Instantly captivating and perpetually playful, this whimsical romp across a world of paper lanterns is utterly enchanting.
The Night Train to Lantern City. Just saying these words out loud immediately conjures an image of a place with warm, hushed lighting spooling out of glazed windows, with billows of steam and smoke misting over the landscape. It’s certainly an evocative kind of opening, but 30 Birds goes one better, placing its detective heroine Zig on a train careering through space on tracks made of clouds, heading toward a city made of actual paper lanterns. It’s a dreamy and impossible kind of architecture, its inhabitants shifting up and down each lantern’s colourful panels and wrapping their 2D bodies around the edges of a very real, 3D space, with doorways transporting them to other miniature lamp spaces hanging around its periphery. The locals themselves are a little impossible, too, as you’ll clock sentient aubergines and disco-loving djinn glyphs, and, of course, a heck of a lot of birds as you saunter through the city’s various districts.
Persian mythology sits at the heart of 30 Birds, and the reason Zig’s been called here in the first place is to witness the awakening of Simurgh, an enormous phoenix-like creature whose god-like status in both real-world legend and in the game forms the backbone of this fantastical tale. Here, Simurgh is the creator of Lantern City, and has been asleep for the past fifty years, dreaming of what to do next with her magical creation. But when the awakening ceremony goes awry and Simurgh gets captured by a mysterious being known only as ‘The Scientist’, Zig sets off on a quest to free her by bringing together the titular avian individuals who can help save her (as Simurgh itself can also be translated as ‘thirty birds’).
But 30 Birds isn’t just some linear A to B hero’s quest adventure. After that initial inciting event sees Zig paired with her first feathered collaborator – a sassy hoopoe called Hoop – you’re more or less free to wander the city however you wish, peeling back its layers and generally noodling through at your own pace. Locals will occasionally give you clues and hints about where you can find certain birds, but after that you’ll need to follow your nose and sense of curiosity – which isn’t exactly hard when Lantern City is so immediately enticing to look at.
The Central lantern is a hive of activity, with people spilling out of shops and baths onto the streets, while the Park feels wild, untamed and teeming with life, a complete contrast from the towering buildings of the College district, but even these warren-like avenues hold some surprising secrets inside them. Then there’s the Grand Bazaar, which is a throng of competing speech bubbles as everyone goes about their business. They all have such distinct characters and a strong sense of place, and they’re wonderful spaces to poke around in.
The transition between different sides of each lantern panel is always a delight. A beautiful blend of 2D and 3D visuals. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Arte France
That said, navigation can feel a little stodgy at times, as remembering which landmarks live on which panels (and how to get back to them) could be smoother if the map in Zig’s phone wasn’t quite so abstract. Each panel is surprisingly spacious, always stretching up and down further than you’re expecting, which can make it hard to get a grasp on where you are at times. A simple zoom out feature could have done wonders to help orient you within these dense and vivid spaces, but you’ll have to make do with just being thorough and meticulous in your exploration. Still, when feathers, paintings and other collectibles gleaming in seemingly locked off windows and obstructed doorways are always drawing your eye toward some hidden nook and cranny, tempting you back behind its layered, picture book diorama, a little bit of backtracking rarely feels like much of a chore.
Interior spaces transport Zig to another smaller lantern on the district’s periphery. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Arte France
Befriending its 30 birds is also a delight. All of them are surprisingly funny and well-written, for starters – shout out to cult leader Gurubird and the Frasier-esque radio host Lovebird in particular here – and seeking them out forms the main thrust of the game’s story. Some can be spotted in plain sight across each city district, while others require more thorough investigation and some very light puzzling before they’ll reveal themselves. Finding one is often its own reward, as many will instantly give you their contact details as soon as you’ve had a chat with them.
The best ones, though, are the birds that have a little minigame mixed in – though even calling them minigames doesn’t quite do them justice. These aren’t minigames that you can fail, or are forced to try again if you don’t get them right. They’re more like daft, miniature episodes of pure playfulness – whether that’s navigating a Rubix Cube-like prison, diving inside a crocodile’s mouth to find a matchbox inside a vase inside a briefcase inside its stomach, inflicting terrible tattoos on unsuspecting underground market customers, or giving romance advice to Lovebird’s radio listeners.
Each bird you meet is an utter delight. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Arte France
If anything, failure and simply having a go is often encouraged in 30 Birds, and nowhere is this more evident than in its tactile musical puzzles. These are all about twiddling dials, sliding buttons and tuning all manner of doodads to get a particular sound or match shapes to create certain patterns, but there’s nothing pressuring you to hurry things along. Instead, you can just luxuriate in the act of play, which permeates 30 Birds from top to bottom.
Indeed, it’s the kind of adventure that you wish could last forever, or at least a little longer than its tight five or so hour run-time allows for. There’s just enough here to give it a sense of life beyond what you’re able to see and explore as part of the main story, such as distant special lanterns that can only be travelled to via magic carpet, living constellations that impart stories when their fallen stars are returned to them, and an entire Snap-like card game played in its cafes and coffee houses where picture tiles are smashed violently together for gleeful victories. But even if 30 Birds feels like a dream you’ve woken up from earlier than you’d like, what a thing to say you’ve experienced all the same. It’s a game I’ll be thinking about for many months to come, and I only hope we get to see more stops along the Night Train to Lantern City in the future.
A copy of 30 Birds was provided for review by publisher Arte France.
We’ve got a double-whammy for you today: a Black Friday discount for yearly Eurogamer subscriptions and a game giveaway for yearly subscribers. And the game is a good one: Citizen Sleeper.
Applying the Black Friday 20 percent-off discount is simple. Click through to our “Support Us” section and then click to subscribe for a yearly membership. Then, on the payment screen, click to add a promotional code and enter EGBF24. The price should drop from £30/€30/$30 to £24/€24/$24. That works out at £2/€2/$2 a month, in case you’re wondering; a regular monthly subscription costs £3/€3/$3. This discount code will expire on Tuesday, 3rd December, at midnight UTC.
The benefit of being a yearly subscriber – in addition to the standard membership benefits of ad-free viewing and exclusive articles and content – means access to game key giveaways, and we’ve got a brand new one for the occasion. We’ve got 100 keys for Citizen Sleeper, split across PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, to give away. These are redeemable in Europe only. (Citizen Sleeper is on GamePass on PC and Xbox if you want to play it there.)
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To claim a key, go to the “My account” section of the website (top-right on desktop, three-lined menu on mobile) and find the Codes tab there. Then, scroll down and find the Citizen Sleeper giveaway and select the version of the game you want. You’ll probably also see codes for other games there – feel free to claim them.
Citizen Sleeper, if you don’t know, is the warm-hearted sci-fi story of a remote-controlled body (a Sleeper) finding their place and way on a somewhat lawless and forgotten space station known as The Eye. It’s a game about friendships and self-discovery, and the mystery of what lies within – both inside you and on the space station itself, right down in its wiry veins and programming bones. It’s gentle and relaxing, thoughtful and deep. Chris Tapsell Recommended Citizen Sleeper in his review (before we changed to a star-rating system).
Excitingly, we’re also on the cusp of a sequel. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is due early 2025 and, based on a recent demo, seems to be in fabulous shape. There have been significant changes – improvements – to how the game works. The heart and warmth is all still there but there’s now a more palpable sense of tension and jeopardy to go with it, which makes it more exciting. The RPG systems are more nuanced and developed; there’s just more to chew on in every regard. I can’t wait.
If you have any problems redeeming any of the above, please mention it in the comments below, or email me on [email protected]. Finally, thank you to everyone who has supported us this far – it means a lot.
Why is it that in a role-playing game where the stakes are usually ‘the end of the world’, the end of the world always has to wait for us to finish our sprawling to-do list first? There’s no way you’ve never encountered this. I came across it most recently in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which, after a thrilling end to Act One, effectively turned to me, the player, and said, hey why don’t you focus on some companion quests now instead, eh? The world was still ending, the danger hadn’t diminished or passed in any way, it’s just the game needed a pace change and for me to see some of the other cool stuff in it.
Egregious though it was, The Veilguard is far from the only BioWare game to have done it – I think, throwing my mind back across a dozen of them, they probably all have. The Reapers are going to destroy the galaxy! But don’t worry you’ve got time to go scan some planets if you want, first. BioWare games are far from the only RPGs to have done it either. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you have a tadpole in your eye for crying out loud, one that you know will turn you into a mind flayer probably pretty soon, and yet still you have time for, well, anything you want to do. In The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, you’re racing to find your daughter-of-sorts Ciri who’s being chased by a menace of legend, yet you’ve got plenty of time to become the bareknuckle boxing champion of the continent, or Gwent champion, if you so wish. This approach is so common in RPGs it’s like dwarves with Scottish accents; a better question to ask would be whether there’s an RPG that doesn’t do it – one that hurries you up instead?
I’m thinking. It’s tricky.
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Pentiment? It doesn’t quite fit the RPG template but it’s one of the only games I can think of that has a sense of passing time, and of either-or choices associated with it – you won’t be able to do everything so you will have to choose. It’s a game in which time feels like time – time that’s as inexorable and immovable as we know it be. Couldn’t a system like that work in a more fully fledged RPG?
I wonder whether anyone else is bothered by it, or whether we’ve become so accustomed to it now we just don’t see it. Perhaps it’s even become part of what we know and expect an RPG to be. What is a role-playing game after all – how do we qualify a game as one? Do we think of them as games we play roles in, to use the purest meaning, or do we think of them in terms of mechanical trappings like side quests and character progression? For me, it’s the latter, slightly ashamed as I am to admit it. But can you imagine an RPG without side quests – would it even be an RPG? It’s a label that’s come to mean certain things, and one of them, for better or worse, is being able to take our time and have the ‘end of world’ wait for us. Some games are reluctant to release us from their grips at all – just think of all the ways live service RPGs make continual demands on our time and attention.
I think you can trace all of this back to Dungeons & Dragons, like so much in RPGs, because it is, after all, the original one. That’s a game that very much revolves around the players – that presents them with a world and tries to guide them around it, but famously usually ends up with players going wildly off course and dungeon masters trying to keep up with them. Are our video game RPGs a legacy of this behaviour – pandering to players?
Is there another way? When, I wonder, was the last time someone sat down and questioned the trappings of an RPG and thought about mixing them up? What if we weren’t given an inexhaustible amount of time to see all areas of a game so we had to more mindfully plot our course through it – wouldn’t that make for more interesting subsequent playthroughs? Wouldn’t hurrying players – because of an impending ‘end of world’ event – help us better understand the urgency of it? Why is it we’ve settled for things the way they are?
Maybe this is their ultimate evolution – that’s a possibility, as bedgrudging as I am to entertain it. After all, one of the allures of RPGs is their being places we can escape to and submerge ourselves in, soak ourselves in, like warm baths, in an effort to forget our worries elsewhere. Adding a new tension to that mix might spoil it. Similarly, I know there’s an allure in wanting to scour a world and do everything in it, and knowing you will be able to – I can’t imagine starting a game knowing I couldn’t. It would feel very weird, but then, maybe that’s because no one’s tried.
What if? That’s all I’m asking. What if we haven’t completely nailed it? Just because we’ve done things this way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s the only way forward. There might be a game being made out there that’s about to come crashing down from proverbial outer space to rewrite the rules and show us that time and urgency can be just as compelling as an endless to-do list. Maybe it already exists and I just don’t know it yet (answers on a postcard in the comments if you do!). But I do know I’m ready for change. I want my time in games to matter again.
Imagine you’re standing in a hallway in a game – what does the scene need in order to make it scary? Should we turn the lights off? Should we have a door where you can’t see what’s behind it, but you can hear something behind it? Should there be a threat somewhere, lurking nearby? Is music important? And at what point is it okay to spring a noisy surprise on the player? In other words, what are the rules of fear?
I’ve been thinking about how games scare people ever since lo-fi horror game Faith: The Unholy Trilogy scared me a few years ago, which isn’t a remarkable feat because I’m a scaredy cat. But what surprised me about Faith was how it achieved that feeling, and how little it achieved it with. Here was more or less an 8-bit game, with tiny wriggling sprites and a handful of colours, and it evoked in me the same kind of fear other blockbuster games sometimes struggle to. How was it doing it?
It mystified me enough that I asked Little Nightmares creator Tarsier about fear shortly afterwards, but though the conversation was good, a broader explanation still eluded me. Scaring people remained a magic I couldn’t quite understand, which is when, coincidentally, an answer of sorts came to me.
Magic: just as I’d once asked bright minds from games what magic meant to them, so I would ask scary-game makers how they scared people. Is there a science to it, a formula for fear, and does it change according to the game you’re making? What is the anatomy of a scare?
I sent my ravens out and here are the answers that came cawing back.
Silent Hill creator and Slitterhead director Keiichirō Toyama
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Silent Hill is one of the founding series of survival horror, so there are few people who have done more for it, arguably, than Toyama. He also directed the Siren series of horror games, before co-founding studio Bokeh, which recently released Slitterhead.
“In short, I would call it the ‘stimulation of imagination’,” Toyama tells me. “The psychological appeal of horror, I believe, lies in a fundamental desire to collectively identify and overcome threats that surprise and challenge life (and species). Therefore, once something is understood, it may still be a threat, but it no longer evokes fear (as with plagues, for instance).
“Utilising this psychology, I think the key to horror as a creative genre lies in controlling the sense of understanding that is within reach but not quite graspable. A recent work that embodies this mechanism exceptionally well, though not a horror title per se, is Subnautica. It does this very effectively.”
Faith: The Unholy Trilogy creator Mason Smith, AKA Airdorf
Don’t worry, the whole Faith trilogy is now on Switch, so you can play it to help you get to sleep.Watch on YouTube
Faith is the horror game that prompted this article and lives rent-free in my head, disturbingly. It’s a horror styled like an old Apple 2 game, and though the first Faith game was released in 2017, a third game and trilogy bundle was released in autumn 2022, when I came across it.
“Our reaction to horror is very subjective,” says Smith, “but there are some universal fears I think all humans possess: fear of the unknown, fear of darkness, things like that.
“For me, it’s important to lay down an effective atmosphere, so for games this means creating a setting where the geometry, textures, lighting, soundscape, etc. are ripe for putting the player in the ‘mood’. Once you prime the player psychologically, there are all sorts of fun strategies you as the designer can employ.
“My favourite is something I borrowed from the designers of Dead Space (2008): prime the player to be scared by one specific thing, for example a monster that you see from far away or on a security monitor or on a child’s drawing. The fun part is keeping them in a sense of dread – they know the monster is coming but they don’t know when or where or how. It can be a matter of seconds, minutes or hours before it happens. Tease little visual or audio cues – little bits of environmental storytelling – along the way. The scare – the payoff – can come suddenly in the form of a jump-scare if you want. The problem with a lot of jump-scares is they come without context, but using this method the player is already familiar with the scary thing, so when the scare finally pays off they can go ‘okay, that’s fair’.”
Still Wakes the Deep creative director John McCormack
“With Still Wakes the Deep, our intention was to ground the player in realism, comfort and mundanity, then slowly remove the safety nets to expose natural human phobias which would create a general atmosphere where scares would be effective. We give the player safety in numbers through their crewmates, the comfort of the routine of working life and the relative protection of this impossible steel structure against the elements, after which we carefully planned out a cadence of removing those basic protections.
“We take away the crew to give monophobia, then switch off the lights to give us nyctophobia, we force them into unnatural spaces to create claustrophobia as well as vertigo, we compromise the structure of the rig to produce thalassophobia and, of course, we bring aboard a nefarious entity to ramp up the fear of the unknown and death.
“Even with all of these triggers in place, it would only work if the player felt viscerally connected to the main character, to feel everything he feels, to know his past and present and determine his future. Dan Pinchbeck, the lead creative director and writer of the game, provided a fully realised protagonist who reacts authentically to the dangers he is forced to face, and the right mix of script, sound and voice acting was essential in making the player feel everything we wanted them to feel. And because we made the whole experience from this particular character’s perspective, this naturally took away the comfort of knowledge and placed the character in situations where he isn’t sure what to do, what this thing is and if there’s even a chance he’ll make it out alive. All combined, we hoped to create a grounding in character, location and phobias where even the sound of a tin of spam hitting the floor would cause the player to flinch.”
There are people who cite two-person indie horror Madison as one of the scariest games in recent years. It tells the story of a teenage boy with a camera whose pictures connect this world and that of the dead. Say cheese!
“There are many kinds of horror, different ways to create it, and various ways that impact the audience,” director Alexi Di Stefano says. “People with thalassophobia can’t handle games that plunge them into the ocean, just as people with a fear of heights might avoid climbing in VR! For me, something that left a deep mark at a young age was a game called Clock Tower: The Struggle Within. That game introduced me to something new, or at least new to me back then, and it made me feel something I never thought I could experience: fear within my own home.
“The game takes place in an ordinary house (at least in the first chapter) where terrifying events unfold. For example, you might come across a corpse floating in a bathroom tub, or an arm on a tray in the dining room. To nine or 10-year-old Alexis, that experience translated into a terror that lingered every time I walked down the hallways of my own home at night – or entered the bathroom and saw the shower curtain closed! It was terrifying but incredible; it was the push I needed to follow this path which ultimately led me to dedicate myself to horror.
“Homes are supposed to be our sacred places, our refuge, and that game showed me the opposite. Unlike most games of that era, which took place in hard-to-access locations like schools at night or hospitals, Clock Tower: The Struggle Within brought horror into an ordinary, everyday space.
“For me, the perfect scare starts with anticipation”
“When I work on the scripts for my games today, I’m very mindful of how to introduce the specific type of horror I want to convey. It’s not just about jump scares, it’s about crafting an atmosphere that unsettles players even when nothing obvious is happening, or, even more powerful, when players turn their consoles off but still can’t hake the feeling.
“For me, the perfect scare starts with anticipation, followed by tension – so much tension it feels like it will never end. It’s a raw and almost painful kind of tension that frightens more than the scare itself. This buildup is what really gets under players’ skin, making the experience stay with them long after they stop playing.
“I don’t follow a strict formula but I’m aware of a detail that, to me, is far from minor: what isn’t seen is often scarier than what’s placed directly in front of the player. The build-up is key; it’s about keeping players in a constant state of anxiety. In Madison, I play with lighting, pacing and interactivity within the environment to keep them guessing. They know something is coming but not when or how. By crafting a relationship between the player and the environment, every shadow or subtle movement can feel like a potential threat, creating fear through what’s suggested rather than what’s shown.
“A major moment I consider is when the player starts feeling fear, and it’s rarely when they expect it. In my games, I like to create scares that linger in the player’s mind, the kind that make them hesitate before turning a corner or opening a door. To me, the scare isn’t just in the immediate shock, but in the lasting anxiety it leaves behind.
“I’m fully aware that what terrifies one person may not affect another in the same way, but regardless of these differences, we always pour a lot of love and passion into what we create, knowing that people will experience it in diverse ways. If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that our bodies – physically and mentally – will unmistakably let us know the exact moment fear begins to take hold and when we start to surrender to it. That’s the magic of horror: it’s personal, visceral, and impossible to ignore.”
“One thing we observed early on while playtesting Dredge,” Thorne says, “was the power of ‘tell, don’t show’. Even in our early prototype, having characters warn players to return before dark or hint at horrors in the fog had players imagining all sorts of things that could happen to them if they were caught out on the water still when night fell.
“You can’t string players along forever and do need to deliver on the promise of terrifying encounters or you’ll lose their trust, but in Dredge the player’s own mind can be just as suspect as some of our characters.”
Dead by Daylight senior creative director Dave Richard
I don’t think team video were very good at Dead by Daylight. Don’t tell them I said that!Watch on YouTube
“Fear is at the basis of what we do, of what Dead by Daylight is and how it came to be,” says Richard. “There are two main facets to fear: being scared and scaring people, and those are the two tenets of Dead by Daylight, which makes it unique in the horror video game universe. In DBD you can feel both helpless and extremely powerful, and both emotions are strong and make for an intense, thrill-seeking playing experience. There are innumerable types of horror – slow burn, psychological, slasher… – and Dead by Daylight delves into all of them.
“For each new chapter we release, we start with a theme,” Richard goes on, “either of horror or a type of experience we want players to feel. From there we elaborate on our vision. The whole DBD team is really passionate and everyone comes up with ideas and concepts throughout the development. Each discipline adds to the horror experience, from the visuals who inspire the audio, to the audio who inspires the VFX. Everything is connected.
“The way we know that we have accomplished our goal starts internally when we run playtests and we hear, or see, our colleagues jump or grunt in disgust – we know we’ve hit our target then. Ultimately fear can be entertaining, and that’s what we want our players to experience.
“There is no secret formula to Dead by Daylight’s success,” Richard adds. “I believe we have been very lucky to create something in which players can act out the fantasy of being the villain in a horror movie or can experience the thrill of being chased, or can just spectate on this very good raw show of humanity and emotions. Our goal is always to surprise, and I think we’ve accomplished that. Fear is the gateway to so many emotions, and we want our players to feel them all.”
“For Signalis, we focused on horror stemming from oppressive systems, both in gameplay and narrative, rather than direct scares, so the ‘anatomy of a scare’ extended for us into all aspects of the game, including the gameplay systems (restrictive inventory, dwindling resources), world-building and narrative (overbearing bureaucracy, cosmic horror).”
Bloober Team director/designer Wojciech Piejko
Piejko is currently co-director of Bloober’s new game Cronos: New Dawn.Watch on YouTube
“Our goal at Bloober Team is to create horror experiences that linger in the minds of our players even after they have put down their controllers,” Piejko says. “To achieve this, we need to get into their minds because the scariest things don’t happen on the screen, they are happening in players’ heads. In horror, less is more. The less you know, the less you see and the scarier it becomes. Think of the first Alien movie: it’s good because you can’t see exactly what the Alien looks like so your brain starts to work. The oldest fear in the book starts to haunt you – the fear of the unknown. In my opinion, the key is not to provide too much information to the player and slowly build up the atmosphere, delving into the story while never revealing everything. There are things that should never be explained; isn’t it more interesting and even strangely romantic?
“As the horror creator, you also need to know how to control the tension, and of course, it all depends on the game you are making. Can the player fight the monsters? If so, you need to understand that when combat starts, the player feels relief – the player no longer thinks about what is lurking in the shadows and the survival instinct takes over. The key to success in this case is to create a great atmosphere and build-up before combat encounters begin, or even trick the player into thinking that they will be attacked and then not do it.
“Example scenario: Imagine you are playing a survival-horror game and looking for a key. You enter a new area and hear the rhythmic sound of something hitting the wall. Finally, you see a monster banging its head against the wall. It doesn’t see you; you have already fought this type of monster, and it’s strong and challenging so you sneak behind its back. You search the rooms and find the key, so now it’s time to pass the monster again. On your way back, you hear the banging again but this time, it suddenly stops. You check the corridor and the monster is gone. Where is it – will it jump out at you from another room? This is where the real fear starts.
“Many horror games strongly rely on jump scares, which are often perceived as the cheapest way to scare the audience. However, if done right and not too often, they can serve as a good way to bridge scenes and relieve tension, giving you an opportunity to build it up again. While making The Medium, a game with no combat, we included one big jump scare just to inform players that this type of thing may happen again, so they will be afraid for the rest of the game. To pull off a good jump scare, you need to grab the player’s attention on something else and then suddenly attack. It’s like a magic trick that can be described in three steps:
The Pledge – The magician shows you a card and hides it in the deck.
The Turn – The magician lets you check the deck, but you can’t find the card there.
The Prestige – The magician pulls the card out of your pocket.
“Now let’s translate this to the jumpscare:
The Pledge – You hear scratching coming from behind the door.
The Turn – Despite the tension, you enter the room to find out it’s only a rat.
The Prestige – You turn around to see the monster standing behind you.
“Sometimes, you can use only two steps; the most important thing is to focus the audience on something and then attack when they don’t expect it. Find something that the player does constantly and feels safe about, then use it against them. One of my favourite moments in making Observer was a bug that scared me to death. I was testing one of the levels and when I turned around, I saw the Janitor, who shouldn’t be there – I almost jumped out of my chair. That was a bug that spawned the Janitor in the wrong position, but it was so effective that we used this scenario in a different part of the game.
“PS: Don’t forget about the music or the absence of it – ambience and sound effects are some of the most important ingredients for evoking fear. PPS: Remember that less is more? It also also applies to graphics: darkness is your friend. Add some grain and the shadows will start to move – or did something move in the shadows? I could talk for hours but I need to go back to work on Cronos; I hope it will scare the shit out of you after its release!”
What surprises me about these answers is that I didn’t expect there to be such a close relationship between magic and fear. I’ve set out on two separate occasions to find answers to two seemingly separate topics, but discovered they are, at their foundation, perhaps fundamentally the same. They both revolve around the unknown. Magic is the term we tend to give something we don’t quite know how to explain, when we’re reaching for something our lack of understanding doesn’t let us find. That gap is important; it’s the allure. We hunger to know what’s going on so we’re no longer adrift or unmoored, our mind grasping for any explanation it can hold onto. The door in our imagination opens up and a tornado swirls through, full of anything and everything, fact and fiction, exciting ideas and frightening ones. It’s uncomfortable; we need to know.
It’s this desire Silent Hill’s Keiichirō Toyama references trying to prolong when he talks about “controlling the sense of understanding”. What he’s saying, I think, is that the player should never know, not entirely – the doorway to their imagination should always be open. Bloober’s Wojciech Piejko shares a similar viewpoint, saying, “the less you know, the less you see and the scarier it becomes”, and Madison’s Alexis Di Stefano agrees: “What isn’t seen is often scarier than what’s placed directly in front of the player,” they say. It’s scary because of your imagination: that’s the element that stays with you long after you close the game. Nadia Thorne and the Dredge team realised a similar thing: that it was more effective to hint at horrors than explicitly display them. And while Dead by Daylight seems to take a more direct approach, is it not the unknown behaviour of the player taking on the role of the killer that keeps it feeling so eternally fresh? We don’t know what they’re going to do, we don’t know where they’re going to be, and that unsettles us. It’s as Faith’s Mason Smith says: “There are some universal fears I think all humans possess,” and fear of the unknown is one of them.
After all, what better thing to help scare you than your very own mind?
