own. Quake was a character from John Carmack’s old D&D game – a hero who had a magical hammer that when it hit the ground made it quake, and who had an orbiting magic spiky ball that intercepted attacks and killed things it hit.
The first monsters we did were ogres, which carried bags of grenades. That was supposed to represent the crossover. Then the Knights, a medieval touch. But the other part was that John Romero was supposed to design the backstory and plot which never happened. Instead we just turned it into another sorta-Doom with demons and cool layouts. The magic Quake hammer’s special effect got used in the lightning gun though.
Also we, the level designers, figured out how to scale up objects so American McGee made a 100-foot high zombie and built a whole level around it. It was super awesome. I then went and made a super-giant Vore who shot giant spike balls. Then the artists rained on our parade and said we couldn’t sue them because when we scaled up the monsters, we also scaled up the textures, which looked terrible. So boo hoo.
An Ogre during an attack in Quake
Q6: If you could go back with your actual knowledge, and implement new creatures, bosses, or levels inside Quake or Doom, what would you do?
A6: I would try to add more clever levels. For instance in Doom, I would have a level in which you are literally aboard a spacecraft which takes off from a base, and flies to Mars. You’d get attacked by things in space that you’d have to shoot, plus there would probably be monsters aboard ship. In Quake I’d like to add a level that was a haunted ship, and if you fell into the sea you’d be lost.
Q7: Planet Apocalypse is a board game that you recently created, where the players must push away demonic lords and their hordes coming to bring Hell on Earth. Thematically speaking, Planet Apocalypse shares some similarities with Doom, especially in the disturbing design of monsters and lords. How did your experience working at Doom influence Planet Apocalypse?
A7: What I took from Doom were two things. First, if the monsters are all enemies and never players, then they can be as overpowered as I like. Second, it’s cool to use guns to shoot demons. So in the game you can literally get Navy Seals to ambush hell hounds.
Baphomet stands in the middle of the demonic horde from Planet Apocalypse
Q8: What are your favorite Demon Lords from Planet Apocalypse and why?
A8: Baphomet because he looks cool and the first time people fight him they are super scared. Later on they scoff at him of course. Jabootu because he has a really terrifying ability and is based on the demon of bad video games. And of course the Spider Mastermind because duh.
Q9: Hellish scenarios from video, board, and tabletop games are brought together in your book adapting the Planet Apocalypse setting inside D&D 5th edition. How was it to bring such a horror and hopeless setting into D&D?
A9: It was super fun. Plus I believe I did something never done before. You see, everyone knows that a D&D campaign eventually dies. The players move away or the GM wants to start a new one. So the idea behind Planet Apocalypse for D&D is that instead of letting your old campaign die with a whimper, you give it a mighty Viking funeral. I.e., you plunge your old campaign world into the horrors of Planet Apocalypse, and let the players go out with a bang. Of course if they manage to save the world that’s cool too, and if they don’t it’s full of angst and emo goth feelings. Of course you can also use the Planet Apocalypse stuff just to add to a normal campaign. But I’ve ended enough campaigns with little squibs that I wished I’d had this book to use instead.
The disturbing Lord Jabootu from the Planet Apocalypse D&D5e book
Q10: Are you thinking of a video game adaptation of Planet Apocalypse? If not, are you in general thinking of working again at a video game?
A10: I spent 24 years in the digital gaming industry, and worked on some of the biggest games and series of all time (Civilization, Doom, Age of Empires). I’ve done my time. I know the industry really really well. Therefore because I am so familiar with the industry, I am totally not willing to do a video game unless the company I am working with sets up a deal in which I pay zero money into the pool, and only take money out as pre-determined. I’m willing to set up as sweet a deal as they like. Several deals almost happened, and all foundered when they said they’d reached the point that I had to put money in. Nope, not happening. Not in this industry.
Final remarks:
I would like to thank Sandy for the unique opportunity to interact with him. Knowing somebody who not only worked at iconic games such as DOOM and Quake but also brought his passion for Lovecraft in amazing TTRPGs was an incredible experience. I would also like to thank Arthur Petersen for organizing the interview and providing useful information, including a copy of the amazing sourcebook of Planet Apocalypse for D&D 5e. Quake figures were selected from the Quake Wiki, which I thank. Board games figures were selected from Petersen Games website (https://petersengames.com/), while the first and final figure are extracted from the book Planet Apocalypse for D&D 5e. The second campaign for Planet Apocalypse was successfully funded some years ago, but you can still find very useful information at this LINK.
Saturnalia is, without any doubts, one of the horror surprises of 2022. Set in a mysterious village in the Italian island of Sardinia, Saturnalia shows innovative features in every aspect, from the peculiar and stylish art-style, to the immersive setting, sound component, and complex rogue-like mechanics. Because failing to hide from the mysterious mask roaming the streets leads not only to permanent death, but also to a reshuffling of the village, meaning losing shortcuts and references. Indeed, Saturnalia is a game that will not keep the player’s hand.
Saturnalia is also heavily based on- and inspired by Italian traditions and folklore, including ancient pagan rites and carnivals. In fact, the disturbing masks of folkloric Sardinian carnivals are something that truly fit in horror games, and they are finally finding their correct space in Saturnalia. Plus, the fictional town of Gravoi, with the twisted streets and mysterious landmarks, is truly the perfect sum of the Italian contributions to horror. For all these reasons, Saturnalia became the first entry in the article “Horror Games Based on European Folklore,” representing horror games rooted in Italian folklore. If you want to know more about Saturnalia, you can read the full article: Horror games based on European and Russian folklore, myths, and traditions [Updated November 2022]
Santa Ragione is the brilliant team from Milan that created and developed Saturnalia. Veterans of the gaming industry, Santa Ragione developed and published multiple games. I had the opportunity to chat and interview Pietro Righi Riva, co-founder of Santa Ragione and the director behind Saturnalia. Together with Pietro, we will look at the development, the challenges, and the mysteries of Saturnalia. If you are curious to know more about Sardinian folklore, the secrets behind the stalking creature, and the brilliant sound component of Saturnalia, you will enjoy the following interview.
Q1:Thanks Pietro for the opportunity to have this interview. To begin knowing your team and Saturnalia, could you tell us how the team was born?
Our first game was actually a horror game, a sci-fi horror game, and most importantly a board game. It is called “Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space.” And then back in 2010, so that is 12 years ago, we started a company formally because we wanted to sign off the rights so that the board game could be published and that time we were all still in the university studying. We did it mostly for fun and then slowly that company kind of became our, and then mostly my, main job. It became the main thing that I was doing. So yes, we started with a board game. A lot of people liked it, but at first it was a very small game because we partnered with a very small publisher.
Then eventually, years later, we got a big company and the game became bigger, but meanwhile we moved on making video games. We did this change mostly because when we started, both me and the co-founder, Nicolò Tedeschi, did not have any technical background, so neither of us was a programmer. We were learning some basic things on the side and eventually that turned into Fotonica, our first video game. It is an extremely simple game, it is just like run in a straight line, and it really came, you know, from trying to make something of the limiting tools we had. Then we partnered up with a genius game programmer and designer, Paolo Tajé, who joined the team in 2012, when we made the first MirrorMoon prototype, which became a finalist of a game jam, and then got released on STEAM. At the time, STEAM was like an exclusive club, like you couldn’t easily publish your game on STEAM without a specific access from Valve. And the finalists of that jam got an automatic invitation. So the day we released MirrorMoon on Steam, only 4 other games were released, which now is kind of funny, because now it is like more than 10 times as many, usually on any given day. So, then when we got the money from that launch, and we turned this, which was like a hobby on the side, into a business. So this is how we started.
Regarding our process for making games, we don’t have a big in-house established development team, it is basically 4 people everyday. Then, based on the projects, we collaborate with experts from different disciplines and build a bigger team. That is what we did with Saturnalia, where if you count everyone, in the end there are like 60 people who worked on the team. But it is not like 60 people all at the same time for all 5-6 years, it is just people who come and work on specific aspects based on the projects.
Q2: How was the idea of developing Saturnalia born? Why Sardinia as a setting?
There are main reasons why we picked Sardinia, but let me start with how the idea came to be. So, the way we make games in Santa Ragione is often thorough and I think not very uncommon. We usually write down simple partial ideas for games that can be a mechanic, dynamic, story, or aesthetic. Then, this accumulates over time, it is like tiny bits of inspiration that accumulate. Then, when there is an opportunity for a new project, we go back to everything that we collected through the months and years when we were busy with something else. Then, what happens is that some of these ideas, when you look at them, look like they can work together, they can come together and become something bigger.
In the case of Saturnalia, we were thinking about two things mostly. One was a very traditional monster labyrinth game, which means you are in the labyrinth and there is a monster and you have to find the exit, where the player uses light as a limited resource to learn the labyrinth. For example, what if you are in a labyrinth and you have 10 matches to explore this maze and learn it? You have to use these 10 matches strategically to learn the labyrinth the best you can to escape it. Then, we have this separate and more complicated idea about horror and the idea of traditions as a tool to suppress change, and how these malevolent people want to protect the status quo and misuse tradition and religion, and those pretend values, to kind of prevent equality and change in society. And that expands to the idea of individual characters and how their stories will exemplify this problem. These two ideas slowly became one, like “What if we add this mechanic to this world or we add this world to this mechanic?” And to tell a story about this conflict, this generational clash, this fight against the status quo, I think we very quickly understood that we had to layer it in history because this is not a 2022 struggle, it is a humankind-forever struggle. Basically, at the bottom of it, we needed a place that had stratified history, which could exemplify the existence of something that has always been there. It also needed to show both the traditional horror side, like the ritual, the ancestral horror trope, and on the side, the concept of history repeating itself.
So, we knew we had to place it in Italy, because that is what we do. After all, we are interested in telling an Italian story, something that we know a bit about and that we can easily research more about. I feel that this has the potential in terms of telling a new story, because an international audience is not necessarily used to hearing stories about Italy. Within Italy, I think Sardinia has that very evident stratification of history, that yes, you can find almost everywhere else, in Italy as well, but in Sardinia, it really goes to like prehistory, like 10s of thousands of years before Christ, like these structures that can really show the existence of history before history, and so that is why we ended up there. Also, for horror reasons, we needed a secluded and isolated space, a place that could host a village that you couldn’t escape from. And then Sardinia of course has this incredible folklore, which is super fascinating, and visually very compelling, of the carnivals and the masks. So, it was an easy choice, but at the same time, we knew that we didn’t want to misappropriate the culture that we, as a Milanese team, don’t fully understand.
So, very early on in the development, we started collaborating with the Sardinia Film Commission, which is this regional office that usually mostly collaborates with international movie production, but we were their first video game. So, what we did at the beginning was: they flew us to the island and we took like a long location studying tour, 7 days with the location manager and a driver, and we visited the island and visited all the places that our director, Marta Gabas, took to build our fictional village. Then we did many interviews and we had a consultation on language, tradition, and history with them, to make sure that everything made sense and was respectful, able to capture the right spirit of the things that we will mention in the story. There are several reasons why the village in the game is fictional, it is not a real village and that comes with a fictional carnival sort of, the Saturnalia that is in the title. The mask and the creature of Saturnalia are made up for the game, we didn’t take an existing mask because these have actual, profound, and sort of sacred meaning to the people that celebrate in those rituals. So we didn’t want to just take one and say “Hey this is like horror and very scary,” but instead we built our own that can fit within the cosmos of Sardinian carnivals. Since each village has its own masks, we could have these fictional ones that could tell the story of our in-game village without changing the reality of what these masks are about, the real ones.
Sardinian folklore imbues every item and detail of the game.
Q3: The town of Gravoi is a character of its own, full of historic and fictional elements that merge into each other. The town is a maze of dead ends and twisted roads, but it also exhibits specific landmarks such as the Church and the Castle. Which was considered the most crucial element, or let’s say “the hearth” of the town, during development? Were there areas removed from the final release?
When we started thinking about the game, we didn’t know that the village was gonna be the core center of the game. We planned originally to have multiple locations that were important next to each other, all with the same internal procedural structure. So, we planned to have a castle as big as the village with rotating and transforming rooms and the crypts separated from the village, but then as we were making it, we realized that we could blend these elements back into the village to give more personality, more identity, and make the village denser with history and things to find and solve from the gameplay perspective. For example, the crypts were supposed to be a separate level, but then they became the mines, which is this kind of a reflection, this mega reflection of the village underground. So, there were scrap locations, like we have this whole idea for a cork forest that was supposed to be next to the villa, and an archeological site that started from the cork forest, and that slowly became the side that was between the castle and the village. So, we had some iterations on that, but then we realized that, if we focused on the village to make it, as you said, as memorable as possible, then it would become itself a character, and also convey our history better.
And we knew as well that, even if the game was profoundly procedural, and needed to drastically change, it should have specific quests and locations that would consistently be there. For example, we knew that we always needed a school and a pharmacy to be there. And so, the design of the village was planned from the beginning to shuffle these elements, their relative position, their rotation, but always being sure that they were there, and also, that they needed to be, not easily, but possible to find and kind of memorize where they are. And that is why we worked on creating each one of these points of interest with some very memorable visual elements, like the neon sign near the pharmacy, the led window in the harbor store, and the flags in front of the school. So, you will visually learn to identify where you are and I think that adds to you making the place feel more real and more memorable.
Q4: Saturnalia is clearly a game not taking the player’s hand, with different routes and mechanics that need to be figured out. Roguelike elements are also very common, including permanent death and the town changing its layout. This is not something very common for pure horror games, but more for example in Souls-like games. Why did you decide to use this approach to convey a horror experience?
It was a very difficult balance, because there was an element of mystery that we wanted to preserve, but at the same time as a studio design philosophy, we would really want to make games that are as accessible as possible. So, in a weird way, these two things came together: what if you can manage to give the tools to unravel the mystery to the player itself without overwhelming them with information and instructions? There are like two ways, when you have a complex game, to teach that to the players, one is to really streamline the experience by slowly adding things that they can familiarize themselves with. This is what most triple-A games do, they teach you one mechanic at a time and they have these corridors and rooms, and like “Let’s do this, then let’s do that.” But, that doesn’t really work in an open-world free-exploration game as we have. The other way you can do it is with tons of tutorials and teaching all this information and trying to say “Hey I taught you all this stuff, here is the manual, figure it out.” So, we obviously didn’t want to do either of these things.
A lot of work went into true play-testing, reading the evaluation of the player’s feedback, trying to teach things once at the right time with the minimum amount of text, and giving them the basic information so that they could eventually learn more if they wanted to and making the game more accessible even if they didn’t learn these things. So, in the game, there are many systems that, if you figure them out, make the game easier, but we don’t expect everyone to figure them all out. We kind of want players to figure out one or two, then experience that special feeling like “Hey I found out this mechanic, this dynamic that allows me to make progress throughout the game.” Because as you mentioned, souls-like games, I think that is the best of that experience, that feeling of satisfaction of figuring out the way to progress, and we tried to capture it in the horror genre in the same way. So being very straightforward and easy with the basic information, and then leaving room for players to discover other stuff on their own.
Be careful when the masked creature is around, or you will end up like him.
Q5: When playing Saturnalia, I have some interesting vibes from some of my favourite games. But I am curious to know if this is true and more. Which were your references and influences while developing Saturnalia?
I am a big Dreamcast fan. That generation of games is probably the one that defines me in terms of taste. I like how experimental and weird some titles of that library were, and I think you can see it in the navigation system and the map system. So, there was this game, called Shenmue, that came out on the Dreamcast, especially in the sequel, in Shenmue II, the way that you can ask for directions to people, or where you don’t have a mini-map and you have to stop and look at a sign, those were lifted from that game because I thought they were very interesting ways to help you find places without ruining the aspect of exploration. Because if you added a mechanic like an on-screen automatic compass, like in Assassin’s Creed, which will tell you where to go when you have an objective, the game would break, and that wouldn’t work. But at the same time, we needed a way to find your way if you got lost, so we went back to that solution.
I also think about the horror game D2 by Kenji Eno, this mountain, plane-crash survival, weird, horror thing that has all these different elements. There is this exploration mode in first-person, where you could explore this place, and there was this free roaming outside in the snow, and, even if it is hard for me to map it one-to-one, I know that I was thinking about D2 when I was making Saturnalia. And of course, there is the whole tradition of horror games, for example, if you think about the original Resident Evil, we didn’t necessarily lift anything specific from it, but I always really admire what they did with the save system in terms of making it a limited resource of the game and enhancing the fear of losing progress through that saving mechanic. So I think, Saturnalia, with the village that reshuffles as punishment for losing progress, is also an experiment of how to make games scary by handling the loss of progress, because you are not only losing your character when dying, but you are also losing something more, you are losing the map, the mental map that you constructed. Thus, I think we were inspired by the idea of innovating in the loss that comes with the game over. There is more Kenji Eno stuff like Enemy 0, the idea of this creature that you can’t see. There is of course Clock Tower and the general obsessive creature monster that procedurally hunts you through an exploration adventure game, where you know it is always there and it’s always coming, and you never have a safe place. You are always being hunted and you don’t know why, and those games did that so well and used that mechanic to make their enemy character very memorable.
Really nice to hear about Kenji Eno as main influence for a game, he really made some weird unique gems. I also had strong vibes from Pathologic, which is one of my favorite games. Especially being in the middle of a town where you don’t know the “rules” behind it, or which are the friendly faces, and you are inside an economy that you don’t understand. I love that mysterious feeling, and I think it is brilliantly portrayed in Saturnalia as well.
[Pietro] Absolutely. I think you can see the similarity with Pathologic also in the mind map, that we have in the game, like this need to track the relationship of the clues that you encounter. I think we are in the same like “weird European horror niche” of games [Pietro laughs]. It is a wonderful game.
Q6: What was the biggest challenge during development, from the prototype to the final release?
One of the biggest challenges was managing the orienteering of players within the game, so the balance between getting them lost and letting them find their way in. So that meant building a very powerful village generation engine that was compatible with all our mission structure, quest structure, and story structure, which will still allow you to progress. Because you have tools that open new ways, but imagine that these ways change every time, so this was very complicated to solve. And also providing the tools to the players to navigate the system, like for example, the procedural signage in the town, where you need to add a sign that says pharmacy in this way, and it needs to be coherent with the actual way you reach the pharmacy. So, those were technological challenges that came from design challenges that made the game accessible, but based on the effect that we wanted, this sense of being lost, being overwhelmed.
And then, the other massive design and technological challenge was handling the dialog system, which again, will need to allow you to play any part of the story in any order with any character, and then the dialogues would still need to make sense. So basically, there needed to be a director AI that was checking what was happening in the game, what happened in the past, picking from a really massive script of dialog the right line at the right time, to convey, for example, the fact that at this point in the story, the player does not know about their parents, but has done such and such that allows them to understand that the item that they found is related to their quest. This happens through the game all the time, continuously, but when you play, you don’t necessarily notice it because, if we did our job right, it just makes sense. But from a design perspective, making sure that this system doesn’t break was extremely challenging and required so much planning at first, and then playtesting. And you know, even a few weeks before launch, we will still find situations where “Oh no this character cannot say this at this point because this piece of information hasn’t been given yet,” so we have to redo the conversations to fix them.
Q7: In the gorgeous artbook of the game, there are different monsters represented, for example the “Mamuthones” or a spider-like creature. Maybe it was my fault since I was hiding terrified each time I was hearing a bell, but are they present in the final release? What is the difference between them?
No, even the standing and the crawling one is the same creature. Eventually in the game you will learn something about the story of the creature. It is very uniquely tight to that specific creature. So, all the other monsters that are up here in the artbook, they were alternative concepts that we did, and eventually we defined into the creature that is now in the game. So, for example, you mentioned the Mamuthone and the spider-one, and as I said before, we felt that it was too similar and stealing too much from an existing culture. And we didn’t want to go in that direction, and so, we kind of found our own creature. The artbook doesn’t explain it, so I understand why you could be confused.
Mamuthone concept from the official artbook.
Q8: The colorful art style is quite uncommon for horror games, but also very interesting. Why did you decide to use this particular style?
In general, when we make Santa Ragione’s games, we have this idea that we need to stand up visually, because it is a very tough market out there, and I think it is important to make a game that immediately from screenshots you can tell apart from all the others. Of course, it comes with a risk because people can look at the screen and maybe not immediately understand the genre that the game represents, which is certainly the other side of the coin. To be honest, I think there is a personal interest in the people working in this game to make something that looks unique and that feels that is unlike everything else, because it gives us the freedom to experiment and also makes us proud that we are not replicating someone else’s work. And I think there is also the fact of the inspirations that we started from, such as cinema, cinematography, stage design, and comics, kind of infer that look, the very saturated colors, the clear lights, the almost stylized look.
There is also, I guess, a necessity aspect to it, where, you know, we can’t create triple-A quality assets in an open-world game with such a small team, such a small budget. So, all these things came together to define the look of the game, and also the people that were involved with it. For example, Marta Gabas, our art director, is not even working in games, she is in theatre. television, and cinema stage design. But we really liked her portfolio and we wanted to work with someone that was not used to video game aesthetics, so that they could bring a really fresh look to the team and the game. And I think she really delivered it by creating something that doesn’t have that video game look.
I think there is also the fact that, when you use a commercial engine like Unity or Unreal, there is a danger of letting stylistic elements from that engine emerge in the game. Sometimes you look at a game and say “Oh this is obviously made in Unreal 345, this is obviously made in Unity,” and it is never a good feeling because you are letting your tools define the look of the things that you are making. We knew we didn’t want to have that feeling and we wanted the game to feel like its own thing. So, I think, those are all the reasons why the game ended up looking the way it does. Some players will look at the game and feel discouraged by how weird it looks, but on the other hand, I think it really caught the attention of people that were giving it a chance and checking it out.
Q9: Saturnalia has four main characters, each of them with a personal ark and reasons to be inside the town. Which character ark and characters do you favor?
You know I’ve been thinking about them so much and for so long that it is really hard to choose. But I have fond memories of working on Tecla, which is not a playable character, but I thought she is a tragic character with an interesting backstory that really strides with the village itself. I think she is also one of the characters whose story is less directly told in the game and more through clues that you may, or may not, piece together. So, I think, she is the one character whom I feel I still know more about her than the players do. Instead, for the rest of the characters, if you really pay attention to what you find in the game, then all the details about their story are there for you to discover. With Tecla instead, I think there is some stuff that only I know about her [Pietro laughs], an element that exists in the game that can hint at some of her backstory. For this, maybe I am more attached to her because I feel like it is more personal with me, like not everything is really known about her in that sense.
Claudia and Paul are two of the main characters of Saturnalia.
Q10: The sound component is really brilliant in every detail, from the shouting doors to the rattling of the creatures. But the lullaby from the main menu is the most terrifying element. I was never scared of the main menu before! Can you tell us something more about the developing of the sounds of Saturnalia? What about the lullaby and its origin?
For the sound design, we did something that we’ve never done before, which is to have two separate sound designers for the game. One person, Davide Pensato, exclusively developed the sound design of the creature on his own, separately from all the other sounds of the game. Because we knew that it needed to be a signature to the game, that it needed to be very special and very memorable and very complex through all the various states that the creature can be, and so, it needed to convey personality, but also what the creature was doing, where it was going. So we worked with Davide for months on the creature, and the way we made the sounds is through this library of samples of traditional Sardinian instruments, called Sonos. They were collected by a Sardinian editor, and basically we licensed this collection of sounds and we reworked them to create the sounds of the creature. And this is its own thing in the game, its own logic, it uses an algorithm to create all the procedural combinations of the sounds that tell you what the creature is doing.
And then, Michael Manning and his studio, they developed the rest of the soundscape of the sound, so everything else you were talking about from the steps, the fire, the crack of this, the shouting doors, all that is of them. So, they really picked this minimalistic aspect of letting a lot of silence, a lot of empty space, so that these minor sounds will really stand out. And then they also developed the abstract, whisper effect of the dialog system. We knew from pretty early on that we wouldn’t have dubbing in the game, but we wanted to create an effect where when the characters were playing you will feel like they were almost saying something, which is, you know, something that games like Animals Crossing do, with the “papapapapa.” But we couldn’t have, of course, that kind of effect in our game. So we were thinking, what if there was a similar effect, but horror? What would that sound be? We came up with the idea that the characters are trying to not make noise, so they will probably be whispering to each other. So we created this whispering engine. Michael Manning did really incredible work with all the sounds in the game, and processed them through analog recording, so they would add some texture and some distortion to it, to make it feel more like a sound from the 80s. There is really a lot to say about it, but you would have to interview them for it.
Regarding the lullaby, my father is a retired journalist, and he always had a love for writing and poetry, like a hobby for him, like nothing that he takes seriously, but he enjoys doing it. Since he is not working anymore, whenever there is a need for lyrics in any of our games, I go to him, so we put our hands to work together on something. So, I basically randomly asked him “Hey can you try and write like a song for the game,” and he sent me back this lullaby. I told him the themes of the game that we were talking about, and he put them together. Then, we were in London to do a test for voice acting, this was very early on, before the first prototype. We never did voice acting, so we wanted to try it out, so we did a week test with different actors, and one of them, Janet Fullerlove, was cast as Tecla at the time, because she also learned Italian at some point in her life. She was amazing and so while we were doing the recording, at some point, I took up the lullaby and I said “Hey can you give this a read? Try it,” and she read it and the recording was so good, she has this like this almost uncanny weird accent to it, that doesn’t feel like there is something wrong with it, and then we combined with music and sounds again from the Archive of Sardinian Sounds, and that became like the start screen lullaby.
So, somehow is Tecla singing the lullaby?
[Pietro] Yeah, yeah, in my mind has always been her, but I guess she doesn’t say it.
The village of Gravoi surrounded by a purple mist.
Q11: What is your plan for the future? Are you considering a sequel or DLCs, or working on a different project?
There are some small updates coming for Saturnalia, probably before the end of the year, but I can’t say more about that for now. Instead, what I can tell you is that we are working on two new games that I am not directing. These are games that are directed by other Italian creators, people that are very passionate about the project they are making, but they don’t have the expertise or technical background to turn it into a commercial product. So we are partnering with them and helping them, you know, to trim and edit, optimize, fix, add controllers, and turn their games into commercial video games. So, that is what we will be focusing on for the rest of the year. We will announce something this spring about these two games.
Final Remarks
I would really like to thank Pietro for the interesting and friendly chat. I discovered a lot about Sardinia and game development, and it was very enriching to see these two worlds merging inside a horror game. And knowing a Kenji Eno fan is always a plus! I was also hinted that the upcoming games published by Santa Ragione will fit “surreal and creepy,” so I am clearly intrigued and keeping an eye open for the future announcements.
Meanwhile, if you didn’t play Saturnalia, you can find it available for consoles and on the EPIC store.
If you follow my channels, it comes not as a surprise that I am fond of horror games that mix folklore and traditions in their setting, especially from Asia. When the enemies are based on creatures from different mythology, or when the rituals around you are in fact part of ancient traditions, the barrier with the horror elements becomes thinner. And in some cases, modern or fantasy setting meets horror and traditions. However, some games do even more, using modern or futuristic settings but still inspired by old legends. In this scenario falls Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, a horror game based on Chinese traditions, but set in a sci-fi world, a place where body enhancement collides with ancient ghosts.
In Sense, the player must explore an abandoned building where something really bad happened. Soon enough, the many unrested souls infesting the apartments will attack. While some ghosts, like a mad doctor or a “too enhanced” woman, make the best out of the sci-fi atmosphere, the Chinese traditions are also heavily implemented, and you can meet the Jiangshi, the traditional Chinese vampire/ghoul, and even an ancient god of death. Between immortal enemies to avoid, brutal bad endings, unlockable outfits, and a relentless atmosphere, Sense is a great homage to classic survival horror games, especially Clock Tower (and you can read more about Sense and other games here: Hide and seek with immortal stalkers: the best Indie Games similar to Clock Tower [Updated Apr 2021]).
Suzaku is the team that had the brilliant idea of creating a 2D horror game where Chinese legends and traditions mix with a supernatural and sci-fi setting. But the recent surprise is that the upcoming sequel, Senses Midnight, will be instead based on Japanese folklore and legends. And even in a more classics-inspired survival-horror setting. If you want to know more about the elements that inspired the first Sense, and some hints of what will wait for you in the upcoming Senses Midnight, be sure to check the following interview with Suzaku.
Q1: Thank you for the opportunity to interact with you. As my first question, I am curious to know how the Suzaku team was born and how did you start to work on Sense a Cyberpunk Ghost Story?
A1: No problem! SUZAKU was born when I lost my long term contract as a writer and concept artist for a game company in 2017. I was pretty frustrated about that, and had a pretty hard time finding any work, especially in the AAA industry. Kayi, my wife and co-founder of the studio got tired of hearing me whine about the state of the industry and challenged me to make a game myself in 6 months. We considered that to be our rebirth career wise as well as a “trial by fire” hence the name SUZAKU, which is the Japanese Phoenix. That first game was going to be a 3d Resident-Evil/Fatal Frame style game, and my initial version of the game was 2.5D in order to find additional funding and garner interest with a sort of “interactive concept art” piece. The response to the 2d art was so surprising that we opted to keep it as a 2D side-scroller and show the world what I could do with that.
Q2: Sense is a very interesting 2D horror game, mixing ghosts, sci-fi elements, and puzzles. Which games or movies influenced you the most during the development?
A2: Originally Fatal Frame was the biggest gameplay influence, but after we switched to a 2D style, I thought a lot about how amazingly Clock Tower and the Twilight Syndrome games from japan pulled that off. I spent a long time trying to break down those games, which by today’s standard are pretty archaic, but rarely surpassed.
As far as art direction, my personal influences are primarily Masamune Shirow and some other legendary anime and manga artists from the 80s and 90s. I love the long, lost feel of those days and try to pull from those inspirations when making my characters and worlds. Team Ninja is my favorite game developer as well, so a bit of their aesthetic is basically part of my blood. It’s not wrong to say that Dead or Alive/Ninja Gaiden has been probably the largest influence on how I design characters.
Beyond that, a ton of movies really influence my writing and how I compose a “scene”, primarily old-school Japanese horror films. Yotsuya Kaidan and it’s many iterations are my favorites, particularly Crest of Betrayal and Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (1959). Kairo and the original Ju-on are also huge influences on the storytelling and pacing.
Q3: Sense does a brilliant work in using Chinese folklore and traditions inside a futuristic setting, which is not something very common to see. Why did you decide to combine such far away elements to build Sense’s horror world?
A3: Originally Sense was set in Japan. We left as much of that as I could in the extra chapter covering Miri, Mei’s ancestor. However we were a little worried about blending in and being just another take on Fatal Frame or other Japanese centered horror games. At some point Sadako-like ghosts became so common world wide that they are barely associated with Japanese horror anymore. Kayi is from Hong Kong, and at the time was living there so we had a rare and unique opportunity to tell a Cantonese ghost story in the way that Hong Kongers would resonate with. I love her culture and Hong Kong is such a special and unique place that we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. There are still so few Hong Kong horror games it’s nice to be able to have a way to frame a ghost story that most audiences haven’t seen.
The scifi elements and cyberpunk setting came from my love of Ghost in the Shell and Masamune Shirow. Prior to starting SUZAKU I had a world building thing I was doing for my concept art portfolio and practice. A huge world that is set up as if Earth’s historical “path” deviated from ours sometime around 1978. At that point everything is different than our own and events and technology go in the direction I believed they would with certain circumstances. For example, by 2084 America has been nuked, split into multiple countries at near constant war with each other, while Japan is back to being THE economic superpower. Due to the effects of the various wars technology has effectively stagnated in areas like personal computers, televisions, and entertainment but advanced incredibly in areas like weaponry, cybernetic prosthesis, and data. I think a lot about how the advancement of technology in our real world has damaged religiosity and spiritualism, and how sci-fi movies may address the concept of the human soul or the things we worship, but they almost never tackle spirituality or the supernatural directly, or in a non-mocking way. My central idea was that it doesn’t matter if we have holographic ads and robot arms, if ghosts are real now, they won’t suddenly vanish in 100 years. I wanted to mix the supernatural with futurism and see how each would affect each other. I still have many plans for that and how to show it.
Traditional exorcisms, ghosts, and ancient blades, together in a sci-fi setting.
Q4: Every floor of the abandoned building where Sense is set has its own ghosts (exactly 13 ghosts, sounds familiar?), each of them with a past to discover. Which ghosts are you favourite in terms of background and integration inside the game?
A4: There was so much I wish we could have done in Sense that we just lacked the budget, time, or skillsets to do. These are things that I hope to address in each of our coming games. So honestly, looking back at Sense 1 I am proud of what we made, but I also look at each of the ghosts as a piece of concept art for what I wish we could have achieved with them gameplay wise. It’s kind of hard to pick any of them based on integration, but I hope some day to be able to come back and give them each the showing they deserve.
That said, I think Jeong and Sally are my favorites, with Tony being a close second. Jeong and Sally have a fairly stereotypical love story, but Kayi and I worked on that together really hard to make sure that Sally herself didn’t feel too much like an erotic novel character, and that Jeong felt understandably forlorn but not pathetic. It took a lot of work and discussion to make them work as a cute couple that was kept apart by both their own insecurities and ultimately tragedy. Tony I was helped along a bit by a very important person to me, and his reveal was inspired by a true story of another friend’s mother. Vietnam has it’s own take on ghosts and ghost stories, and I wanted make sure I was respectful to their spirituality and their history post Vietnam war. His part may be short, but I think he came together the best over all.
Of course I spent over a year writing their individual arcs, not counting the tweaking and re-linking them to the overall narrative and core story of the building, so I do love all 13 of them for a lot of reasons.
Discover what happened to Sally and why her ghost is like this.
Q5: Were there other ghosts or Chinese legends that you wanted to integrate but in the end were cut from the final release?
A5: I committed to the 13 ghosts “gag” pretty much day one, so I was able to fit in every single ghost I wanted to initially. There is a ton of cut content and ideas that I chose to save for future projects though! I don’t want to give anything away but the next step in Mei’s journey will return to actual Hong Kong and feature more ghosts and legends that Hong Kongers will love. The proper “Sense 2” is a love letter to Kowloon and the people of Hong Kong. So while we are spending some time in Japan and some other areas, we are committed to getting back to Hong Kong with the story eventually. We just want to do it right, which requires a lot of research, preparation, and learning. We aren’t quite ready for that task yet.
Some of the 13 ghosts can be quite disturbing.
Q6: Sense is getting a sequel, Senses Midnight, which shifts from 2D to 3D aesthetics and tank controls. Which are the ideas behind this change?
A6: Well Midnight isn’t exactly a sequel to Sense, it’s more of a side story. It’s the first of several side stories we are calling SENSE/s. There are 3 set in japan, 3 set in Hong Kong, and 3 set in America. Each of these games are meant to be smaller/shorter and more simple ghost stories where we are experimenting with gameplay ideas and learning the tools we need to make the actual Sequel the game it deserves to be. We want to build our name as a studio and show real growth each time. I’m not sure how many of these 9 titles we will need to get through before we can tackle Sense 2, but we aim to have at least 1 out per year and are hoping to eventually get to 2.
To answer the main point of the question though, the idea was to finally get where we wanted Sense 1 to be. Sense was always meant to be an old-school survival horror title, like Fatal Frame, so Midnight is really just our first attempt at getting that right on a much tighter budget and timeframe. This way if things don’t quite work out with a function or gameplay feel we can pivot much quicker and easily without worrying about losing several years of work and a lot of money. It also lets us flesh out the world a bit more and get some ideas that aren’t big enough for a 7+ hour game onto your screen.
Q7: Will combat be part of Senses Midnight, or will running-and-hiding be the main strategy to survive the disturbing ghosts?
A7: Midnight will be focused on running and hiding, but we worked hard to implement systems more current gamers are familiar with, while intentionally ditching lockers and finding batteries for your ineffective flashlight. We wanted to focus the development of Midnight on getting our camera system working really well along with enemy AI and other systems that need to be in place and solid before we are comfortable tackling combat.
Combat was a huge problem for us in Sense 1, and I personally feel as a huge fan of Ninja Gaiden and fighting games, it has to be perfect. As a fan of classic survival horror, it also has to be balanced against the player, but feel fair. It’s a huge undertaking for how small our studio is, and we want to make sure we do it perfectly, but not just ripping a classic game’s systems directly. We are working very hard on the next game in the SENSE/s series, which will have a strong focus on combat and are currently playing with a test chamber style game we will likely release to gather feedback from later this year.
Dangers will be behind every corner in Senses Midnight.
Q8: I really liked the disturbing ghosts from Sense. Could you give us some hints about what horrified spirits are waiting for us in Senses Midnight?
A6: I believe that if you liked what we did in Sense 1, Midnight will continue that trend, we have a lot of Japanese urban legend and folklore inspired spirits for you to avoid throughout the Ikebukuro park. But I don’t want to spoil the secret or the reveals! Make sure to wishlist SENSE/s: Midnight on Steam today, and pick it up on JULY 22nd: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1664430/SENSEs_Midnight/
Q9: Sense was based on Chinese folklore, and now Senses looks more focused on Japanese traditions: any hints of what the next folkloric setting could be after Senses Midnight?
A9: Midnight and the next game are set in Japan, but like I said earlier, we plan to tell some smaller stories in Hong Kong and America as well! We’re not well versed or knowledgeable in areas outside of those, but we’ve always wanted to visit Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore. So I hope that someday we can bring some of those cultures in as well. That said, that test chamber game mentioned might be something a little fresh and new to look forward to, even though it won’t exactly be a final/finished game experience.
The Ikebukuro park waits the player in the upcoming Senses Midnight.
Final Remarks:
I would like to thank Suzaku’s team for this opportunity and their interesting answers. I really look forward to see which terrifying ghosts will wait for the player in Senses Midnight and in the future game set in America. And of course even more curious about being back in Hong Kong for Sense 2! Meanwhile, you can play the first Sense on STEAM HERE, or can Wishlist the upcoming Senses Midnight HERE while waiting for the release on the 22nd of July.
If you follow my blog, you probably noticed how “towns with a dark secret” is a topic that fascinates me when applied to video games. Having limited time to solve a mystery, interacting with many characters to decide who to trust, and finally accessing forbidden places, is a mechanic that never stops to entertain. Between the different titles, one of the best examples of this trope is “A Place for the Unwilling” (PFU). You can also read more about PFU, and in general about towns with a dark secret, in a previous article: Towns with a Dark Secret: the most hermetic, cryptic, and bizarre communities at the core of open-world games [Updated October 2021].
The game has a very peculiar art-style, a sort of Victorian comic book hiding a darker soul. The player has 21 days to explore the town, trading and interacting with many characters in order to understand what is hiding behind the happy facade. Because if you know about Cthulhu Myths, as soon as you realise that the spectacle the “King in Yellow” is in town, you will understand that there is something more going on in this city. A town that apparently is much younger than it should be.
Many characters are hiding something, and only by siding with some people, the player will be able to discover the most obscure secret of the town. Because not every path leads toward the eldritch secrets, and some playthroughs may only touch the surface of the mystery. This is because the game is massive, with ~15 characters to interact, built thrust, and discover, a complex task that will lead to one of the 8 endings. For more details about the game, you can have a look at the aforementioned article about towns with a dark secret.
Alpixel Games is the team that developed PFU. This game is their first big project, and the team is composed of different experienced people including the art director Rubén Calles and the narrative designer Ángel Luis Sucasas. Rubén is one of the co-founders of Alpixel Games, and the talented hand behind the art-style of the game. In the following interview, together with Rubén and Ángel we will discover the inner secrets, the references, and how PFU was born, exploring a world of possibilities and hypothetic spin-offs. Rubén also shared early concepts and artworks that can be very interesting for every fan of the game, so if you want to know and see more about PFU, have a look at the following interview.
Q1: Thanks Ruben for the opportunity and to answer my questions. A Place for the Unwilling (PFU) was a pleasant surprise, a game focused on solving the mysteries of a city by interacting with many characters over 21 days. So I am really curious to know how your adventure started: how Alpixel Games was born and how the making of PFU started?
A1[Rubén Calles (art director)]: Thank you for your interest in our game! We started working together during Adventure Jam 2015, when we made a small pixel art game called “The Night Henry Allen Died”. I had met Luis at the beginning of the year during the Global Game Jam and since he already knew Celer, we came to work together on this little game that later turned into the seed of A Place for the Unwilling.
The setting of the game was pretty similar: your character received a letter from an old friend (Henry Allen), asking him to come to his place. The morning after the character arrives there, Henry appears dead, hanging from a rope inside his office. The game displayed a few locations inside the Allen’s manor and a small set of obscure and mysterious characters the player must talk to in order to figure out what led Henry to his tragic death. We decided to work together on a bigger project after that and we checked a couple of ideas but all of us wanted to explore further what we started in The Night Henry Allen Died. Eventually, both Ángel and Martín joined the team and a couple of years later Miguel replaced Martín when he got a job in the UK.
Rubén’s concept for “The Night Henry Allen Died.”
Q2: Which are the references that were helpful while developing PFU?
A2 [Rubén Calles (art director)]: Apart from the literary references such as the work of H.P. Lovecraft or Robert Chambers, we always point at Over the Garden Wall as the main reference behind our game. This miniseries aired a few months before we joined the Adventure Jam and we LOVED it. I think part of its appeal is that it feels like a kid’s show if you pick a single frame, but that naïve and cartoon appearance is just a tool for their creators to mask profound and dark themes. They use this very wisely to subvert your expectations and to show not to judge a book for its cover.
Another references we used were Charles Adams’ comic strips, Gustave Dore’s engravings (specially his London scenes from Doré’s London’) and a lot of illustrated newspapers and tabloids from the 18th century such as The Police Illustrated News (which definitely worth a Google Search if you are interested in gruesome and weird crimes).
Q3: The game has an insane amount of dialogues, books, and descriptions to read, able to paint the complex secrets of the city. And not only that but also two different newspapers with daily news based on the player’s action. How difficult was it to write such intricate and interconnected lore?
A3 [Ángel Sucasas (narrative designer)]: Well, the short answer would be three years plus. Not actually writing, but thinking about it. Lovecraft never wrote a 200.000 word novel and that was the real ambition. As we were really limited in our mechanics, we had to play with the worldbuilding in the hope that the player would be interested enough to see through multiple playthroughs that the slice of the narrative pie was bottomless. From a creative point of view the starting point was conceiving the structure as Dickens in the surface and Lovecraft in the innards. That meant that the player, especially during the first week, should only be conscious of 5% Lovecraft and 95% Dickens. Questlines of characters like Florence were completely empty of Lovecraft or Myles because we had to create opportunities, or at least try, to allow the player only to see the Dickens side and get a rewarding playthrough if that was its preference. The hardest part was looking at each cliffhanger event from multiple quests at the same time. Major quests as the play can be seen and felt very different regarding which characters you choose to questline in that playthrough. Regarding the newspapers, that was tons of fun to write. Personally, I had worked as a journalist on a major newspaper for many years, so I approached the newspaper as its own microcosmos imagining the backstories of the reporters and linking them with easter eggs to the best Lovecraft short stories. The amazing art of Rubén did the rest.
Everything started as a Dickens’s tale, how did we arrive here?
Q4: Behind the cute art-style and Victorian setting, PFU hides well its deep Lovecraftian vibes. How did you decide to adopt this style and setting for a story inspired by Lovecraft’s mythos?
A4 [Rubén Calles (art director)]: This decision had a lot to do with the references we worked with and with the artstyle I felt comfortable with at the moment. Ray Bradbury and Roald Dahl were big influences for me at the time and one thing their work have in common is frequently setting an innocent tone to suddenly break that appearance and introduce gruesome, dark or magical events that can’t be ignored and affect the reader’s perspective retrospectively. I used to make illustrations and small animations very influenced by the reading of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and I think I took many things from those illustrations to shape the game’s aesthetic. I’ve just recalled that the book Deep Dark Fears was published also in 2015 and I’m sure that webcomic by Frank Krause influenced a lot on the tone we wanted to achieve with A Place for the Unwilling.
Rubén’s personal projects, reflecting his personal art-style.
Q5: The King in Yellow is a mysterious theater play related to Cthulhu mythos, specifically to Hastur. During the game, it is possible to buy a ticket to watch the actual play, and I found this moment truly brilliant. Why did you decide to include the complete spectacle? Which references did you use for the actual play and its masks?
A5 [Ángel Sucasas (narrative designer)]: That was again a very big easter egg for Cthulhu Mythos fans. We weren’t the first ones to attempt it, so one of the key things during the investigation was to read all the versions that were around. We even have one deeply personal story. We couldn’t find the Thomas Tafero version (he actually performed the play in New York) so we contacted him by his Facebook page. Her widow answered back and gave us a digital version of the play. We were deeply moved and thankful for that kindness. In the end, our version of the play is our own thing, but the inspiration of Tafero’s take and all the others is there.
Of course we could talk endlessly about the process of writing the play. We did a full script with all the info related to it that was as detailed as what you would need to actually perform the play. Of course, the two excerpts of Chambers version are literal (both of them of the first act). The real challenge was writing the second act, because it’s supposed to make you mad. I really hope we didn’t achieve that.
Welcome to the first act of the King in Yellow.
Q6: The trading system is a crucial element in the game, pretty dynamic and randomised at the beginning of a new game. How was the development of this system and why is it important for the game?
A6 [Rubén Calles (art director)]: We tried to build a system that served the main objective of the game, the exploration. Money is not the key of the game, but it helps in beating some missions, growing the city by improving your donations, and even aligning yourself with a faction or the other.
Therefore, we aimed to use the trading system to lead the player through the city and make them interact with different characters. Each shopkeeper sets their own prices and if you want to make money, you will have to take notes and create your own commercial route to buy cheap and sell expensive. While you buy and sell items to these cast of merchants, you will start establishing a relationship with them, and that will allow you to know them better and end up running errands for them, thus meeting more people, unlocking new scenarios and missions, etc.
You can even find a section in the rich-people’spaper (The Journal) where you can check how the prices will do the next day.
As you see, this trading system is an excellent tool to get to know the city. After all, this is the main reason you came here, since your deceased friend Henry put his fortune and his business in your hands.
Q7: PFU is an adventure deep to its roots, focused on characters, dialogues, and decisions, and therefore without the need for combat. Was there ever at some point during development a combat system, and if yes, against what? Or a combat-free experience was the aim since the beginning?
A7 [Ángel Sucasas (narrative designer)]: This is an interesting question actually, because when we think about Lovecraft adaptations to videogames, a lot of unnecessary action and shooting comes to mind. You can virtually put every ancient deity down in many Lovecraft game adaptations. While that can make some sense in terms of keeping the general public interested, it also feels very disconnected from the very core of Lovecraft’s theme: All your actions are useless, you are a dust mote in comparison to the major forces that rule this universe you inhabit. That said, we felt the necessity of avoiding combat as a mechanic in favor of the dialogue and the free exploration of the city. Being in the right (or wrong, it depends…) place at the right time could feel really powerful to the user experience and make them realize their actions do really matter.
Q8: The town in which PFU is set is incredibly full of life and characters, each of them hiding secrets and sub-stories. If you should create a spin-off of PFU, on which character would you focus and why?
A8 [Rubén Calles (art director)]: I always thought a 3D exploration game would fit like a glove to Myles Stout, our little unionist rascal. His life is really tough, surrounded by poverty and crime, always looking for something to eat and avoiding rats, beggars, and the cruel and violent policemen that use to beat the s*** out of him and the rest of his band. There’s a couple of times that he tells the player, if they get to know him well, how he killed a giant rat in a very crafty way at the age of three.
In the end he is just a little kid with too much on his plate. A good boy with a big heart and a lot of imagination that happened to be born in the most miserable neighborhood during one of the most unequal and unfair times of history.
I would love to see a specific scene: He manages to sneak inside a dark place where a bunch of drunk sailors and workers bet on rat races, and he watches the whole scene. They drink and smoke, they put all their savings on the table and the race stars. They get mad when they realize the race was fixed from the beginning and end up killing the rats out of rage and despair. Myles, who was looking at the scene from the shadows, gets to pick up the only rat that was still breathing and runs away with it in a tense persecution with Little Nightmares vibes.
Myles ready to start his new journey.
Q9: A huge town, limited time, many characters, and 21 data to do everything: with such a complicated setting, it is impossible to see everything in one playthrough. Do you think there are still secrets and mysteries that the players were unable to find?
A9 [Rubén Calles (art director)]: It’s definitely not possible to discover all the secrets and events of the game in just one playthrough. Mainly because some of them are mutually exclusive. For example, if you start joining forces with Myles, some other characters and “superior forces” won’t be much… kind and eager to interact with someone like you.
We actually have talked to some loyal players that figured out the deepest secrets of the City, and that makes us feel really proud. Seeing someone put that effort and those many hours in exploring and digging something you made… wow, that makes me feel super happy about what we built. Now the console launch is around the corner, we hope many new players may come visit our City and enjoy it. Seeing people interact and share the things they discovered and their theories on the game is something we just have tasted and we would love that to happen this time now the game is more polished.
Q10: PFU was a great surprise, and I am really curious to know a bit about your future project. Are you planning a sequel or are you working on a new independent project.
A10 [Rubén Calles (art director)]: Sadly, we are no longer working together as a team. The development of A Place for the Unwilling was long and difficult and the game reception did not match our expectatives so it put so much pressure on our backs and our bank accounts. But who knows, we could end up working together again in the future!
I am currently working on The Fabulous Fear Machine by Fictiorama Studios, and starting a management game in my spare time. Ángel is now working as a designer at Mercury Steam, and previously he was a narrative director on Song of Nunu, by Tequila Works. Celer keeps doing impressive work at his company Uprising Studios, which just published their first title, Scarf (a gorgeous 3D adventure), under the umbrella of THQ Nordic. Luis is working on Sushi for Robots and a few other personal projects thanks to one of the fellowship grants awarded by the Astra Games Fund. Martín is currently working at a London startup, developing a videogame that they define as casual lunchtime gaming meets eSports.
Final Remarks:
I would like to thank Rubénfor the opportunity and the very interesting answers. He was very open to collaborate and interact, for this interview and for the many curiosities that I previously had while playing the game.Also a special thanks for sharing his art with us, providing the concepts that you can see in the article. I would also like to thank Angel for answering some of the questions and for helping in the past the community to solve one of the most complex endings.
It is a shame to know that the team is not anymore together, especially since PFU was such a great title. I wish to all the members of the team the best, and, if you like dialogue-based adventures, such as Disco Elysium or Pathologic, you should definitively give this hidden gem a try.
A Place for the Unwilling is available on STEAM HERE, and soon on console.
Tamashii is a game difficult to define inside a specific box. If it is true that the game is mainly a platformer with complex puzzles based on creating clones, the combination of a disturbing atmosphere and intended glitches creates a unique and hermetic product. Tamashii is full of secrets, easter eggs, and scary surprises hidden as fake glitches and bugs. Every room is hiding something, every scene can have a coded message or a subliminal image, in a game where even the game folder itself is hiding old prototypes and files protected with passwords.
The bosses are one of the most interesting points of Tamashii, huge abominations that will need effort and different strategies to be defeated. One can be a puzzle, another a chase for your life, or even transforming the game in a “shmup”, each battle is a different scenario. Worth also to specify that the bosses are a cluster of symbolism, biblical quotes, and hidden references, not only before the fight, but also after being defeated, when a religious quote will flash on the screen for a split second. Moreover, if you are curious to read more about these creatures, you can also check my article: The Bosses of Tamashii: behind the religious symbolism of glitchy abominations of flesh.
Vikintor is the game developer from Brazil behind the surreal insanity of Tamashii. Vikintor created several games, including the free Estigma, a nightmarish combination of Pacman and Q-bert. Teocida is instead the upcoming prequel/sequel of Tamashii, another cryptic and mysterious puzzle-game defined as “Metaphysical Aptitude Program”.
While waiting for the release of Teocida, I had the opportunity to talk with Vikintor about his career, Tamashii’s secrets, and his future directions. If you are curious to know more about the most hidden secrets of Tamashii, its symbolism, and cut secrets, the following interview will satisfy your curiosity.
Tamashii boss that transforms the game in a classic “shmup”.
Q1:Thank you Vikintor for the opportunity. I am curious to know: how your career as solo developer started and how Tamashii was born?
A1: I worked on a factory while programming Tamashii in my spare time. At the time I had only the basic gameplay elements, but I didn’t had expectations or an aesthetic for it. I spent a lot of time trying to find an aesthetic that I liked, and playing some obscure old games helped me to get inspiration.
As I am an enthusiastic person about esotericism, I had the idea of creating an identity that mixed video games with esotericism in a subversive perspective. But I decided to take gamedev a bit more seriously after re-playing Paranoiascape, which helped me with the aesthetics, mostly because It was the first obscure game I’ve played as kid. It was an unlabeled disc that my father bought in a market when people trade pirated games copies and sell every kind of stuff, like broken televisions, used toys, porn and probably stolen stuff.
Q2:Which were the most important references, both for movies and games, for the development of Tamashii?
A2: Besides ParanoiaScape, I was inspired by games like Garage Bad Dream Adventure, Kowai Shashin, Spider the videogame (PS1) and Yume Nikki, and movies like Tetsuo The Iron Man, Society, When Black Birds Fly and Eraserhead. For the game esoteric references, I only cared about classic books that I own physically, I’m not a big fan of reading about that stuff in the internet.
Q3: Tamashii is a game full of surprises, secrets, hidden messages, symbolism, and intended glitches. Why did you decide to use this formula for Tamashii?
A3: My intention was to create something that achieves the same felling I had when I was a young gamer discovering an obscure game for the first time. And because I’m a huge easter egg hunting fan, I tried to make a game that always seems to be hiding something.
Q4: Hidden Biblical quotes and religious symbolism are an important part of Tamashii’s atmosphere. Why did you use this symbolism to define the world-building and the atmosphere?
A4: I tried to find a balance between sacred and profane, making something that sounds and seems alienish, edgy, weirdly erotic and esoteric at the same time. Also, Tamashii characters were mostly inspired by Gnostic mythology and symbolism. Second; I also aimed to make the game fells like a religious propaganda. For that I was heavily inspired by pretentious old PC and NES educational videogames, making Tamashii the more preachy I could at the time, but with an anarchic approach to its content.
Religious symbolism and dialogues are central elements of Tamashii.
Q5: Between the many cryptic secrets, a scene with a video of a quite creepy “live streaming” got quite famous. Could you tell us more about it?
A5: I don’t remember where the idea came from, but I was planning to add some events to the Live Streaming segment, but I never did. The game actually checks if the computer has an active Internet connection and, if not, displays an error message. The room in the video was actually my own room at that time. I still thinking about implement the same thing on more games, but I have to take a time to at least prepare something cooler for it.
Q6: Was there something cut from the final release, like a boss battle or a really creepy glitch?
A6: The game has a bunch of cut content that still inside the game. There’s some beta and unfinished puzzles rooms and some boss’s layout variants, A fake install screen that can be found only on version 1.0 (It was an error), also an unreachable test room with all movement mechanics from Estigma. There is also a room with a windmill that works depending of player score on levels.
Q7: Tamashii is a game full of secrets, including coded messages and hidden files in the game folder. Do you think there is still something that the players didn’t discover? If yes, could you tell us some clues about it?
A7: I remember about hiding a visual signature to an audio in the game (that only can be seem using a spectrogram) and some visual that can be noticed with different brightness settings, but I can’t remember much more.
The super-hidden Windmill room (thanks to Vikintor for sharing it).
Q8: Other than Tamashii you also recently released Estigma, a horror puzzle with a similar disturbing atmosphere. You are also working on other projects, but I am curious, which is your “dream project”, the game that you would like to develop one day?
A8: A dream project for me is creating something that I can consider weird even by my standards, because I don’t believe my games is weird as much I like them to be.
Q9: Teocida is the upcoming sequel of Tamashii, which is also set in the same universe. Teocida is described as a “Metaphysical Aptitude Program”. Could you provide some details about this definition?
A9: In addition to the esoteric theme, with Teocida I also wanted to bring the game a little closer to parapsychology. As if the game were a succession of tests, including the Zener cards used for clairvoyance studies.
Q10: Could you give us some information about Teocida and how will it be connected to Tamashii? When will it be a possible release window for Teocida?
A10: I decided not to name Teocida as Tamashii2 because of the changes in direction compared to the first game. While in the first game we control a character who is new to that world, in Teocida we follow the story from the perspective of the Matriarch, a character who knows that reality very well. Also the game can be played before or after Tamashii, and I thought that a number on the tittle could implies the opposite. I don’t have a release date yet, however the story is done, now I’m just absorbing content and getting inspired to prepare the secret content.
Image from the upcoming Teocida, showing a potential connection with Tamashii.
Final remarks:
I would like to thank Vikintor for his time, the interesting answers, and for sharing hidden images of Tamashii. His amazing horror puzzle was a true surprise full of secrets and unexpected events, and I am really looking forward for the release of Teocida. While waiting, if you still didn’t play Tamashii, it is available on STEAM, PS4, and Switch.
A murder mystery set on a tropical island could be the synopsis of an Agatha Christie’s book. But what if this crime also features an immortal elite, Cosmic Gods and demons? In this case, you will have Paradise Killer, one of the most unusual and refreshing games of this crazy 2020. The game can be described as an open-world detective game, where interacting with the characters and exploring the world are the mechanisms to solve an impossible murder, “the crime to end all crimes.” Players can advance at their own pace since the game can be finished at any moment by calling the final trail. But who would refuse to discover all the dirty secrets hidden around the island to unveil the guilty and solve the impossible murder?
Murders and crimes are ready to be solved.
Paradise Killer is an explosion of ideas and innovative concepts, from the gameplay to the artistic direction and the lore. If interacting with the characters is a crucial element, exploring the environment is not secondary, and the Island becomes a character itself for how much personality is imbued in its design. Every inhabitant of the island is as bizarre as unique, due to complex and original backgrounds. From a red skeleton resurrected for love, to a warrior idol blessed by the gods with a goat head, nothing about the Island could be defined as ordinary. But behind their colorful appearance, every character is hiding heavy secrets, a creepy past, and they all have potential motifs to commit the murder.
The amount of lore, details, and elements used to build the world is really insane, including traditions, rituals, and even a pantheon of Cosmic Gods (for which I wrote a complete analysis: Worshipping Cosmic Goat-like Gods: mythology and pantheon of the resetting islands of Paradise Killer). Personally speaking, it was since Pathologic 2 that I was not so immersed in the traditions and the secrets of a digital world. Every character has a complex background to discover, every room or building is there for a specific purpose, every collectable item will provide new details about the world. There is really a lot more to discover for the dedicated players other than solving the murder.
Kaizen Game Works is the UK-based team behind the creation of Paradise Killer. Born in 2018, Paradise Killer is the first game developed by the studio but, judging from its quality, I am sure we will hear a lot more about the team in the future. Oli Clarke Smith and Phil Crabtree, the two members of the studio, are veterans of the gaming industry and not only worked at popular mobile games, but also at Until Dawn for Supermassive Games.
In the following article, Oli will explain more about the lore and the secrets of Paradise Killer. If you are curious to know how the characters evolved, mysteries never discovered, or the future of such a rich universe, the following interview will satisfy your curiosity.
Q1: Thanks for the opportunity to talk with you. Paradise Killer (PK) was really a surpriseand one of the most original and innovative games of 2020, both in terms ofgameplay and art-style. How the idea of Paradise Killer was born?
A1: We both quit our professional game dev jobs back in 2018 so we could try and make our own future rather than making games for other people. We didn’t know what we were going to make and started kicking some ideas around. We thought about doing a top down shooter and a narrative driving game but neither stuck. We realised what we really wanted to do was an exploration based character game. We wanted to explore a rich world and unravel a mystery by speaking to weird characters.
The idea for the open ended investigation took a while to develop. We initially thought the game would be like Gone Home but with an open ended mystery that you’d interpret in your head rather than express back to the game. As we worked on it, we realised that a much more systems heavy game that allowed the player to do a full investigation and accuse anyone was the way to go.
Welcome to Island 24.
Q2: The vaporwave aesthetic is a strong inspiration for the art-style of PK, why did youdecide to use this particular aesthetic?
A2: There are two aspects to this.
We wanted to make a murder mystery game but also make somewhere that people could go on holiday to. When we started working on this in 2018, the world was already a hellscape politically, culturally, socially, economically and environmentally. We wanted to make somewhere players could escape to and inhabit. The art design of vaporwave is otherworldly, taking the familiar but making it dreamlike. Using the artistic cues from the vaporwave movement allowed us to create a recognisable yet bizarre world to escape to.
The other thing about vaporwave is that it is in some ways the modern punk rock.We both grew up in the early 2000s UK punk scene. We were in a band together and I ran a DIY record label. Vaporwave has an anti-capitalist energy and intent that punk could never have as bands had to sell records in a capitalist marketplace with the blessing of record companies. The internet allows vaporwave to be free from that as music distribution platforms willingly turn a blind eye to copyright infringement.
We believe very strongly that the world is broken. Capitalism and religion don’t work, governments have failed society and people are in pain. It is important to remember that in Paradise Killer, you are one of the bad guys. The Syndicate are trying to resurrect alien gods that want to drown the universe in a sea of blood. The gods exist only to satisfy their own whims, much like the wealthy and powerful in our own society. By embracing vaporwave aesthetics and themes we can shine a critical light on the Syndicate and thus hold a mirror up to our own society without being preachy to the player.
I should say though that we didn’t set out to make a vaporwave game. The aesthetic and themes emerged gradually through development.
Q3: PK is an open-world investigation game with many characters to question and cluesto discover. To follow up such a massive game, the “crime to end all crimes” shouldalso be especially complex and intricate. Of course, I will avoid spoilers but I amcurious, how was the process behind the creation of the murder mystery? How didyou decide, between many characters, who was guilty?
A3: The mystery was very iterative. We started by establishing the crime and location. From there we worked out which characters needed to fulfil which roles. This went hand in hand with adding ideas that we wanted to include. I am a big fan of manga and Japanese games that deal with artificially created killers and wanted to include that part in one conspiracy. Once we had the skeleton on a story in place, we adapted it continuously as we fleshed out details, added characters and changed locations.
We made a number of development decisions early on which helped. We are a two person team (with some contractors) so we knew we didn’t have the resources to tackle 3D characters, animation and full voice acting. This was a blessing as it allowed us to rewrite and improve dialogue and evidence right up until shipping the game as we weren’t limited by motion capture or text not matching voice acting.
We also decided that we’d use a fantasy world so that we could control the mystery. Thanks to shows like CSI and the popularity of true crime media, players are very well educated in investigative procedure. By creating our own world we could control the rules and expectations around this.
A good example of this is how there isn’t any CCTV around the island. We originally had cameras in as environmental storytelling about the Syndicate watching the Citizens but realised that created too many plot holes and impossibilities. So we removed them. The player accepts this because they’re in such a bizarre world.
Players have commented on how rich our lore and world building is. I was extremely worried about this before launch as a lot of it was written to help explain away our contrivances around aspects of the mystery and how the crime could take place. The freedom of our fantasy world allowed us to adapt everything to make the mystery work.
Another important note is that we realised that every piece of evidence had to be explicitly tied to one suspect and one crime. That way the player could comprehend it and Starlight could categorise it. This caused big changes to some parts of the mystery as we had to be very explicit about what was linked to what. In a linear story ambiguity is fine because the audience is along for the ride, in Paradise Killer the player determines their own path.
In a fantasy world, murders can be even more complex.
Q4: The characters of PK are surely one of the iconic traits of the game. Which characterchanged the most, in terms of appearance or background, during the early stage ofdevelopment till the final release [SPOILERS ALERT]?
A4: SPOILER BEGINS
Witness to the End was originally innocent. There was originally only one conspiracy but we realised that for the mystery to be compelling, we needed there to be multiple suspects for every crime. Witness originally filled the role that Judge now has but he was completely rewritten to be a villain.
SPOILER ENDS
In terms of design, almost no one changed from their original design except Yuri. His original design really wasn’t working with his character so we got him redrawn to be very good looking and contrast with his vile personality.
The Judge is a fusion of multiple bodies trying to achieve the perfect Justice.
Q5: Building a variegated and interesting open-world structure is surely not an easy task,how was the process behind the creation of Island 24?
A5: Again, this was very iterative. There were some areas that we definitely wanted to include like the apartments and suburbs and areas that were needed for the story like the Council building. Then there are areas like the farm and warehouse that were needed to explain the function of the island. We wanted to create a believable world that allowed the player to see how the island functions.
During development we lifted and moved whole sections of the island around to better locate them for story reasons, exploration and atmosphere. It is intentional that the functional areas of the island are hidden from view if you are in the Syndicate area. Carmelina says she appreciates function but she also looks down on Citizens so she hypocritically hides function from view.
In terms of the actual dev process, we start with a very simple blockout for each area. Just coloured cubes placed to determine paths, blockers and some landmarks. Then we dive in and create and place assets for each part. We have a lot of easy control of moving things so even right at the end I was shifting large chunks of the world around for better player experiences.
Q6: After finishing the game, there is a specific area of the game that left me puzzled. Iam talking about a secondary tunnel connecting two main areas, with inside postersof Crimson Acid but also several pictures that appear based on real images. Whichare the meanings of this area and the pictures inside it?
A6: That’s the service tunnel that connects the Citizen living areas to the working areas. The Citizens use this tunnel on their way to and from work. The Crimson signs are there to encourage the Citizens to work hard and worship. She is blessed by the gods and so too can they be if they worship hard enough. The photos are memorial photos of Citizens that have lost their lives in the industry of the island. The Citizens have a hard life and suffer at the hands of the ruling class. The photos are mostly members of the dev team.
The pictures inside the mysterious tunnel.
Q7: The lore of PK is rich and dense, including a pantheon of Cosmic Gods. It isinteresting to notice that several Gods have goat-like anatomies, which is verydifferent from the common view of “just add eyes and tentacles.” The idea isdefinitively interesting but I am curious: why did you use goats to portray CosmicGods?
A7: Disclaimer: I find Lovecraft’s views on different races abhorrent and in no way endorse them.
I have always been fascinated with the gods in the Cthulhu mythos and their indescribable forms, particularly one that resembles a goat. I just reread the details around that god and hoo boy that is scorchingly racist so I’m not going to repeat any of that here.
Moving on, I used to play the Beastman army in Warhammer. I find goat heads to be deeply unsettling, especially on the bodies of humans. Their use in Satanic imagery has a stark juxtaposition with their somewhat moronic real world look. The gods in Paradise Killer are idiotic and cruel. I felt that hideous goat forms would create a good style that evoked ancient evil, bizarre forms and stupidity.
Q8: Were there other Gods planned to be more involved in the plot of the game, maybeat some point during the development, other than Crying Grudge?
A8: Crying Grudge was initially a plot function to explain how people could get through the fourth Holy Seal. Once we put him in though it was such a cool moment and discovery for the player. I never wanted to include any more gods to interact with because it would diminish the impact of finding Crying Grudge. However, I really love the lore behind Lost Pain leeching power from the dark side of the moon while he hides in an abandoned city of gold. I wanted to do a side quest where you went to the moon and I would have loved to see him looming over a terrifying monolithic city in the distance.
That said, we have a very different game we’d like to make in this universe and if we ever get to make it, we want to allow you to kill some of the gods.
Crying Grudge, one of the Cosmic Gods
Q9: PK is set on Island 24, but 23 islands existed before this one, and for each island, itis briefly provided lore of what happened there. If PK was not set on Island 24, onwhich other islands you could imagine the game to take place and why?
A9: We have an idea for a game set on Island 13 so we can see the downfall of Love Dies. I think that period would be very cool to see. For this particular crime, it only makes sense for it to be on the eve of Perfect 25 but some of the previous islands would be very cool to investigate.
Q10: Open-world and free-roaming are usually associated with secrets and easter eggsand, of course, PK is not an exception. But I am wondering, is there a secret so wellhidden on the island that you think very few people discovered it?
A10: I haven’t seen anyone talk about the rather grim masturbation room that one of the Citizens has been using…
The identity of the whisky drinkers has been discussed on forums and some people are wildly off track and one or two got it.
There are a few references that very few people have picked up on. I don’t like including a lot of references to other works generally but there are some personal references to members of the dev team that might be confusing. A cartridge of our previous game is out there to find on the island and I haven’t seen anyone make the connection yet.
We talked about doing a Fez level of cryptic puzzle for players to crack but in the end it didn’t make sense. I’m really bad at puzzles and I always find that kind of thing alienating to me.
Q11: A potentially infinite number of islands, a pantheon of Cosmic Gods, and dozens ofcharacters: PK is already offering a lot of material to explore more about the world,and for sure already received positive consensus from the players and press. But myquestion is: what are your plans for the future? Are you thinking of expanding theuniverse with DLCs or a sequel, or are you already planning your next project?
A11: We have a lot of games we’d like to make in this universe. We have plans for Lydia and Sam and we’d like to see the downfall of LD on Island 13. We intentionally made a universe that could support a wide range of games and characters. We don’t have any DLC plans and no plans for a direct sequel but we are very excited to go back to a Paradise in the future. We didn’t know if anyone would like all this weird stuff but seeing which parts people have latched on to has been amazing. There are certain characters I’d love to do more with just for the fans.
Final Remarks:
I would like to thank both Oli and Phil for the opportunity. Phil always replied to the emails, and it was really easy to interact and discuss with him. Oli provided exhaustive and interesting answers, with so many new details about the lore and the development of the game, which will satisfy even the most extreme curiosity. Paradise Killer is really a surprise, a game so deep and unique that can be compared with very few other games. Luckily, Paradise Killer already achieved positive reviews everywhere, with even recent nominations at the Golden Joystick Awards. As a fan myself, I hope one day to be back to this universe, to discover what happened on previous islands, or maybe to really “kill some of the gods.” If you still didn’t play Paradise Killer, it is available on STEAM and Switch.
Years ago, survival horror games were mostly developed in Japan, with great names such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Fatal Frame. The situation is now different, with many studios around the world bringing their personalised version of horror on the market. For example, different studios around Asia are using horror games to also portray traditions and cultural elements from their countries (for more information about horror games based on the folklore of different Asian countries, check my article: Horror games based on traditional Asian folklore). Devespresso Games is a Korean studio focusing on developing horror games, such as The Coma series, but also dark RPGs like Vambrace Cold Souls. Their products are always characterised by a gorgeous comic-like aesthetic, an iconic style able to perfectly fit both horror games and RPGs.
The Coma is an interesting horror franchise imbued with traditional and cultural elements from Korea, starting from the school life, to urban settings and legends. Gameplay-wise, Coma is a 2D horror game with strong connections with classic survival-horror games, such as Clock Tower, were exploration and puzzles are complicated by the presence of an immortal stalker. Hiding and running are a lifesaver, but managing the stamina to avoid to finish helpless under the knife of the killer, it is not always an easy task. The Coma 2 Vicious Sisters was released this year, improving the first game in every element and creating one of the most completed 2D horror experiences of last years.
A typical moment in Coma 2: hiding from an immortal killer in a surreal dark world
Tristan Lee Riven is the game writer and designer at Devespresso Games, and co-creator of the Coma series. I had the opportunity to interact with Tristan and, thanks to his interesting answers, we explored the past and the future of The Coma series. If you are curious about the creation of the main character or the dark world, or you want to know more about the monsters that were not in the final version of Coma 2, the following interview will satisfy your curiosity.
Q1: Thanks Tristan for the opportunity of interacting with you. The Coma franchise became one of the most famous series of horror games developed in Korea. I am really curious, how the Devespresso team was born? How did your adventure with the Coma begin?
A1: The pleasure is all mine. We’re a very small team (4 guys) and none of us actually have an “official” background in games development. Minho, the game’s artist, and I first started our adventure in the gaming industry in 2012 when we attempted to start up a fledgling studio. We didn’t have much luck at that time, but we learned a lot. We later officially incorporated Devespresso Games in Korea. We also wanted our first game’s story to be uniquely “Korean.” The main inspiration behind the initial story was using some of Minho’s experiences as a student and trying to reframe them within the context of a horror story.
Q2: Which were the main inspirations, such as movies or games, while developing the Coma?
A2: We are big fans of 80’s slasher and horror films. You name it, we love it: Halloween, Friday the 13th, Alien, the list could go on forever. Through Dark Song, we set out to create a truly iconic slasher villainess.
Q3: The art-style of your games (both Vambrace and Coma series) is quite iconic and characteristic, with a unique comic-like feeling. Why did you decide to implement this art-style in your games? Which were your references for the style?
A3: First of all, this is Minho’s distinctive art style. You could say it already comes naturally to him. However, when it came to The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters, we did make a conscious choice to emulate the Korean manhwa style (webtoon comics). We realized that gamers are spoiled for choice when it comes to Western and Japanese games, but hardly any games had that unique Korean aesthetic. The look immersed players into Mina’s plight and kept them on the edge of their seats.
Manhwa aesthetic and a supernatural slasher villain are an explosive combination
Q4: For the development of Coma 2, you really listened to the community advice and improved the previous game in any possible element. Which were the most difficult implementations and changes at gameplay -level while going from Coma to its sequel?
A4: Before we started on The Coma 2, we determined that we had to make everything bigger and better than it was in the original game. We were quite versed on what did and didn’t work with The Coma: Recut. So, it was a simple matter of dropping what didn’t work and expanding on what did. Players frequently told us they loved the story, so we decided to make it deeper with an expanded cast and more dynamic plot twists. We wanted Song to be more menacing, so she’s much more deadly now and the player can take perma-damage if they’re not prepared. Honestly, the most challenging aspect was listening to player feedback on a daily basis. We received a lot and had to be very objective about what we changed. These adjustments were significant and it often meant we had to crunch – sometimes going whole days without sleep. But it all worked out in the end!
Q5: Mina Park, the protagonist of the Coma 2, became already an iconic character for the community. How her character was born? According to you, which are the elements that make her unique and interesting?
A5: Players already experienced The Coma through the eyes of Youngho. The second time around, I wanted that experience to be familiar, but completely different. This time we once again experience the shadow realm from the perspective of someone who is unfamiliar with it. Much like Youngho, Mina must face her own inner demons in this place. However, the conflicts a Korean high school girl contends with is a very different set of challenges. Telling her story gave us the unique opportunity share a tale of broken friendships and reputation destruction through hateful gossip. She is far from the “perfect” student we are led to believe she is at the beginning of the game, and she must come to grips with her deep flaws and find a way to reconcile this by growing as a person through hardship.
Q6: The Coma 2 artbook is full of gorgeous images and interesting references, with even more concepts unlockable as extra in the game itself. I am especially curious about an image full of twisted monsters, also because some of them never made their appearance in the final game. Which monsters were present in your original draft? Which was their behavior and how they would make the life of the player a nightmare?
A6: We originally had plans for 3 more monsters that never made it into the final game. The first similar to the Shadow Stalkers, but they lurched and floated about the stage rather than crawling after you. We also had another monster that crawled along the roof and attacked from above. Finally, we did plan to have an evil nurse in the hospital but later scrapped that idea due to balancing and time constraints.
Concepts for the used and unused monsters inside The Coma 2
Q7: In Coma 2 there are many creepy characters, but the Dokkaebi is probably my favorite. The demon merchant is an ambiguous and mysterious character, and, correct me if I am wrong, it is also inspired by a Korean legend. Could you tell us something more about this character and its role in the Coma’s universe?
A7: The Dokkaebi is roughly equivalent to the Western conception of a “goblin.” In Korean folklore they are often portrayed as tricksters who deceive hapless humans. While living in Korea I noticed that some traditional markets were known as “Dokkaebi Markets.” When I inquired about the meaning of this, a friend told me legends about the Dokkaebi. These markets were named after them because they were temporary and would vanish quickly – much like the mysterious Dokkaebi. Sometimes the names stuck despite the fact that the markets became a permanent fixture.
I thought it would be quite neat if Dokkaebi actually lived and worked in the shadow realm’s markets. Of course, they would have to be just as mischievous as the legends would have us believe. Ultimately, he’s not an “evil” character – just a very selfish creature who saw an opportunity to take advantage of a lost girl for his personal benefit.
Q8: The Coma is not only the title of the game but also a dark world existing as parallel reality to the waking world. This dark world is a complex scenario full of details and complex background elements, creating a unique and detailed setting. Which were the main elements and the details that you used to give life and identity to this evil place?
A8: The life of a human is a complex web of relationships, lies, rumors, secrets, and much more. The Coma is simply a manifestation of these darker, subconscious elements. The realm manifests from the collective unconscious of all the individuals who are connected to that location. In a sense, there’s something deeply Jungian that we wanted to explore here. We imagined stories and secrets that people in such places would have and tried to breathe life into those stories.
The Coma world can be a really surreal and twisted place.
Q9: On the press section of your website [https://www.devespressogames.com/copy-of-press] there are really interesting Trivia about your games. For example, for Coma Recut you talked about how the very first playable version missed any save-point or indicators, or how a giant tentacle ball was there to crush the player. Are there some interesting Trivia about The Coma 2 that you want to share here?
A9: We originally intended for Dark Song to have a variety of “finishing” moves she would do on Mina which were quite brutal. Unfortunately, due to time and dev constraints, we were not able to do this. Next time!
Q10: If Coma was already a successful game, the Coma 2, even if released only this year, already over-passed it, sitting at an “overwhelmingly positive” score on STEAM. Which are your plan for the future of the franchise? Is Coma 3 a possibility? Are there gonna be DLCs to expand Mina’s journey?
A10: We will definitely do a Coma 3 and there are vague discussions about other possible projects to expand upon what happened the night Mina was in the Coma. That said, we have no official announcements to make about either one!
Final Remarks
I would like to thank Tristan for the interesting answers and the quick response. As a fan of the series, I am glad to know that, after the success of the Coma 2, the saga will continue in the next entry. While waiting for future announcements, if you didn’t play it, the Coma 2 is currently available on STEAM, and soon on PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Rogue-like elements and crafting for resources were never so much associated with horror as in the case of Darkwood. Made in Poland, Darkwood was able to join surreal and folkloric atmospheres in an unnerving and disturbing setting. Freedom of exploration collided with the constant fear of death and the passing of time, because when the night is coming in Darkwood, the only way to survive is to barricade inside a cabin.
The mysterious woods are also home of creepy and eerie characters, some of them are friendly, while others are cryptic adversaries. From a humanoid wolf to a trinity of women in gas masks, every single character of Darkwood is an interesting and complex enigma. But not every inhabitant of the woods is willing to talk, feral creatures will attack the player on sight, while even more mysterious beings are wandering during the night.
Acid Wizard Studio surprised everybody with a deep, complex and surreal horror game, with its own intriguing mythology. And if you think that this was their first game, they really have a bright future in front of them. I had the nice opportunity to interact and exhange questions with Acid Wizard Studio. Their answers are really interesting and very helpful to understand even more the secrets hidden in Darkwood. The team was very friendly and responsive, especially the wizards Jakub Kuć (also known as Kuba) and Artur Kordas.
If you want to know more about the development of Darkwood, its references, and the character’s creation, I suggest you read the following interview. Also, you will know some details about future projects of Acid Wizard Studio.
Q1) Thank you for the opportunity. Darkwood became one of the most famous survival-horror games of last years. How was the idea of Darkwood born?
A1)[Kuba] Nice to read this kind of warm reception. It’s very hard to give a condensed answer to this question. Darkwood evolved from the idea to make a very simple tower defense game. It was our first project, so we wanted to make something quickly, to practice and find out if we are able to do it. Of course it took longer that we planned and while we were implementing more and more ideas and details to this simple project, Darkwood slowly started to take shape.
Q2) Which were the major influences during the developing of Darkwood? I am curious especially about the movies and the games that were a reference during your work.
A2)[Kuba] In terms of building atmosphere, and game mechanics, we were really fascinated with Dark Souls back then. We love how FROM is not handing you everything on a plate, they let you experience and find out many things on your own, building this tension of not being certain of anything their world is offering you. Also Fallout, considering that your choices do matter, and also how it clashes grim atmosphere with dark humor. There were probably many more games, which had non direct influence on Darkwood. As for movies and books – Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky and Picnic on the roadside by Strugatsky brothers, on which Stalker was based, but also Twin Peaks, The Shining, Wojciech Smarzowski’s movies (Dom zły especially) and Stanisław Lem’s books.
Q3) Darkwood is a great example of how to properly manage an Early Access (EA) on STEAM, with the community helping to create the game. What changed the most from the EA to the final release of Darkwood?
A3)[Kuba] As it was our first game ever, project was changing a lot. We were testing out new mechanics, trying to implement new stuff, see how it will work, and how the community will react. I remember one time that people went crazy when we implemented the first version of “Shadows” creatures. Reception was so negative, that we decided to pull them off as fast as we could. We redesigned them and implemented them once more, this time without major problems.
Q4) The atmosphere of Darkwood is really scary, deep and immersive. What was the original plan when building the atmosphere? How did you decide to convey fear?
A4)[Kuba] I think most of the time we were trying to achieve the feeling of “being scared of the unknown.” So basically the mystery is present from the very beginning of the game, causing the player to feel lost and insecure. FOV in top down also came in handy, not showing to the player what exactly he should be scared of. Talking about audio, using it in a minimalist way, mostly using silence, to build up tension and sense of dread. I think using these methods resulted in a horror that was partly happening in the heads of the players, tricking their minds.
Q5) In a recent interview you defined Darkwood as a “Poland-simulator.” I would be curious to know more on how Poland influenced Darkwood. How the setting and and the folklore of Poland are integrated in the world of Darkwood?
A5)[Kuba] We wanted to set the game in Poland, because we were born and raised here, so the decision was natural for us. We felt that we are able to tell a story in a much more sincere and convincing way if we will set it in the place that we are surrounded by. Poland influenced Darkwood a lot, and we were trying to take advantage of this setting as much as we could. It was also a way to introduce our folklore to players who didn’t know anything about our country, we thought it was gonna be very exotic, and maybe refreshing for them.
Artwork showing the mysterious woods.
Q6) The characters of Darkwood are unique and innovative, over the top and really creepy. How was the process of creating such complex characters? Which is your favorite character and why?
A6)[Kuba] Only in the early stages of development creating some characters was collective work of the three of us. After a short while, Artur was mainly responsible for this task, so I cannot provide you many detailed insights. As for the favorite character…. it’s very hard decision, but I think it would be Piotrek, he is beautifully unaware of everything that is happening around him. Completely absent minded, just caring about space travel in his spaceship made of metal crap. His character was based on a song “Piotrek” by polish group called “Ścianka.” I really love the atmosphere in this track, maybe that’s why I have chosen Piotrek.
Piotrek lost in his own world.
Q7) If I can also answer to the previous question, my personal favorite is the Wolf, a really complex and ambiguous character. How is the story behind the creation of this character and how was he integrated into the game?
A7)[Artur] The Wolf was the first character NPC that I drew on paper. This was, I think, even before Darkwood had a name, so we were still in very early stage of thinking about the game. My initial idea behind this character was very simple. I thought that man with wolf head was cool and fits dark Fairy-tale mood perfectly. This draft was a spark and from then on this character started to develop slowly.
So for the big part of the development, he was a one dimensional, super over the top character that combines the worst of animal and human traits. During the development of the game, as we added new parts of story and new characters, he became a little more nuanced and mysterious. But he remained the most obvious antagonistic NPC, a nice contrast for the rest of the characters in Darkwood.
The feral wolf, not a welcoming character.
Q8) The Prologue of Darkwood is an incredible example of alternative storytelling, with a switch between main characters and point of views. Why did you decide to start the game in this unconventional way?
A8)[Artur] Prologue/tutorial had to be a separate, linear thing, with slightly different rules in order to create an environment in which the player could learn how to play the game. The Prologue also had to introduce the setting and to be a good starting point for the story. So for these reasons we chose another character. Not as much mysterious as the main protagonist, with more personality, and more history shared with the forest and peoples living in it. He simply was a better “guide” for the player… and we also thought that switching character would be a cool twist at the beginning of a game.
Q9) Darkwood evolved and changed during the years, with new contents added and removed. Was there a character or an enemy that was supposed to be part of the game, but in the end was cut-out from the final release?
A9)[Kuba] Yes, for example larva from the second trailer didn’t last to final version of game. Graphic asset was ready, it was also animated, looked cool IMHO but, as you already said, project changed a lot during the years, so it was cut-out, it did not fit for the rest of the story. I cannot recall anything right now, but I bet there is something more. In the Darkwood artbook you can find many sketches of characters that we thought were cool back then, but never got into the game.
Concepts of the creatures from Darkwood artbook.
Q10) Fans are really looking forward for your next game. What are you planning for the future? Working on a new IP, or Darkwood 2 is a possibility?
A10)[Kuba] We rented a bigger office, recruited two more acid wizards and one wizardess. We’re on our way to discover some exciting new project, prototyping, exploring. We’re not working on Darkwood 2 right now, but we do not exclude possibility to get back to the woods one more time, sometime in the future. Working on this title was a really exhausting experience, but in the end we like this forest. It will sound weird, but it feels little bit like home, and it’s cool that so many people found this place interesting.
Final Remarks:
I would really like to thank Kuba and Artur from Acid Wizard Studio for answering my questions. Kuba was the one handling all the communication, so a special thanks to him. This was a great opportunity since at the moment Acid Wizard Studio is not allowing many interviews. While looking forward to the mysterious new projects of the team, if you never played Darkwood, it is available for STEAM, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.
Last year (2019) was full of interesting and innovative horror games developed by Spanish teams, from Yuppie Psycho to Blasphemous. But it looks like that 2020 will also be a great year for Spanish horror games, especially with the upcoming Lamentum.
According to Obscure Tales, the developers of Lamentum, the game is described as a pixel art survival-horror game set in New England in the mid-nineteenth century. Even if the final release is still far, Lamentum already looks like a really promising survival-horror game, with a gorgeous pixel-art, a set of creepy and disturbing creatures, and an interesting atmosphere inspired by Lovecraft. The game will also feature multiple ways of dealing with the enemies, from running or hiding, to fighting the monsters using different melee weapons or firearms. To complete the ingredients of a good survival-horror, Lamentum will also feature several puzzles to solve. If you wan to have a taste of the general atmosphere and the lore of Lamentum, a Demo is already available on STEAM.
If you are looking forward to the release of Lamentum, you will be curious to check the following interview with the developers. The Obscure Tales team answered my questions regarding the atmosphere and the ideas behind Lamentum, with a special focus on the monsters and the characters that will lurk in the darkness of the mansion. I hope the following interview will provide you with more details regarding the twisted world of Lamentum, while waiting for the final release.
The main artwork of Lamentum
Q1: Thank you for the opportunity to interact with you. Lamentum is one of the most promising horror games to look forward in 2020, and I am interested in how everything started. How the team was created and how the idea of Lamentum was born?
A1: Thank you for giving us this opportunity! In Obscure Tales we are two, Nico (programmer) and Fran (artist). We met at a videogame development forum and we soon realized that we were both passionate about survival horror and pixel-art. So we think … why not make a video game that unites our two passions?
Q2: Looking at the art and the setting I can feel Lovecraft vibes from Lamentum, but which are the major inspirations of your work while developing Lamentum?
A2: Lovecraft is a great inspiration for our work. The dark universe of the Cthulhu Myths has inspired us to design some creatures of Lamentum. But we get inspiration from many other sources such as movies (The Thing, Hellraiser …) and great video games that have marked us. We really like games with a complex background hidden from the naked eye like Silent Hill, and that is why we have put special effort into creating our own lore.
Cosmic-horror vibes are really strong in Lamentum
Q3: Judging from the demo, Lamentum provides quite enough freedom of exploration to the player. How much freedom will be in the final release of Lamentum? How will be the balance between exploration and fights?
A3: Although Lamentum is not an open world video game, we are clear that one of its fundamental pillars is going to be exploration. The player will have to find his way while facing multiple dangers. The combat will be present, but it will not be fundamental for the adventure. We want to give a sense of danger and although our protagonist has several weapons at his disposal, combat will always involve risks.
Q4: According to the artworks and the images released, there will be many interesting secondary characters, such as the “Red Queen” or the “Old Man and the Deer”. How will they been integrated in Lamentum?
A4: Our protagonist, Victor, will find several characters during his adventure. Some of them will not be human characters and we want to let the player discover how to interact with them. Without wanting to go into details to avoid spoiling, these creatures can be helpful or be an obstacle in our path. In Lamentum, not everything is as it seems.
Artworks for the characters of Lamentum
Q5: Just to have an idea about the final length of the game, how many hours will be necessary, on average, to complete Lamentum? Are you planning NG+ or different Difficulty Levels?
A5: It is still early to know the exact duration of the game, but we estimate that it will last about 6-8h. Of course. Lamentum will have two difficulty levels (normal-difficult) Lamentum is not an RPG and will not have a progression of levels or statistics of the character and therefore we have decided not to include an NG + mode.
Q6: The demo included 3 different endings, so I imagine the main game will also have multiple-endings. Can you share some details about the multiple endings and how are you integrating them?
A6: Of course. Lamentum will feature multiple endings. We think that adding this feature increases the replay value of a video game and is something we have always liked. During the adventure, depending on the decisions you make, you will get a different ending. However, these decisions will not always be dialogues or actions and it will be difficult to predict the consequences they will have. As an additional note clarify that the demo is completely independent and does not represent the final game. We do it in two weeks for the Kickstarter campaign with the aim of showing the game’s characteristics.
Q7: It is not an easy task to scare the players and to create a dreadful setting. How did you decide to convey horror and fear in Lamentum?
A7: We believe that fear can be transmitted in multiple ways. Exploring in the light of a lamp, a disturbing vision or feeling helpless in front of an enemy can convey fear to the player. In Lamentum we want the player to always be in tension and as a good survival horror never know what awaits him around the corner. Another tool that seems fundamental to transmit terror is the sound section. All the details count when creating a dark atmosphere.
Q8: According to the info released, Lamentum will also include boss battles. How will they work? Will they be more based on direct fights or on puzzles to solve?
A8: During the game you will meet some mysterious beings called Custodians. These beings are very powerful and facing them will be a great challenge. The battles against these enemies will mix puzzles and combat. Each confrontation will be different and some Custodians will have weak points that you must take advantage of to defeat them. We want to convey to the player that the Custodians are powerful beings and that facing them directly would mean certain death. These beings have their own story and their own motivations and we want the player to discover them for himself.
Q9: The creatures design of Lamentum looks really promising, with many disturbing and interesting enemies to face. Which is your favorite monster till now and why?
A9: We have many favorites! Maybe as NPC the Red Queen is one of our favorites because of its background, but we have trouble deciding. As an enemy we love the walking famine. It’s great to throw up the player over! XD
The enemies of Lamentum are really creepy and original
Q10: Of course to conclude a question that all the fans are waiting. When it will be the most probable release window for Lamentum?
A10: We hope to have the PC version ready by mid-2020. Our launch plans are first PC, then Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One.
Final Remarks:
I would really like to thank Fran and especially Nico from Obscure Tales for their time and for the interesting answers. Lamentum is one of the most intriguing indie horror games to be released in 2020, and now with the new information I am even more curious to play it. While waiting mid-2020 for the release of the game, I suggest you to follow Obscure Tales on Twitter for news regarding the developing of Lamentum.
Surreal and Creepy 