LOS ANGELES — An independent game developer with shit-for-brains announced they were hard at work curating an elaborate, unique horror experience for players, when “dimly-lit hallway” was right there, sources report.
“It’s tough watching rookie developers making the same mistakes,” said Vander Cartwright, an industry veteran who advises indie studios on how to market their games entirely through sad little quote tweets. “In this particular case, we see a failure of vision right off the bat. Before starting any project with financial ambitions, you have to look at what the market wants. A surreal puzzle-platformer that invites the player into a world both dark and whimsical. A cryptic survival-horror masterpiece of hard science fiction and queer love. A thoughtful remaster of beloved horror classic Condemned: Criminal Origins. The market doesn’t want any of that crap. What the market wants is 1-3 dimly-lit hallways with lights that go blinky-blink and maybe there’s a scary woman. That’s it.”
“I’m not oversimplifying things,” continued Cartwright. “Give me a single claustrophobic hallway in an unassuming suburban home and I will sell that shit like yuri to Signalis fans. Believe me. I make a living off the whims of a demographic that sees itself somewhere between a protected species and a globe-spanning coalition of unrealized political power. Before I go to sleep and after I wake up each morning, I think to myself, what do gamers want right now? Couch co-op? Intricate world-building? Expanded voting rights for women? No. The only thing gamers want with no nuance or exception is two corridors connected at a right angle, a little bit of head bob, and framed pictures of a smiling family with their eyes gouged out hanging on every wall.”
Alejandro De Anda, a former colleague of the indie developer who wished to keep their dumb ass anonymous, admitted his split from the studio last year was due in part to creative differences.
“There’s no hard feelings, I just felt like we were moving in two different directions,” said De Anda, who has since founded his own studio, Shovelscare Games. “The old studio head was one of those guys who was all vision, no sense. He wanted a first-person horror game with a manageably small open world and light Metroidvania elements set in a sparse wood populated by abandoned, interconnected treehouses, with a narrative told largely through loose notes and diary entries. My response when he laid all this out and showed me the alpha build he’d already made was what anyone would say: We wouldn’t be able to buy that wholesale from the Unity Asset Store for a clean $15 like we would with a hallway.”
“I raised a number of other obvious points,” continued De Anda, whose upcoming title Buster’s Ballpit is currently the #1 most wishlisted game on Steam by virtue of being another mascot horror game. “First and foremost, I told him, why bother? We have the emaciated, fetid corpse of P.T. right here, and with a few scraps of meat still on it. He asked why every AA horror game had to be P.T., and that’s when I hit him with the hard truth: If we as an industry make enough P.T. clones, maybe it’ll make up for the Silent Hills-shaped hole in our hearts. He turned around and scoffed, but I could see the tears already dampening his cheeks.”
When asked for comment, the indie developer, now a solo-dev, offered stern words of advice for creators.
“What’s the point of making games if you’re just going to do what’s already been done?” said the developer. “You know what made P.T. special? It wasn’t the fact that it was a Kojima game in disguise or the bold choice to set it in the narrow, claustrophobic corridor that is your average $4000 per month no bed one bath Brooklyn apartment. P.T. was special because it did something different. It surprised you. It innovated. It made you whisper ‘Jareth’ into the microphone on your PS4 controller because the internet promised you Norman Reedus. Is it tragic Silent Hills was never made? Yes. Did Konami need to take the teaser out back and shoot it in the back of the head execution style? No. But if you think you can recapture the same magic that game had by endlessly imitating it, you’ve not only boarded the cope boat, my friend. You’re riding first class.”
At press time, the developer had launched their debut horror title to underwhelming sales, a problem they intend to address through several minor bug fixes and the addition of the “deckbuilder” and “roguelike” tags to the game’s Steam page.
