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The Challenges of Designing Horror (ft. Fredrik Olsson - Amnesia: The Bunker) | Dev Heads Podcast
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This week, the Dev Heads crew are joined by Fredrik Olsson, the creative lead on Amnesia: The Bunker, to discuss the challenges of designing horror.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Guest Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:33
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to DevHeads, the podcast focused on the ins, outs and goings on of game development with hosts experience ranging from indie, double to triple A. I'm Jay and I'm joined by my wonderful co-host Tina. Hello, how's it going? And Mikey. Hello. And today we have a very special guest expert on all things horror design, creative lead on Amnesia, the bunker, Frederick Olsen. Hey, Frederick. Hello, so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. You're welcome, dude. We're super excited. Like ah speaking from but like personally, I'm a huge horror guy and um I absolutely love the bunker. um I played for it for a second time this week and it's amazing.
The Horror Genre and Personal Experiences
00:01:16
Speaker
It's been one of my favorite horror games and I've been really itching to sit down with you because I'm also designing a horror game and well, to say that
00:01:26
Speaker
I'm designing a horror game. Mikey, what's your experience with horror? I've been more of a fan. I haven't worked on, I guess you could say there's elements of horror in Black Mesa, but I wouldn't describe it like that. ah But i'm I'm a horror fan. More in like the action horror genre, I guess. Like I like Dead Space. I liked all the Resident Evils, or most of them. My favorite was Four, probably. um And then I liked Fear One. I loved Fear. I liked that game a lot. So yeah, kind of more in the action horror space as a fan. Yeah. And Tina, what's ah what's your experience of horror? Game development. yeah um The horror of game development. I'm really jumpy and anxious, so like when I play video games, i it it's hard for me to play a ah horror game, unfortunately. um I'll probably move at a very glacial pace, so it's not the first thing I grab, unfortunately. I'm ah i'm a scared again.
00:02:25
Speaker
but I'm kind of, I've been a scaredy cat
Frederick's Journey into Horror Game Design
00:02:28
Speaker
myself as well. So i've I had a bit of a problem working with the bunker for a while in in the beginning of it at least, but you get like desensitized to it after a while, of course. Did you work on a document and then be typing something really scary and go, Oh God. That's good stuff. Go for a walk. That's great. Would you say that moving into horror wasn't kind of like your your first choice being like a little bit ah scared of those those things or or is it been like something to challenge yourself? I mean, I was I've always been.
00:03:07
Speaker
ah No, I don't think horror was my kind of focus or anything. I wasn't gravitating towards that in any way. it's what I love games. i love ah one and Actually, when people can can make their own challenges in game between themselves and stuff like that. so In the past, I set up an 11 versus 11 soccer game. like That's what we ran, me and my friend, for many years. that's my ticket it into the gaming industry. So I mean, that was more of setting up a framework for people to actually make the challenge like chess or monopoly or whatever, where you play against other people. So that's been my driving force. And then I'm kind of like moved for some reason, I ended up in in the horror genre, which I'm very happy about now. And I feel like it's my area, but it's very late in life that it took that route, I'd say.
Maintaining Immersion and Fear in Games
00:04:02
Speaker
That's, it's really interesting to think like, cause a lot of people who I know that are friends of mine or work in the industry that are working in horror or just like horror tend to be like hyper obsessed with it. And it's interesting to see that you've come from like a different background and then have kind of fallen into this space and now have learned to, you know, love it and express your own designs through it. I'd rather be to be without it, to be honest. No, wouldn't say no, I wouldn't say that. But I mean, it's also kind of nice. I kind of sense that that I have like testing out the game, for example, I haven't like a small
00:04:40
Speaker
It feels like I have a short distance between my feelings and the game because I'm a bit of a scaredy cat. and so So I think when I, I can still get immersed in the bunker. I play it quite often, too often to be sane almost. but So it's why yeah, and so playing it still, it, it gets my, uh, adrenaline pumping. I mean, it's not the same as the first ones, but like, yeah, so, so I guess that's where I've i've started to really grow fond of, of that feeling and, and it brings out some very, uh, honest,
00:05:20
Speaker
feelings and emotions in here that many other games maybe don't do. So, I mean, games are all over the place. We have so many different games and this is one that I've grown attached to now.
Role of Environmental Storytelling in Horror
00:05:32
Speaker
So, i'm yeah. I'm really glad you brought that up because while I was playing this week, so it's a difficult thing as a game developer when you play games because of the new one, you come into the field because of the new understanding of how games are put together and how they're made. Sometimes it's difficult to not view them as their own individual moving cogs. So when I go into a new game and I see an environment, my brain's thinking about the environment. ah It's thinking about the texturing. It's thinking about, you know, how the level was laid out and stuff like that. But horror is a genre that
00:06:08
Speaker
evaporates that part of my mind. There's something about it because you'd think, oh, horror games would stop being scary for you if you knew how they were put together. Right. And how they're constructed. And for yourself, the creative lead on Amnesia, the bunker, you're still getting those feelings um and they're still inducing those feelings while you're going through. And I find that really fascinating. And like the the psychology behind that, I think it's crazy. Hmm. I think it comes down to, in this case, with the bunker being so dynamic and being based off of the player's own actions and the randomness of the resources, stuff like that. It creates always a new situation for me.
00:06:52
Speaker
so I honestly don't think I had the same with Rebirth, even though I was the creative lead on that and played it a lot. It became more predictable to me. it didn't um I kind of found my optimized roots through that game, whereas the bunker still throws the surprises at me, which is which is causing these kind of, and and especially with the increase difficulties with the custom settings we added and shell shock mode and those kind of things, then it becomes so still for me, I can't fully predict the the monster and and how things go and the darkness and the difficulty of seeing things when you aim the gun, if you miss the the so the stalker. and
00:07:31
Speaker
Also, when resources are so low, like we they're so if the the the higher the difficulty, the less the resources are. So you'll have to make do with a can of fuel and ah and ah um a flare to set fire in maybe as a defensive mechanism for you, instead of having like tons of ah or a few bullets that you can use. So the creativity comes into it and you need to start thinking out of the box in a way, which also creates these kind of tense moments and kind of panicky moments. So yeah, I guess it's about how it's put together.
Game Mechanics and Player Experience Balance
00:08:10
Speaker
the scripted nature of certain like, not to name names, but there are some horror games where it's extremely scripted. And, you know, events are made to transpire specific intervals to, you know, give you this sharp peak and then relief and stuff like that. And that can become that predictability on a second playthrough can make it, you know,
00:08:32
Speaker
you see behind the curtain and you see the Wizard of Oz, right? And turn in the cocks. But with, you know, the bunker, that kind of um adjustments and always being new every time you go through that, that makes it the scares keep coming for that. Like, Tina, yeah I'm sorry to keep going back to you because I think you've got a really unique perspective here of someone who just doesn't gel with horror. If you were playing one, what is it that makes you want to stop? Like, what is it like the sound? Is it the the visuals or the fret? um I just the the feeling of getting. Scared. Is not like my favorite thing, um yeah but I will say ah it is interesting to think about how you develop a horror game because
00:09:25
Speaker
Um, I think like at the crux of game development, you want the player to feel positively or some sort of like emotional reaction that you, you know, um, and instilling fear and making them jump is like the best thing I think in making a horror game. Right. But I'm i'm fascinated by the development process because when you tackle a horror game, you must have. the ability to instill fear down to a sort of science, right? Or some sort of formula in a way, it like a combination of sound effects, um ah environmental storytelling. um um I'm curious to know if that is the case, um Frederick. I get i guess for for some for some developers, maybe it is. but
00:10:16
Speaker
be honest and to maybe disappoint you. For us, it's the opposite almost. There's very little, very little science behind it. I can start off like looking at the bunker, for example, we talked a lot about moments, me and Thomas, Thomas Grippo, who is the founder of of Frictional and still very much involved in the creative stuff and a creative director on the studio. We talked a lot about these how these moments moments pop up in your head in the beginning. So for example, one of my early moments was like before we had built anything, I had this moment of you having
00:10:53
Speaker
progress at stake in this bunker. You're out in the bunker, you've done tons of stuff that is now at stake. That time you've spent an effort you've spent in that and then all of a sudden, boom, the bunker goes dark and you hear this ah creature coming out of the hole and start patrolling the area. That was an early moment, like a video in my head, almost. And those kind of, okay, how do we get there? How do we get to that moment? the other moment Another moment was, for example, okay, if you sit there, the monster is coming closer, ah you go, hey, did I load that bullet I just found? And then having to slowly open up but the the the pistol and look for for yourself down there, not seeing a counter anywhere. That's the kind of horror moments that we see in movies and stuff, and we want the player to experience. They are in the movies for a reason, and we can if we can create them dynamically for the player. ah So those kind of moments, and there's tons of those moments, like coming throughout development, but they are the ones that that kind of fuel the core of of this of the bunker, at least. But if you look at
00:12:02
Speaker
environmental storytelling and those kind of things, it's more like, yeah of course, me, together with a writer, together with the sign lead, but also our artists, for example, they are extremely experienced now. They've gone through, ah that people stay, we're happy to say, at least for now, knock on wood, wherever we have wood, but people are staying with us. We have experienced artists that's been with us since the dark descent or soma and they know how to do this environment so a lot of it comes naturally to them we don't have to go we could go in with certain
00:12:39
Speaker
wishes. And of course
Sound Design in Horror Games
00:12:40
Speaker
we put out the to the bigger, broader strokes of how a level should be put put together, but then they go into the details and do this kind of thing. So it's really lucky to work with a lot of talented people in the studio who are like in the frictional DNA already. So yeah. So sorry, not that much science. We're very bad at science. fiction It's interesting though, because you said, okay, we so we mentioned environment, right? ah The environment art helps impact like that anxiety, yeah your inventory, having very little or trying to seek something that you may not have causes that like fear and anxiety. We also mentioned lighting.
00:13:19
Speaker
um it's it It's not as, I guess, um straightforward for people that are outside for a game development, right? Like how you utilize these things um with lighting, for instance. um Is that something that's more taken up by the designer who wants to create those moments? Is it by the artists, the the lighters? um like Who helps set like the piece all together?
00:13:55
Speaker
um So first of all, since Bunker has kind of two types of lighting, one is generally thrown, one is generally thrown off. And you can even like yeah you can even break the the lights. If you fire ah throw a grenade near of a light, it actually goes out. So so you won't it won't be light lit up when when the generator is on but i mean what we do is first of all we set the boundaries and like this was very liberating for us to work with bunker for me i just could say since we had an infinite light source for once.
00:14:32
Speaker
We didn't have that on rebirth, for example. So we had to kind of find a balance where the player can still see, I mean, in darkness. So so the ah night vision, we call it that, that turns on when you're in darkness, it became kind of strong. So you could actually go around and do things without, of course, then we had the sanity system that started working on you instead in rebirth. But here we could say, pitch black darkness. That's what we're doing. And we have this infinite flashlight that you can use how many times you want, but of course it's going to attract the beast to your location because it's so loud. So it was very liberating. And then when it comes to the rest of how we do lighting, I think it's just very simple, like artists going, we showing off images,
00:15:19
Speaker
Uh, some, uh, like the bunker is fairly easy in that way. It's of course, they have different environments. Like the prison area has one type of environment, but it, but it's basic, like, like and yeah yeah, similar. So we had that, we put that up. And then, uh, I think, uh, our art lead, uh, Rasmus, he went around like. adjusting certain things afterwards, adding some particles. We wanted to spice things up and get and like a tone that was similar all through the game. So he went through, I think, all of the those levels and all of the areas and kind of put his little flavor on it. But not a lot of it is already from the artists themselves. Yeah.
00:16:01
Speaker
yeah It can also be used in the the flip side direction as well, because something I've spoken to in some of my horror design episodes is the usage of lighting in the sense of the intense difference in ah darkness and light, like the chiaroscuro. It's like an ah artist term for how you draw attention to specific specific things. We can do that in level designs to guide the player in what would be and usually is a maze in horror games. you can use light as a guiding light for the player that is diegetic to the world. it's It's part of the game's world. um So the player doesn't have to think about it. It's not this big green arrow saying go this way, but it's it can be as simple as a lamp on a desk being lit up to highlight a note. There's a very simple thing that would make sense for that to be in the world, but it is a guidance for our player. And it's how it plays off of the darkness that accentuates both of them.
00:16:59
Speaker
if that makes sense. um It's used a lot super powerful. Yeah. Level, level, guiding the player through level the design with lighting is something we use all over the place. Like you have the fuel storage, for example, you have, you
The Consequences of Death in Games
00:17:15
Speaker
can see that in the, in the bunker. I'm back in the bunker again, but the maintenance area, you have a fuel storage. We really wanted the player not to miss that sign. There's a light, even the, the emergency light when the generator is off is near that sign. So, I mean, We use that a lot to guide the player and I think in Rebirth we did even more of that since it's more linear and maybe not so much about exploring but progressing through a linear player journey. then now yeah
00:17:43
Speaker
im forty I'm playing a lot of Sons of the Forest right now, which is a game that really indulges in darkness. And it's awesome. But you feel it as a player, at least I do when I'm playing, when I get into those caves and I'm switching between, you know, you were talking about night vision, turning off my light, trying to peek through the darkness and see, turning on a light and looking at what's near me. But they don't, you there's definitely a use of lights to draw the player towards certain things, but they're like very, very conservative about the use of it. and it's easy to get lost and you really start to miss that sort of level designer or environment artist touch to guide you through those dark caves.
00:18:22
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it's these the such a crazy tool like because frederick one thing you were speaking to earlier, which was um like mechanical fear. So using the game systems to generate fear through how long it takes to reload your gun or ah these the sound element attached to the light. These are things to. like generate a fear response in the mechanical interaction with the world, which is something I know you're very passionate about, which is games is a medium. This is a unique thing that we can do is make the interaction with this medium feel powerful and meaningful. Um, and I feel going back to light.
00:19:06
Speaker
You can use that mechanically as a guidance, but then get condition the player to get used to that and then strip it away. A lot of players will assume that if they are within a lighted area that they are safe. And um because the darkness is the bad thing and the light is the good thing. And as soon as you take that away, um that becomes extremely powerful and that safe space is now gone. And now everything becomes, you've like reset that fear. Is that something that you you dabbled with?
00:19:39
Speaker
I mean, if you, if you, if you take away the lighting, I mean, that's what we do with the generator. I mean, if that's what you meant, like when it turns off, it's, it's completely dark. ah So yes, it's. it's all of a sudden like players are feeling like this is fairly easy, it's simple, I can see, I can walk around here, the the monster isn't out. So, yeah, for sure. And I think we do that in... We try and find balances in every game we've made. It's part of it, um I would say, yeah. Yeah. With with mechanical theory, another thing that
00:20:19
Speaker
I spoke to in my horror episode is the reliance
Balancing Elements in Horror Game Design
00:20:22
Speaker
on death as a mechanic for players to have mechanical fear of the monster. um The player has to experience what a monster can do ah so that they can be scared of, say, losing progress or, you know, um being sent back to somewhere that they they don't want to be. Is that something that you and the team um chose to do at certain intervals to kind of encourage the players to be caught? Or did did you find that that just kind of happened naturally because of the the difficulty of the game?
00:20:57
Speaker
um I mean, in the in the game, we have a lot of notes. If you're looking at the bunker, we have a lot of notes talking about how the... So we're building up the horror of the monster that way. But we put a lot of effort on actually not showing the monster too much. I mean, all of the death scenes in the bunker, you can't see its face. Then you get the hand over the camera. When he grabs you from the front, you get, like, you see a slight of his head. of his teeth when he grabs you from behind and all that. so And then even to the point where where the lights are flickering around him when he walks. So you can't really get, you only get this kind of small silhouettes of him. And also we put this kind of little blur effect when you look straight at the monster. So we spent a lot of time on that because we knew if we're going to make it five, 10, and even consecutive playthroughs and still have some kind of fear around this monster. We really can't show it too much. We did we chose not to show it in the trailers, which we got a a lot of positives about. There was another monster, some fan-made monster. I saw those. Yeah, yeah but that didn't at all look like the one one we were making. but i mean ah So we spent just a lot of time not showing the monster, but of course telling in notes that it kills you, it it comes back, if you shoot it, it comes back even.
00:22:28
Speaker
even more angry and we showed even a corpse that's been threaded into pieces on ah in a photo to show that this is what the beast can do it to you. i We work a lot, and that that I think is core on what we could talk about actually, but we we work a lot inside the player's head. We try to be in the player's head. everything we do, ah we we do playing with small, small noises. I mean, there's the corridor, you can see it like in the corridor in the soldiers quarters in the bunker, there's a small noise. but prolong It just says that. And people are just every time you i watch too many let's plays and people are just turning around. There was nothing there. That's just a sound. But I mean, it's building. And it's kind of like this bow that you're just putting more and more effort on. And you just
00:23:15
Speaker
turning into the point where there's a release, then the player is so closer to this moment moment of panic. And especially, the I mean, we tried to make it so that all of these systems and mechanics actually helped that. that's why we have one save point in the game. That's why there's the progress for every minute you spend there, for every resource you pick up, for every door you blow up and and progress through. you so You start making that string even tighter or or more tense, and it's going to boil down to this moment where you know, I better run, I better throw a grenade, whatever you think is the the solution to it, and you need to act. And also what it does is that that
00:23:58
Speaker
we tied it into the player's actions in the bunker. So this tense bow that you, the string that you built up is also down to you and every single action that you do. So you kind of have it in your own hands to put the bad stuff upon you and how you want to act. And and that that becomes, I think, why why people are stressed out about the game and amongst other things, I guess. But then but some yeah. You've just touched on two things. Sorry, we can end that. It's just going to take my brain a second to to work through both of them. So the first one is mentioning that the, you know, not showing the monster, which is a, you know, a classic horror thing.
Challenges in Horror Game Design
00:24:41
Speaker
ah One famous example is, um, the Xenomorph from, uh, Ridley Scott's original Alien.
00:24:47
Speaker
you know, we barely ever see the xenomorph shown in in silhouette, shown i'm hiding within the ship, the hints of the ship, like hint towards the monster. And that's something that I i think alien isolation, not at their own fault, but lost because we've had however many years, 30 30, 40 years of alien, you know, media, everybody understands what the xenomorph looks like and what it can do and, you know, everything about it.
00:25:21
Speaker
to a point where they hold off from showing it in Alien Isolation but then once it's revealed it does repeatedly keep showing up and the threat becomes very obvious and because they're showing it so much it's then kind of easy to then figure out how it works and how it how it behaves and then to abuse that and I feel loses that kind of fear element. Um, another thing is the game is, I think it a little bit too long, but yeah I think it loses it. And amnesia, the bunker doesn't because of what you've done, you've kept things, you know, uh, in the dark in, in a way. Um,
00:26:01
Speaker
Another thing that you mentioned was sound. I would just like to say one more thing that actually I could go even to the movie Jaws. I mean, that's an even even almost even better example of how they managed to do something. But that was because I understand that the the mechanical shark that they had was so poorly made. It didn't look good. So they had to cut it from a lot of scenes. So, but it turned out well for them. And I mean, that's also like the less you show and it's always work with the players. Yeah. Sorry.
00:26:35
Speaker
but but No, no, it's perfect. It's a great example. the The other thing you mentioned was sound. So along with being you know a level designer, I'm also the sound designer for the projects that I work on. cool And the sound in horror is such an integral part of the machine. um The thing you were speaking to was the cling-clang noises in the corridor. um So ah for our viewers, ah these are what um I refer to as non-linear sounds. So sound is in a spectrum of high, mid, and low frequencies. And non-linear sounds like exist in the extreme highs and extreme lows of these frequencies. Our bodies aren't used to hearing them, and they immediately put us on edge. It's like an instinct for humans. And horror games, and especially Amnesia the Bunker, does this so beautifully is that
00:27:27
Speaker
When you have long stretches of silence and nothing, most sounds become non-linear sounds. You can hear a pin drop and you're put on edge. And um is that something that you guys paid special attention to? like was it Were they dropped at careful moments or were they ah like are they like interspersed at like random sections? Honestly, this is just a need to pay tribute to when it comes to those kind of and nonlinear like environment audio, it's just down to Mike, the audio lead. He's so brilliant with this. ah you you He just comes with these things. You don't have to. So so i'm I'm taking it for sure that he's done it. and But it's kind of like you we don't even have to have a
00:28:16
Speaker
have too much dialogue about it. He knows that trust. Yeah. Yeah. So he's a, so he worked on rebirth as well. And it's, it's like becomes this kind of we, we've known each other and we can just let go and things come out and it's very rarely something that needs. We work more on, for example, things like together, with like when it comes to music, when it comes to ah maybe monster audio, ah then I probably usually have something to say about it, but ah I have my strange ideas about how how the rates and the rebirth should sound like, you you know, if you put a grass ah st straw of grass between your fingers and you blow like this, it sounds scratch scratchy, screechy noise. so
00:29:02
Speaker
I told Mike that and he's like, okay, I can try. And then it became something like that. And it hey I think he added some animal sounds and mixed it up and it became this kind of fantastic audio for for the rates in rebirth. So, I mean, those kinds of things. But apart from that, I think he's just, ah and and Sam and Mike who worked, Sam worked on Soma, does the same there. They are super skilled people. It's a partner we work with. um so So. I'm sorry, I can't really answer, but I would be so, I will be surprised if that's not part of his life. With my opinion as a sound designer, your team 100% did these things. um I think it's ah such a superb example of it in motion. um And I think something that adds to that is the setting because a lot of the times, let's say you're in a horror game and you're in a spooky house, right? You know?
00:30:03
Speaker
um I find that sometimes a lot of the nonlinear sounds or scares that come in feel a little bit unnatural and i sometimes a bit forced, which makes me get to the point where I'm like, okay, you know, they're trying to scare me. But with sound in the bunker, you have the war going on, which creates so much noise and invites screams and explosions and gunfire that makes sense contextually. Was that something that... What drove you to that setting? What was kind of the jumping off point for that? Actually, it was... Yeah, World War I. It was a suggestion made, I think, from the writer on rebirth, during rebirth. He mentioned we should make a French... Because we were doing some soldier stuff in the fort, in rebirth, in the fort in the desert, in rebirth.
00:31:02
Speaker
just mentioned that, and that idea just popped up a few times. um And then we came out of Rebirth, and I was not the creative lead on Rebirth from the beginning. I came in halfway through, took it over. and And then I was feeling like, okay, I've done this now for a couple of years, but I'm not done. I would like to be part of something from the beginning. So I just And I was also thinking, we should make an amnesia with a gun now. The gun that needs to be weapon. We need a weapon. And then weapon that works well. We bet these get less scary because now you're armed. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think so? I mean, people that really discuss that. Where they could. It runs the risk of it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. But we never really, like, we were never worried about it. But we could talk about it. Like, I realize there's a... There's this initial idea I had. I forgot about it. I've often got questions from people in interviews and stuff. And this is the first time I remember to mention it. But that's one of the first ideas was actually that.
00:32:03
Speaker
It's such a stupid idea, but it was kind of fueling the the start of this and how you should have very little ammo in the bunker. I was like, you should have one bullet. There's one bullet. And by the end of the game, you should be able to use it on yourself. If you're tired, there was like crazy shit going on very early on in this. So fucking metal. That would be me. The game would start and I'd be like, I'm out.
00:32:34
Speaker
at the beginningtic right when you wake up and just like there's no reload it just you go back to many years that would be amazing but you was scared you made it out yeah ah We couldn't make it work. I was like really churning this idea and seeing how we could get it in, but it like just But it was very like, it's interesting to know because this game was initially meant to be a DLC. So I pitched it as let's make a simple DLC. It's World War One. You have a gun and you have a monster stalking because we had this stalking mechanism mechanic that we built for rebirth parts of it for the
Game Development Processes and Balancing
00:33:10
Speaker
ghouls in rebirth. But we realized early on it's pointless using it because of the linearity of the game. And you spend very little time in every level in rebirth. So it does make sense to have a stalking entity because the When you come to an oasis, there's not going to be a stalking entity and you go into the dark world where there's different ah types of enemies. So it didn't make sense there. So we had that as well. So we took that and I said, now the gun, we we should have a gun. World War I is a good setting because it's not like high tech. We have a very small, like tight framework when it comes to technology.
00:33:44
Speaker
And we had the idea since before. And then I said, DLC, we just called it Amicia the Bunker. And Thomas said, yeah, sounds cool. Try it. And we'd made a prototype. I was meant to go into a bigger, ambitious project, which I'm now working on instead. But and that DLC, and then we got the prototype out a month afterwards. I think we showed it on our YouTube. It was really, it looks really, nice I was surprised. people It looks fairly. the the monster model was very different. It was a deformed Google ah walking around instead. But we come fairly long in that time and in one month. And then we realized this is nothing like rebirth in when it comes to how it's laid out. So we didn't want to make it a DLC. And we felt it was super fun and super promising. So let's make it its own thing. And then we added a bunch of
00:34:36
Speaker
effort to it and up the scope. And now I've completely forgotten what the original question was. but sort you the tell this goes there The gun's really interesting to me because not only do you have limited ammo, especially on the higher difficulties, but also it's not just used as a weapon. It's also used as a tool. And sometimes you need to sacrifice ammo to be able to access certain um things in areas and eat
00:35:07
Speaker
I prefer I don't like it in in games in horror games specifically when they give you a weapon and it is just there as a tool to show how useless it is against the thing because at the creature because I then feel like um I've been cheated out a little bit but when you can also use it for different applications And it's semi, semi works on the monster, right? I feel like you feel like you have power and when you have to sacrifice ammo, there's this real sense of loss and decision-making and encourages more exploration. Like it's crazy how much the inclusion of a gun affects so many other mechanics in the game. It's fascinating.
00:35:48
Speaker
It's a great expression of the scarcity that we're talking about. And it lines up with the randomness, the kind of authored randomness, the taste of randomness of having limited resources. The fact that it's only like, as you say, Frederick, taking advantage of the tech at the time, just six rounds, slowly, quietly loading one shell at a time, being to slowly, manually, physically check and see how many rounds you have left. It all works very well. It's cool to introduce something that that ah could be a lifesaver as far as the gameplay goes and get you out of this scary situation. But it's only if you planned around it. It's only if you took advantage of the scarce resources you had and then use it in a deliberate, smart way.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah. But there's also the moments when ah shit hit the fan and you need to use it as a backup and then you go out of it. No, I use two bullets. You see it like like all the time and again on Let's Play. Some people go like, no, I use two bullets. And it's this moment where you can you can actually fire it. at like I don't know if you're aware, but you can also use it. the the gun can be used on fuel puddles so you can pour out fuel on the ground for example near an explosive barrel so if you want to break down the game is basically about breaking down doors you know that guys it's like it's just breaking down wooden doors that's all we do in this game but you need to do it in certain aspects and then shit will hit the fan so that's that's what happens
00:37:18
Speaker
So you can pull ah an explosive barrel near ah near a door, pour some fuel on it. If if the only thing you have is ah ah a can of fuel and a bullet, you can then fire the on the fuel puddle. Of course, the monster will come running, but it's going to make the explosive barrel explode and you will be able to later on go through that wooden door. Yeah. So yeah, I'm smiling. guy um Oh, go ahead. Yeah. and No, no, no, no, no. I'm fine just because I'm thinking about like this conversation about ammo and like tech and the pillars and like, Oh no, I used two bullets and images in my head of like one of my favorite horror games, which is action horror fear fly through where you're just spending tons and tons of lead, just a burst fire weapons that you can't even control the amount of rounds that you're firing.
00:38:06
Speaker
And, uh, just, just how it's interesting that the the genre is so broad and there's so many different approaches to it. Yeah. but I think it's best. Yeah. Go ahead. No, gone go you're the guest. I've been talking, I've been talking so much. yeah i just I just want the listeners to understand that like, you can't just as a developer, just sit down and say, we're going to make a horror game now and expect.
Player Psychology and Game Design
00:38:32
Speaker
the suspense and the buildup and the, you know, the scares to actually land. Like if there's a lot of thought and process put into it, like, and, uh, that's what I love about this conversation is you're going into the nuance and the details on how to execute on that. Well, um, I still can't mentally comprehend how you play test something like this and balance the scary in a way that
00:38:58
Speaker
made the game successful right like you're sitting there maybe you have an encounter with the monster and this is just like me thinking about this like what if that the first encounter with the monster didn't land like how do you guys decide okay, we need to approach this differently to make that suspense land properly. You know what I mean? Like there's so many tools that you can use. How do you even balance how many bullets you give a player to make them feel scared? Like it's just, it's so much that I, that I wish, I wish they're the listeners to appreciate. Like it, you know, you give people five, 10 bullets, then, you know, that fear goes away. Like how do you find the this the sweet spot?
00:39:42
Speaker
And it's also about, for us, it's like, we don't want to go into this discussion where people are saying, should there be different difficulty levels or should there not be gaming games? Because we we yeah we believe that people play games differently. that That's our feeling to it of it. if If a person hides, especially with with horror games, if a person sits and hides underneath the table for a long time, that's how they play. They are scared. Whereas yeah you might pe the one ah where someone else might go like, okay, I'll just fire one round in his face and run back to the safe room. That's the other way of of playing it. But if you're the one sitting in underneath the table, the generator that keeps
00:40:25
Speaker
you healthy in this bunker because he doesn't like the light being on the generator. That fuel is burning. So I mean, that means that you need more fuel than the other person. So that's why we really went into this. Like we need to find different difficulty levels um and we need to add different difficulty levels and even go to the point where we new game plus you can add, you can customize 30 different aspects of the game, more than 30 different aspects of the game. So in in a way, I think we went for normal. We said normal difficulty should be like this. And then we played it a lot. We had the team play it a lot. But I think also there, I remember we I never sat there and I played it so many times. I played it way too much at the very end of the project. I was playing it every week and likes it. that's what does it
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. i And I never felt that it I had to go back and say something about ah balance, that that it was off for resources, for example. i What I did, what I realized, this is the kind of thing you realize, that we need to have fuel in the beginning of each. So you can see that if you play the game again, you can see that in the new sub levels that you open up, there is often quite a lot of fuel in the first room. So you realized one of those things, because if players come in there and burnt all the fuel, they're going to have a hard time getting to the end of this level. So we kind of front loaded fuel for them to be able to have the generator on and go on and do these kinds of things. But apart from that, I think balance are now
00:42:03
Speaker
I don't know, was it luck or was it the the designer that worked on it that's really skilled? I think the like the latter has been with us yeah for a long time as well, worked on three projects. so And it never felt like it was too little or too much. Yeah, yeah I think it's it's great. like Speaking to the feel, you were just talking about That allows for initial exploration um without too much you know risk of the the lights going out. And I think it's really important for exploration to be a part of horror because um going to different areas and you know on on a simple level getting confused on where to go, um opening new areas is initially scary because you don't know what's going to be there.
00:42:51
Speaker
but also the items you find are super, super important with bullets. They are such a high value resource that when you see them, you have this like immense some amount of relief, but it then also encourages more exploration. Let's say you had a gun with infinite ammo. Let's say with fear and Mikey was speaking about a gun that is effectively, you know, has infinite usage. The encouragement to explore is decreased if there isn't a reward or reason to go and do it. And it's super important for horror design to encourage that. I find that if games are walk into a room, hide behind a box, wait for creature to go through its cycle, then walk past it, go to the next room, hide from the thing. That's not scary.
00:43:47
Speaker
um because it it feels like more of a really simple puzzle than it does a player-driven exploration of an environment. um And that goes to balance, right? How do you balance how much of this resource is there to keep those scares, um you know, there? Was there an instance where you playtested some of the levels and the people who were playtesting it just didn't find a section scary and you had to make quite like drastic changes?
00:44:19
Speaker
No, not... no. There was a major change, but that was not because of... Yeah, there was some feedback halfway through. It was a fairly short project from our point of view, but but that was not a section thing, it was how the monster behaved. and was like ah people that That was a ah big moment in the development. I remember the stalker was, we didn't have it the stalker is connected to the generator. So if the generator is on, it's going to be less active. If the generator is off, it's going to be out patrolling. And of course, you need to use your flashlight all the time to see anything. and But then in the beginning, we had it so that it was not directly connected to the generator, but rather to the darkness. So if a room was dark, if you turned off the light switch and that room was dark, he was more likely to go into that room.
00:45:14
Speaker
But that just made it very different difficult. When we had testers play this, they said, okay, the generator doesn't do anything. The generator is on, but I hear the stalker, he's out here. And he was in a dark room, but the player was in a lit room. And they were like, okay, it doesn't do anything. I don't have to fuel the generator at all. So they couldn't process that he's probably over in some other room that is dark, which is fully understandable. so we came up with this suggestion that okay let's put him inside the holes a lot more like when the generator is on we have him inside the holes we have him react to your audio still theys your noise so whenever you make a noise and he's in that hole he you hear you Yeah. You can see me even moving in the ceiling, the dust falls and, and you can see the dust coming out of the hole. That was already planned, but it became much more the type of experience you had when the Emirates was on. So you, you just move a box. If you're in a room where he's in that hole over there, if you move a box, you hear him. um you That just became so intense. And I was like, first time day yeah, yeah. that's It's all me in the game as well. I've done all of the balls. No, I'm just kidding.
00:46:28
Speaker
No, no, no. I went to Thomas and I said, okay, I just tested this new behavior of the of the stalker and um and is ah and I said, I think it might be too scary now. And he's like, sounds good. I'm like, okay, is that what we're doing? Okay, let's go. Because I had a hard time playing. I was like, sweating the first time I played that. um so yeah Did you find with that change, you were speaking to when the monster would occupy dark rooms before the the mid development change. Did you find that that made players care less about fuel because they internally thought, well, the generator is not doing anything. So that resource became less high value.
00:47:12
Speaker
Did you find that? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Or we could see that that would easily happen because of the feedback we got. It was an early version, so they it wasn't at that point really possible to judge if they cared about fuel or not. But that feedback was like, okay, the generator doesn't do anything really. So, yeah. but i'm I'm pretty sure that would have been the end result if we kept on with that one. So I'm super, super happy about it that change. It's probably the biggest and most important one. And that's also so fascinating to me about game development as a whole that one shift in how the monster behaves. If you didn't do that would have had a knock on effect on so many other systems and the perception of those systems. And that one tweak elevated the horror of the game and also the player's perception of their safety.
00:48:05
Speaker
in a completely different way. And that's so that's fascinating. and Speaking to horror design, a common thing that I want to get your two cents on is jump scares
Comparing Horror Design Principles
00:48:20
Speaker
and their frequency. What is your kind of feeling on traditional jump scares and what they do for the player? traditional jump scares. So I think <unk>m I'm just this person that I'm not fond of ah tons of jump scares at all. I want them well-placed and very, very rare. that's That's how you make them work in my opinion. um
00:48:48
Speaker
So, I mean, we did a some of that in Rebirth. I remember playing Prey. If you play that, there's ah it's not. ah The new one or the old one? ah The 2016, I think. Yeah, yeah that one. do yeah Yeah. And there's just, you're walking around opening doors all the time. And that's that game. And then one time I opened the door and then there's a corpse lying on the other side of the door and just falling out. loud oh and You go like jumping and that just gets you. And I really appreciate those kinds of, but it's because of the lack of them that made that moment strong. If that would have happened multiple times, then And then the same goes with horror, I think keep them rare. Um, yeah. I think most horror games kind of get that now. I think most of the ones, at least the ones that we, that get big enough to talk about, understand that you have to be limited and sparse to make them work. And then nobody likes just being startled for no good reason. I don't know if films like that anymore, as far as horror films, I feel like they lean on heavy jump scaring. Yeah.
00:50:00
Speaker
I think that's because of the medium. um the Everything we've been speaking to ah is, you know, mechanical horror and the players involvement within games as a medium. Horror has to rely on some dirtier tricks, ah you know, big emphasis on sound and and jump scares and suspense and stuff like that because they don't have that interaction baked into the medium. Um, movies are getting better at it. Uh, you know, we, we've seen some very, very good horror movies that just use suspense and then pay off to to get there rather than someone is in a dark room wandering around and you know, the music swells and somebody jumps out. Audiences are, you know, there's a reason why people look down on jump scares is because they know the trick. It's like a magic trick that, you know, the, the sleight of hand. It's no longer, you know, effective or impressive.
00:50:54
Speaker
It feels a bit ah sheep because you can do it like it takes you. Okay, you need to be clever in where you place them, I guess, but it doesn't require the build up in the same way and and those kind of things. So I guess that's why they feel sheep if you overdo them. yeah hundred percent It's kind of interesting. Did you guys play Steel Wakes the Deep yet? Not yet. I'm super excited to play it. So no one has played it. i Yeah, I haven't played it yet, but I've seen, I've seen some videos on it. look on no hell no Yeah. You know, it could get me to play a ah scary game. If I wasn't the me as the player, wasn't the, um, the prey dealing with an apex predator. Like if you put me in or like situations, I think.
00:51:50
Speaker
That could be compelling. um Let's do this for Tina. Let's give her some games like that. What are some games like that where you're not, you're not the prey? I'm just thinking, you know, ah're we're talking about kids before the show started. Like a good example of like horror recently that I had to deal with was my two year old saying like, Oh, I got a booboo and pointed to her stomach. I'm like, okay, I guess that's nothing. But then she went, Like, you know, five games. Terrifying. Like, that's a jump scare. I don't know. I don't know how well that does in video games. Getting puked on. I'm afraid of being puked on, so I guess that's scary. Nobody wants it. You should try some of the Resident Evil games that are weird. I've played Resident Evil. Which ones did you play? I remember playing through three.
00:52:43
Speaker
And what was that? Was it for with the the girl with the bow and arrow and the like, uh, the skimpy costume? arrow Oh, uh, that was five, I think. cheva But that was like a custom outfit. game yeah play not Very scary. Uh, I suppose. This is a great example of um something we all spoke about, you know, through our correspondence, which is the difference between, you know, atmospheric horror and action horror. And the bunker really destroyed that line between, you know, here's a gun, have fun, good luck. um But some games like Mikey, your kind of taste seems to be leaning more towards action horror, yeah yeah which of like attracts you to that.
00:53:27
Speaker
It's, I think it's because I wouldn't say i'm I'm like Tina, but I do have a sense of like, I don't like being startled too much. And I really like, I just really like first-person shooters and action games. And so that's kind of why I gravitated toward RE4, fear, ah dead space, because those games are kind of more about like a light vibe or a light atmosphere of horror, but then you're engaging in all the cool action parts. Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 obviously like, We're talking about scarcity. They're big on scarcity. It's kind of what I love about those games. At the end of the day, like as far as I'm concerned, Fear One is like not super scary. I think what they were going for was you have this contrast. Here you're the unstoppable a super soldier man who's killing everybody and can slow down time and does high kicks and low kicks. And then you get turned into blood soup by a little girl, right?
00:54:19
Speaker
ah They wanted this kind of contrast there, but it doesn't end up fully working in my opinion because it's too the the dichotomy is too strong. you It's kind of like you're talking about like, oh, I'm going into a scary part. They didn't have like a ton of jump scares. There's definitely a lot of atmosphere, great sound design, great music, great level design, great lighting, but but it's hard to get scared when you were just ah the unstoppable badass, even though I see what they're going for with the contrasting. Resident Evil 4, Dead Space kind of similar, like it's scary, you will be startled, but the the action is really kind of what you're there for. So I think it's less so my like, it's not like I'm avoiding the horror, there's maybe a little bit of that and I wanted to be scared, but more so I just really like the action, but I like action with scarcity.
00:55:04
Speaker
I like action where it's it's why i we're contactable shooters that are all about scarcity. They're all about the peaks and valleys instead of something like, you know, a little more action oriented, explicitly kind of like some of the games like Tina, you work on like the Call of Duty franchise and stuff, right? That's the kind of shooter and action game that I like on their stakes and and stuff.
00:55:26
Speaker
I'm like throwing myself into a a weird imaginative state where I'm trying to think like, okay, what could get me to play, uh, amnesia on my own, on my sofa at night? And I'm thinking, um, uh, So I, you know,
00:55:51
Speaker
co-op I think would help me like having a scare and solidarity with someone else. Like a friend would make me want to like jump into it more, right? Just so you play RE5 with a, with a buddy that sounds better. There's a reason why a lot of the multiplayer Resident Evils then tend to lean more towards action. And, uh, that direction, because it I believe it's very scary. It's harder to pull off scares with friends because there's, whether you're sat with them or you over voice comms, you're,
00:56:28
Speaker
it I feel it breaks a part of your brain to be like, I'm not by myself. And they may be much better at the game than you. So, you know, they're finding all the things, they're doing the stuff and you're just following or, you know, um I think you can design around that. I think there are some examples. Subnautica co-op mod. Terrifying. I was so scared and it did not matter. i needed show tim Yeah. I don't know if you're afraid of being underwater, but I am. gar last yeah i are on Yeah. I played about a couple hours for a stream, like for horror stream because people were like, Jay should play it because he's got a philosophy. And it hit me up like it to the point where I was like, I was shaking and like, it's very effective. Very good game.
00:57:18
Speaker
i did that's one that I am going to play amnesia. I am going to play it and I'm going to stream it and I need someone here with me. i can do it yeah and that makes for Yeah, it'll be the line it's an glacial pace yeah there Yeah. There's another one. Sun, I was talking about it earlier, Sons of the Forest. Definitely a scary game, ah in my opinion, when you go into the caves, but you can play that with up to eight people. And I still find it scary again, just because of how well they did.
00:57:49
Speaker
Well, it's a lot of different elements, right? It's the darkness. It's the the scarcity, right? It's all these things. Death matters. And I feel like that's kind of like at the core of every horror game, right? Death has to kind of matter. It has to feel like a big setback. ye Yeah. Yeah. How does it matter there in in Sons of the Forest? What kind of... What kind of... What's at stake when you die? It's a little forgiving, I guess, ah but when you're doing the multiplayer, at least, which is only the way I've done it. But if somebody dies, you respawn somewhere else, like in a camp. You keep all of your stuff, but you've lost the resources that you use to like armor, for instance. Armor is very valuable because you have to gather a bunch of little pieces, assemble them, and do a thing. And if you die, well, you've lost all the the pills that you spent to get that health back before you've lost the armor that you spent resources to construct.
00:58:44
Speaker
And now you've suffered the setback. Because in horror games, I think that that that is the key, most difficult thing we we we kind of have to work with every time is how, what do we tie to dying? Because if there is nothing at stake when you die, It's very likely to to draw back on the the horror continuously. And i if I would want to go back to it, it still wakes the deep again. I absolutely love that game, by the way. It's a fantastic setting, everything like that. But here comes like, there is this the thing about this game where you, if you die, you start a few seconds before.
00:59:26
Speaker
that moment when you die and it becomes, uh, when that happens a couple of three or four times and you hear the same voice line. Yeah. yeah Unfortunately it becomes this where. where the horror goes away of it. So for me, the narrative, the setting, everything with that game. So I i highly recommend it. i've i' I've been thinking about it since I played it, but that thinking about those things specifically um is actually something that is very, very difficult in horror. Let me ask you this.
01:00:00
Speaker
right so What do you think, Frederick? Sorry, I was just going to... What are some of your favorite horror games, Frederick? And what are some horror games that you weren't a fan of and you you feel like ah could have been a lot better if they made some changes?
01:00:15
Speaker
I haven't played that many. i'm I'm not a big, I have never been a big consumer of horror games. I've read a lot of horror books, watched ah quite a lot of, not the gory movies and stuff. And then I played a few here and there. I played Resident Evil games. I played, of course, so I can't even remember. Is there anything? I think that the games are very, just very different approach to them.
01:00:48
Speaker
Like if you take, if you, and especially now, I just want to say it still wakes the deep again, that environment, that oil rig that you're on, it's so well designed. It's so interesting as a setting and all of the details and everything.
Narrative Importance in Horror Games
01:01:05
Speaker
So I can understand why why they have to, for example, lead the player using yellow yellow paint that they do. This has been, I don't know if you're aware, but there is a lot of yellow. That's where you need to follow. And and of course, that's also something that I'm quite strongly for for the experience I want to build and play is I want to leave it up more to the player. The bunker is more of a sandbox and you you can do this on your own, but we give you the tools, we give you the notes, we give you everything, but you need to piece it all together.
01:01:39
Speaker
because that brings, in my opinion, you further into the world. But if you have a super detailed oil rig, how do you know where to go? I mean, a bunker is fairly like linear and stuff like that. So it's easy for us compared to what the Chinese room had to do with that oil rig. So I understand why they have to go for those kinds of things. So it's not easy to say, yeah, OK, in that game. So that's why I'm getting there. That game I would have loved to have more of a player ah reward and player affordance and and so the player could actually move around. But I also at the same time absolutely loved the game for the setting and for the ambience and for the whole ah voice acting and all of that.
01:02:20
Speaker
so i By saying so, I would take away almost, it's impossible to know how Oidrigg works for a common person and how you can get around there. so So do you see what I mean? It's like... Yeah, it sounds like you're saying it's just a different approach and to to change something there would fundamentally change the game. It would be different. Yeah. Yeah. So and when people criticize the yellow paint, I kind of feel like take it away and see how far you get. It's impossible. So either you want the oil or you want the whole like that cinematic ah or linear experience or you. So it's just very different games. And I.
01:03:01
Speaker
I don't think there's any games that I could just sit there and say, yeah I would have changed this or that. Or I think the games that would be me telling that they should make a different game than what I want to make. And that just for me is not the way I want to look at things. I want to look at this is the experience they want to make. And then I can say what I want to make and and what I want to play. But yeah. I have a silly question. ah Frederick, when you guys are hiring people Is it a and necessity that the people you hire have an understanding or an appreciation for horror as a genre itself, like whether it's a film or books or games? Or can people that have... Yeah, no, it's ah it's not a recommend. It's a...
01:03:59
Speaker
You guys was in Frederick a bit. Yeah, a bit of a connectioner slightly. I want to know. Oh, I think we're hearing. Oh, I'm back. Oh, I'm back. Oh, are you sure? I'm back. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. My son is playing gorilla tag on in VR and it's probably crashing on the internet. Careful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. go Don't go near him. You might. Yeah.
01:04:34
Speaker
So sorry. Where were we? yeah Oh, I completely forgot the question. i hi Yeah. do you Yeah. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. No, we don't. like especially if you're talking, we do our own tech. We do our own engine at Frictional. It doesn't matter if if the programmer is into horror or anything like that when when we're looking at engine programmers and stuff like that. But I would say that ah for specifically for design or gameplay programming and stuff like that. It's a but a big bonus. If the person kind of likes our games, the first person type of horror, not horror necessarily, but narrative and immersive experiences. Yeah. But apart from that, I mean, anyone else, even artists and stuff like that, I think it's not a requirement in any way.
01:05:26
Speaker
hundred percent think Sorry to bounce back to something you were saying earlier, but with the death in Still Wakes The Deep. This is fascinating to me because as you were saying, I think how you manage death in a horror game is also the most important aspect of the of the game. um There has to be stakes for the death and there have to be reasons to not want to die. And it is really a Goldilocks zone because if you
01:05:57
Speaker
like it still wakes the deep, respawn seconds after you've just died, then the fear of death is completely evaporated and the experience is lessened, but if you are punished too much, so much so you become frustrated and both of these things make you not want to play. They're like, why should I be playing because the horror is dead? And my God, I have to do the next hour of gameplay all over again because I misread and misread something or didn't hide a split second quick enough. So you really have to get it within this goalie lock zone and managing where those, you know, save points and checkpoints are is it's an art and it's extremely difficult.
01:06:39
Speaker
What if are you had to get your dog alive that depended on you to get through like a scary environment? paint day storming horrorgainst you yeah this is so your phnox yeah Not to go too much into the horror game I'm making, but it is very similar to that. um So you have to navigate um ah other creatures through um you know scary environments to save their lives because they're helpless and you help them. um And I can tell you dealing with ah
01:07:16
Speaker
escort missions in horror is a, is a, its own kettle of fish. It's very, it's very difficult about a challenge, dude. Yeah. Oh, and it's underwater. It's an underwater horror game stealth with escort missions. It's like the, I was speaking to a friend of mine. He's he was, he was one of the. He was one of the level designers on the Prince of Persia's and Assassin's Creed. And I told him this challenge, this um how difficult it was to do level design for this. Expecting for him to be like, oh yeah, no, no, I could do that. is you know He's way more experienced than I am. um And he was like, man, that sounds like fucking hell. like That sounds like the first level design job ever. And I was like, yeah, dude.
01:08:01
Speaker
So I got a little bit of satisfaction of him telling me, yeah, it's it is difficult. But having a creature with you does heighten that, Oh, I've got to keep this thing safe. but it's cute and cuddly Yeah. But if you have, yeah you have the permadeath of those creatures. Like we we we were trialing not to go too deep into it. We were trying different things of like thinking about, well, what if the creatures, if they get caught are dead permanently and you have to move on and you have to live with the fact that your actions got that creature killed, but people get extremely frustrated with that. And that's how people start pointing fingers at the game and going, it's the game's fault that that happened. The game shouldn't have done this rather than it being their fault. So.
01:08:50
Speaker
with the games in development. So we're we're toying with with some things. um But yeah, it's... No, that's a really difficult one. Avoiding, like finding the golden zone where it doesn't become too frustrating. and oh And I've been thinking in hindsight with Bunker, this was just like, should have we should have been more worried. about this. But because I'm like we were it's pretty much depends on you can see it. So ah this is me confessing I've been watching way too many Let's Plays of the bunker. It's like one of the things when I'm like, okay, nothing on TV, nothing I want to stream and then I just go on to Twitch and watch Let's Play or something on YouTube. And I enjoy it a lot. But I've seen this kind of thing where people they go out on these
01:09:46
Speaker
missions in the bunker they die and you next time they go they've learned something they know where the important resources where they can do it more efficiently they go like okay i know i know so. I think it if we would have made bigger levels, for example, so yeah so it took you one hour to get to die because it rarely does, to be honest, because it's fairly short distances that you can move in the bunker. But if we had made it too big, then that would have become ah one of the issues um for the death.
01:10:22
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's super interesting. You're saying also, you're talking about an escort mission because have you played rebirth? Uh, it's, it's not an escort mission per se with perma death, but instead we work with the trying to screw with the, the, the, my I played the bunker. I haven't played rebirth. So now what, what do you do in there mechanically? Uh, uh, you're, uh, um, so this is a, a super minor spoiler but I mean we we just chose to not to show it off in in ah PR and stuff like that but you are a pregnant woman ah stranded in the desert so that's your escort mission is of course
01:11:05
Speaker
What we do is we, yeah, the baby. So what we do, and then we wanted to kind of with that game, it's much more focused around the narrative and those kinds of things. And, uh, uh, in, in initial rebirth, uh, but what we wanted to try is to see if we can actually make the player latch on to something that you can't see. So what we do mechanically there, we have this kind of fear system very similar to the. sanity system in the first amnesia, but it's a fear system. So looking at monsters being in the dark and stuff like that increases your fear. You start seeing tentacles on the screen and you can use and actually talk to the baby through the voice acting ah of Tasi, the protagonist, and actually cuddle with the belly a bit and and and get the fear to to ah pull back so that it becomes your unseen invisible companion. That's fucking wild.
01:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's the baby button. It's the baby button. Press B for baby. Yeah. yeah it has to be of course yeah Yeah. And then you have this kind of like this it becomes a very strong emotional connection for those that can go into it. And we kind of see that very clearly that like maybe teenage boys are not that attaching to Tassie, but yeah fathers and mothers can come out of it like shields down their backs because Tassie also had a previous child and things with that. So we tied in with with that kind of second narrative and stuff. But that then we don't work with like a player start feeling like, oh, hang on. night
01:12:39
Speaker
I shouldn't be jumping here then maybe I'm all of a sudden when they realize a half an hour into the game that because they have amnesia they have forgotten that they're pregnant and it's very early in the pregnancy but they become this kind of kind of body horror or physical horror in the sense that can I actually fall over and stuff like that but then trying that into the death scenarios you can't really die but you can you can succumb to your fear and go into a monster rage and stuff. I'm not going to spoil it anymore. But that's the way we took on fighting it. I'm buying both right after this podcast. This is amazing. I never heard of that. I went very much under the radar, I would say, rebirthing. I'm a bit sad about it, but I mean, still people love it. I think some people think it's
01:13:29
Speaker
If you like a talkative protagonist, for example, with a very good voice actor, she's really good. Alex Billton, also in a lot of other games, she's doing an amazing job with playing Tasi. And I think you if you go into it with that approach, it's a narrative, more linear story, some gameplay aspects to it. It's very different from the bunker, but also something that we we want to challenge ourselves and see what we can do with stuff like that Oh my God. That's amazing. Okay. Yeah, I'm in. Holy crap. It's very cool.
Future Projects and Innovation vs. Expectations
01:14:07
Speaker
ah prop Props to you for taking the risks that you did because all the Amnesia games feel, I played all of them, all of them feel and look very different. So for being like a pregnant lady to a soldier in World War I, all of them the same brand and the same vision and the same similar.
01:14:24
Speaker
gameplay appeal It's great that your studio isn't afraid to take risks like that and try that stuff.
01:14:31
Speaker
Yeah. And we were kind of, yeah, I'm so happy to be at friction. Can I just rant about that? But I mean, it's because, yeah I mean, we we may made the Dark Descent. It's it's helped us. it was So we're a ah maybe a bit spoiled in the sense that we don't work under a publisher and stuff like that. We're so funded it thanks to that. And Soma became a big hit as well. So we can take those kind of risks. And it's not that we want to like go for the risks. It's what we want to do. And we are allowed to do it. And it works. I mean, even rebutting. No Yeah, no restrictions. We of course need to pay the bills. But as long as we do that, it's it's ah it's fine. And also to have the freedom to have such an interesting mechanic and have that just be a surprise.
01:15:24
Speaker
That's ballsy. I really respect that to just be like, yeah, we didn't say this on PR. That's something we've been questioning afterwards. Was it the was it the right move? I have no idea. Do you feel like maybe- Yeah, sorry. I really like the moment when when when players actually realize it half an hour in, they realize, oh, I'm a pregnant. and Instead of them going into the game thinking like you will now, okay, how do frictional do pregnancy? I'm going to have a look. And that's that's different expectations. on the on the game, whereas now they come into it. Oh, I'm and I'm a French lady stranded in the Algerian desert. It's going to be horrible horror. And then all of a sudden what I have a baby to take care of. And I think I don't think you play as a pregnant woman in any other video game. Is that bold to say? I think that's right. But surely there's some. Yeah, we have all these people. Please tell us who you put when you play a pregnant person.
01:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so. I can't think of one right now, but I feel like that. That's incredible. Yeah. And I don't think that... I don't want to spoil it since you're saying you're going to go and play these. But there's a couple of scenes that later on in the games that you haven't seen before in games, definitely. Got it. Oh, see, that's not even more reason to play it. We're going to play with pregnant bellies. We're going to stream it. that for yeah All right. so Sign me up. Sign me up. And I'll be watching it with a pregnant. This not good to dwell on these things because like you were saying, you guys have been questioning this, you know, internally, for seeing our response from you explaining that mechanic.
01:17:18
Speaker
Do you feel that if that was mentioned in PR, maybe the game would have had a you know a different reception?
01:17:28
Speaker
no Yeah, that's what i that's what we question. We don't we don't know. yeah even the even the It seems like the reviewers and journalists also kind of had the same understanding just by playing the game that ah it has to come as a surprise. they It came as a surprise to them and it was positive. So probably they realized we don't want to mention it ah in the reviews. So it was also kept a secret by a lot of the, some mentioned it, but quite a few actually kind of mentioned that. So instead they said, yeah, we don't want to spoil too much. And so so they stuck out. and One of the biggest things for the game was actually left out. So I um i don't know if we did the right thing in
01:18:15
Speaker
keeping you to the right thing. Yeah. I think in the long run. Yeah. I think it's such an important thing but for people who do pick it up and play it and discover that stuff. I mean, in a way it kind of sucks that it was, you know, a little bit spoiled for us, but now it's been like, we want to go play it now. Like this it's been a long time since I've heard about a, a inclusion in the game that has made me go. I'm playing that I'm going, I'm i'm going to play that now. So in a way there's pros and cons to both pros and cons to both. I think about it in terms of the art and that special surprise that you gave all those players, you know, ah there's value in that yeah for sure. Is it? that
01:18:56
Speaker
I just keep thinking of crazy questions. Sorry, go ahead, Frederick. I guess what i think i think we spent so much time talking about experiences, like at Frictional, it's an experience. Everything, ever you can break it down to small scenes and experiences. So it becomes, why we did it was probably because we wanted the player to have the kind of, in our opinion, the purest of experiences to actually go into it, not knowing anything about the pregnancy, and then all of a sudden realize it. So instead of. capitalizing on it, I guess, on the PR. But on the other hand, if we could have let more people experience it because we had it in the PR, I don't know. Let's not dwell on it. We always ask ourselves, after we ship, we always ask ourselves, right? Yeah. How big is the team, by the way? Because I remember reading somewhere that you said it took five years to make the last game, and then this one took two.
01:19:58
Speaker
Correct. You are well informed. yeah How big is the team? so Totally. We are like 34 now. and so On that, we work on two projects and one engine. I don't think you can, but is there anything you can tell us about what you're doing now or what the studio is doing now or the next project?
01:20:25
Speaker
Sorry, I'm hearing you poorly there now. No, I'm just kidding. i i get i get it okay Fair enough. that is ah That is a fair answer. no allow yeah yeah yeah we We can't say too much at all. Sorry. Sorry, but you are doing something. Yes, we are working on two projects. So what what I can say is basically some general general stuff. We have been working for quite some time on one big ambitious, more ambitious project in the bunker, for example, for multiple years. um And the that one is in production now. And then we have one in pre-production that is being started like been started now.
01:21:06
Speaker
And what we want to do again, a bit spoiled I guess, we have a small team on pre-production that works on this up until we release the game that is currently in production and we can move the whole team over to the other project. So we don't want two projects going in production at the same time because we believe that's where there's friction in that friction. Yeah. Or kind of drag. Yeah. So, so instead small team preparing everything, which makes a very long pre-production. So I'm the creative lead on this one that we're in free production now. And I like.
01:21:42
Speaker
Ooh, it's quite a lot of pre-production. What am I doing? How many documents can I write? But it's, uh, it's also very nice to be able to really, really sort everything out until the team comes over and stuff like that.
Real-Life Inspirations in Horror Games
01:21:55
Speaker
yeah Does it have a gun with one board in it? a and you reach that and No, no, no. But what we're doing is actually moving away a bit from from horror in that true sense. We've said that before in other places as well, but it's so we want to try it. It's still going to be a comfortable experience. It's still going to be both of the games have their own kind of
01:22:23
Speaker
believe you mastered suspense so I feel like you could take that into any other sort of genre or environment. Yeah, very much suspense. And and ah for me, i'm I'm very intrigued in following like the bunker. ah track and see where we can take that even further and then don't want to speak for for the other projects since that's not the one I'm... But it's it's the one that's closest at hand. and It's also very, like, has its own very strong core, say that. But I can't say much more on that, sorry. Is it um too morbid and too soon to bring up um
01:23:04
Speaker
like I'm a terrible person. You know, the ocean gate experience that happened was at a year or two ago. You know what I'm talking about, right? Well, the people, yeah, from the, from the Titanic. Oh, right. Yeah. We know what you're talking about. Yeah. What about it? Yeah. Now just pulling from like real life experiences for a suspenseful horror style games. Is that terrible? That's pretty terrible of me to say. what To create a game built around being in a submersible and implosion being a looming threat. Is the question Tina about, ah do we pull from real life experiences ah to inspire these kinds of games? Or like, was there an instance of that? Yeah.
01:23:53
Speaker
see it just when When those people died, I just, well I just wanted to make sure I understood the question. That's all. think It seemed like that was what you were getting at. So I yeah i offered that just in case it was like, you know, a billionaire horror game, like what scary shit can they get themselves into? World world war one, right? going to a Horrific setting and i think leverage. I think ah games was mentioned today. Fear One was inspired by the horror of the US military industrial complex. I don't know. There might have been something there. Because that was 2005. And five and that I think that was a part of the discourse. I feel like that was an inspiration for that. That's not about a specific event or incident. But I think that was something they drew inspiration from. I need to share something from the chat. So apparently, there's a game called Iron Lung. I need to look that up.
01:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the one I. Sorry, are you getting me? We're getting you, but you're out of sync. um Oh, yeah. We're out of sync with your video. Yeah, we can hear you.
Ethical Debate on Real-Life Events as Game Inspiration
01:25:03
Speaker
I bet. um
01:25:06
Speaker
and That is. up and Oh, no, you're taking a second. This could be a horror game. out This could be a horror game. The chat says that sales of iron lung went up right after ocean gate, which is like, sorry. sorry I guess that kind of makes sense. I mean, people, they look at why, why are those stories? Why are those real life things fascinating to us or one? They're real. Wait, is Frederick talking? I can't tell. I think he's out of sync. Okay. Potentially.
01:25:43
Speaker
I don't want to talk over. Yeah, this is hard. Yeah. There was a movie that was released around COVID that was kind of like this. It was about, uh, it was like a altered place over zoom calls or something. It was the horror movie. Yeah. Let me look up the name of it. Yeah. I'm wondering. I got into a few horror movies recently and I found it. I'm so, this I'm so, I, are you hearing me at all or? Yeah, we're now now we like her we're on the out of sync when I watch the video. Yeah, you're back, you're back, you're back. Am I back? Oh. Yeah, yeah, you're back. Okay.
01:26:17
Speaker
Too much gorilla tag. the absolutely too much goillata Yeah, I'm going to go ah the gorilla tag and Valorant. I think that's have a strong internet, but, uh, yeah, that when you start beating, I've been following whatever you've been saying, but I also been very disturbed about looking at my own video going like way back in time here. So sorry. Yeah. Please continue. No, it's okay. Okay, there were a few tangents. a Host is the name of the movie I was thinking of. It came out in 2020, a British horror film. What was the other? Oh yeah, Iron Lung. Yeah, I think people just, you know, those stories are scary because they're real and because people are afraid of underwater and we imagine ourselves in those scenarios. So I don't know, it kind of makes sense that somebody would read that in the news and say like, man, you know, that reminds me of that scary thing I was going to try to experience with.
01:27:09
Speaker
It's just something about humans, I suppose. But Iron Long was made, ah was started long before that incident, I think. Yes. yeah Correct. It's that's when out for it happened. yeah yeah Yeah. He wasn't like, Oh, that's so scary. I'm going to make a game about that immediately. No. yeah have and i think that's that's that's something you need to be very very careful with i think oh yeah yeah you can you can probably like draw inspiration from certain like feelings you get when you think about real life things but i mean and and if you go for world war one i guess then it's
01:27:46
Speaker
to that's that's that's enough far away to be say a safe area to at least try and do something. it's It's interesting though, because I feel like war gets its own special path with exploration in video games, because if somebody brought out a AAA video game about the Titanic, I think some people would be in an uproar. They'd be like, why are you trying to gamify this horrible event? I think you might be too old at this point, but I know what you mean. I guess nobody's done it, right? I guess nobody's done it already, so we're kind of okay with it. To bring it further forward, if somebody made a video game directly about 9-11,
01:28:26
Speaker
people yeah not being happy. um But war, regardless of how recent that war was, like the Iraq war is explored in video games and isn't ever called to attention on its, you know, um insensitive
War in Video Games: A Sensitive Exploration
01:28:40
Speaker
nature. I think that's it's interesting how war gets ah its own special category. Yeah, I think it depends. Like you can't anybody who made a game about the Ukraine war right now, that wouldn't fly. yeah yeah So I think it's a combination of timing. You're right. War like has a special or is in a different queue, let's say, ah compared to like a civilian incidents where a lot of people die or if a thing happens. Yeah, I agree. And also, I think war has a special path, maybe because it's
01:29:14
Speaker
I don't know what the word is, but maybe it's because it's a bit anonymous. I mean, like 9-11, so many people were down there. So the buildings fall, had people that actually worked there. But if you go over as a soldier, it's not maybe your own decision, but and But at least it's systemic violence, right? Yeah. and And there's so many people, and it becomes kind of anonymous, what even happened out there. and and um So I guess that's the nature of war. But Ukraine and and and Russia would would feel wrong right now, especially in that, yeah but I think, anywhere, but mostly in the European region. and It's interesting where that lies, that line. It's very nebulous. It's very nebulouss very interesting.
01:30:02
Speaker
Right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to move us to just a few donations that we've got, which is usually just some questions for us because we've got to start wrapping up soon um because there's going to be another stream shortly. We've only got a couple, but don't be afraid to go off on little tangents if you need to. So the group is grim with five Canadian dollars says it did. Lambert, I believe speak in broken dialogue um ever come up as a possible layer for the fear crafting in bunker.
01:30:36
Speaker
I'm sorry, I don't fully understand that. the yeah um I'll try and read it again without me being all like broken languagey. Did having the monster speak in broken dialogue ever come up as a possible layer of fear for the crafting in the
Psychological Elements in Enhancing Horror
01:30:53
Speaker
bunker? Also to have him speak in, yeah ah we you actually have that. I don't know if if the person asking this question knows about it, but but it's very rare. But you can hear it sometimes if you're close to a hole, you can hear the monster saying, brought up my hands, brought up my hands from the hole. You can hear those kinds of lines and also
01:31:19
Speaker
Euler, but if you manage to kill him at the end, he's going to scream on his name and it's very obscure. You can't really hear it, but it's it's in there baked into the the stuff. And that that's intentional on your end to to drive the a different kind of psychological horror. Yes. I think it's also a way to like since the monster, like the connection between the monster and the person was so disconnected otherwise. But also we don't want it to feel on the nose by having him speak all the time. I think it's more interesting to have a monster that is just purely animalistic and unknown for the most of the game. But then if you can actually pick up on a few of those lines, you can start understanding. And once you get a glimpse of him, you can see that this looks like like almost like a soldier uniform on him and stuff like that. so
01:32:13
Speaker
That makes it scarier for me, right? like that's more It's like initially understanding and then that it's like, you think it's this animalistic creature and then hearing spoken language that, you know, kind of makes sense, but also doesn't, it makes you question. And I think that is where horror lies is in asking questions. Is this human? Is it mimicking language or is it actually saying something? Was it human? And then your brain just like runs like, what is this? Yeah, we really want to work with the subconscious stuff. I mean, you as an audio designer, do you do you know about the shepherd's tone we used in the in the bunker, for example? I absolutely love that. I was like pushing for that. So the generator has a very like subtle shepherd's tone. You know this illusion of of a noise actually going up or down, but it doesn't. but it So constantly, when the generator is on, you have a downscaling like this sound. So it's it sounds like it's
01:33:12
Speaker
constantly like the the fuel is running out. and going down yeah Yeah, it's so back in the like very low, working with the players subconscious, but I think it's stressing people out without them knowing about it. And then the second the generator dies, it becomes completely quiet even though. So so that kind of shepherd zone. So I think those kind of things you want to work in the players like almost you don't want to at least our type of horror. We don't want to be in your face. We don't want to be like the gory stuff. They can there can be certain places. There can be jump scares in certain places, but they're very rare. And instead we try and work up. There's nothing that scares the people like just being outside in the dark. It's scary because you make up what the heck is around you or whatever. So let's let's work with that instead. and there'
01:34:00
Speaker
poke some needles into that stuff and give people that, uh, what they need to make up their own ideas. Yeah. My first, my first experience with the shepherd tone, I think it's a shepherd tone. It might just be there mimicking it musically is in Mario 64 with the infinite staircase. Yeah, think it is yeah yeah they're using the shepherd's tone to constantly make you feel like you're ascending and it's infinitely repeating. It's, it's absolutely beautiful. Even Frederick's asleep. which for Perfect. Perfect. Also need the narcoleptic ah every time, every time you hear me at all guys, Jay was talking too much. Every time someone mentioned super Mario, I fall asleep. So.
01:34:50
Speaker
A few more donations come in, so I'm going to make sure we get through these. ah Brick in the head, $10. Thank you so much for me for horror to be effective. I need to be able to fight back. Ambiguity breeds anxiety. If the outcome of being found is certain, then the fear is gone. Let me defend myself. Interesting. Interesting. and Yeah. Kind of speaks to it. I think you were saying earlier, like, uh, it's not scary to just get killed immediately. It needs to be a chance to survive. So yeah. And the loss to, to be important as well. Find that Goldilocks. zone I think the main thing that you maybe do, do you talk about combat in games a lot?
01:35:34
Speaker
but the main thing for me is like combat can even you you said defend yourself that for me is one thing defend yourself is always good in a horror thing in a horror setting but attacking something makes it a different experience and that's what kind of Resident Evil or ah fear or or these kind of games that are more action they are attacking you are the power fantasy in this game and you need you get bigger guns as you progress and all of that but yeah <unk> The key is defending, I guess, in our type of horror when you want to work with that. Let's be real. and In Dead Space, Isaac Clarke is the monster. He is the monster that is obliterating the Necromorphs and slicing off their limbs. yeah that's the Those are the ones we should feel sorry for.
01:36:23
Speaker
There's a game that does this beautifully and then slowly descends to not doing it very well, which is a game called Scorn. I don't know if any of you have played Scorn. Yeah, yeah, Scorn. I didn't play it, but I know, I know that, yeah. It's on my list, actually. It might be a good one to stream. I'd really like to, if you do, let me know on Twitter because I'd love to hear your opinions on it. it The problem is, is that I think it's first third is really strong. The ambiguity of the world, the questions, it's all really well done. um A lot of people say that that game is a puzzle game. um I disagree entirely because you get more weapons than you do. There are puzzles in the game, like.
01:37:01
Speaker
the amount of guns you get is higher than the amount of puzzles in the game. And for me, it's like the game devolves into becoming about combat and defending yourself or attacking and getting things away from you. And then it just completely evaporates for me. I prefer it has to just be like puzzle driven horror. Yeah, I've heard that about it as well. Yeah. Interesting. All right. All the games with $4.99. Thank you so much. Thinking about an earlier comment, what would a hypothetical horror game that is too scary even look like?
Personalized Horror Experiences with Technology
01:37:34
Speaker
It is scary. for
01:37:38
Speaker
it All horror games are too scary. Tina doesn't want to... oh he sorry saying yeah ah What makes them too scary? ah What would make a too scary game? You know what? If you could use new tech to make it more personalized, I think that could be really scary. Like if you were, um, like, uh, looking into, uh, I don't know, somehow reading what someone's gamer tag is and then seeing that their real name is. John. And then using that name. And then like, yeah, have the VOC their name, you know, the monster sister name.
01:38:19
Speaker
You could read their phobias and stuff like that. Is that what you mean? Oh, shit. Wait, is this kind of half your... Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, no, go ahead. It kind of happened. I know if you're a solid one, remember how Psycho Mantis could read your save file and say things like, you like Castlevania, don't you? Can you imagine being a kid in the nineties and hearing that? That would have been too scary. Yeah, doing stuff like that could be like... gary er right just sort of utilizing anything at your disposal to try to make the player feel like you're actually the monster is going to attack them personally.
01:38:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty scary. Yeah. When in Forza Horizon 5, when the NPCs started going into horror game, I shit myself. no horror game But yeah, there's like, yeah I mean, I don't want to go into the AI conversation with video games, but yeah, like if you could say their names or ah I think just small details like that could be very terrifying on their own. five Yeah. Tech's got a while to go before I think we get to the point where we can like imagine a game like just speaking to you on the psycho Mantis level of being like, it knows where you've been because of your GPS yeah locations. And it can call it out and be like, your i p I know where you live. Like, and it calls out your address.
01:39:46
Speaker
but your general address right like house california i like ah it's just You just have it like use all of the data that Syria and Google are. are they know i know what your They know what you're afraid of. like my My wife asks me to kill the spiders at home. So if she plays a game, you use that data, then they put spiders in her game. And my son maybe is afraid of some other flies flying out here. So we could just use those phobias. And yes, that's where it's going to end up. There you go. First one is phobia. There's going to be some great horror games in the future. It's going to be invasive. But it's obvious it's way way after we've gone from this earth. So we're safe.
01:40:33
Speaker
Humaine Shield, 4.99. Humaine Shield gives 4.99, says horror games and films border the line of being either boring or funny. What challenges do you face to maintain tension and anxiety?
Maintaining Tension in Long Horror Games
01:40:53
Speaker
That's a very broad question. ahead go frederick yeah i think what I think you need... ah So bunker is a short game. it's a we we We mentioned a lot of people, ah including me, I didn't even finish it. Alien isolation was too long. I mean, and that that's what a lot of people say at least. So I mean, the length is important. And if you're doing a longer one, I think personally you need to switch it up. You need to start ah it need to have a good escalation, realize where to go with it. um
01:41:31
Speaker
keep anxiety. That's super difficult. I don't think you should be paying. You shouldn't even be recommending players to play a 20 hour horror game in one sitting or a two sitting for diversity, right? like yeah You have to have the player as soon as they've learned what they can do mechanically fully and what the enemy can do, you've lost all tension because there are no no longer any questions. So you need to introduce new mechanics or you know, completely flip how the monster works based on some narrative, you know, interaction to reinvigorate that, you know, new questions. and stuff that
01:42:10
Speaker
I think it's also a question of balance. Two two of the games I worked with, ah Under Hell, Half-Life 2 Mod, back on my modding days, and more recently, SCP-5K. they um there's a lot of there's There's funny elements to those games, and there's a lot of action to those games. I think it comes down to the balance. And those games did a good job of not trying to be funny all the time, not trying to just have action, you know have some scary parts. it's If you are going to have a long game, Under Hell is very long. SCP-5K is still in development. and But, uh, I think it's helped by having the pacing and, you know, uh, mechanical diversity. I think you just said, so those help with that too. Yeah, a hundred percent. All right. We've got a couple more to go through. I'm just being mindful of time because, uh, we've got another stream starting in 15 minutes. So, uh, sovereign, playing horror games.
01:43:01
Speaker
hi i i know yeah we need not that i' um like dream that i'm hanging on here um see i wish you got to do that that one i yeah you're not goingnna like yeah and elder jack And Marty playing Elden ring DLC. So viewers, if you, if you want to hang around for that, please hang around, but we're going to go for a couple more donations from sovereign five euros. Do you think spec ops, the line counts as a war horror game often heard that debated? I don't think so. I remember that game. I played that game. I feel like that is, uh, it's a subversive narrative game, ah a third person action narrative game, uh, with a subversive story. I don't know if I would call it war horror. Yeah. For, for context, for the viewers who don't know spec ops, the line is the game that quite famously has a a midpoint twist where you're committing genocide.
01:43:58
Speaker
unknowingly, right not exactly for for what I remember. And I played it years ago. Uh, you talk about the white phosphorus scene. Yeah. You like destroy a village, right? No, you you kill trying to remember and someone in the chat can correct me. That's a terrible weapon to use. you You're trying to take out somebody. It's not like you're trying to commit genocide. and There's some sort of fog of war or you this the people you play as are furious and they just want to kill everybody because they think they're threats and then they turn out to not be threats. And the game ah the game ah makes you feel guilty over that. So it's not like a genocide game. ah i wouldn't discover Yeah, for sure. It's an unknown genocide sequence. i wouldn't happen But it's that moment where you can actually fire in the sky to get people to go away, or am I misunderstanding? Oh, no, I think that's that's different. that' um yeah This is when we actually like attack people with it. But anyway, in my opinion, I wouldn't call it war horror, even though it makes war feel like horror. Horrible. And horrible, yes. Yeah. We got three minutes, Jay.
01:45:06
Speaker
Oh, Doc Jackal, $5. Thank you so much. No insightful questions today, but would you guys consider Fallout games horror? Thank you for the great conversations. I want to know what's lame. I never wanted to leave the bunkers. you know What did you say? You played. I never wanted to like in Fallout 4. I didn't want to leave the bunker. I was like, why am I leaving? I don't want to go. You played Fallout and you didn't go outside. I didn't want to. You don't want to. Okay. You don't want to. I was like, come on bro. I just started. It was a horror game for you. Yeah. Like I'm good. I want to be introverted. Stay inside. Yeah. I wouldn't count them as horror games. No, me neither.
01:45:47
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Cause I know we're on a, we're on a tight time schedule here and we could keep talking. What we'll make sure we'll do is we'll set up this stream so we can all play a rebirth and um we can get our pregnant bellies going. You know, that'll be a front stream. We'll see if we can get all all right together for that. Yeah. Yeah. Or I'll just get pregnant. You know, we'll see what happens. But
01:46:14
Speaker
Can I say thank you so much, Frederick, for joining us. This has been super insightful and super interesting. Thank you guys for having me. It's been absolutely delightful Friday entertainment. Yeah, you got a new fan. So I appreciate you explaining everything to us. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm happy to meet you guys. So, so happy. Yeah. Hell yeah, dude. We'll do more stuff in the future. And to all the viewers, thank you so much for joining us live. Um, these will all, this podcast will be uploaded on all of the wonderful podcast places, you know, Apple, Apple podcasts and Spotify and all that jazz. But thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you in the next one. Bye guys. Bye.