Tag: hauntology
Wyrd News
Hunter’s Moon turns English witch-hunting into systemic folk horror
I think folk horror becomes much more interesting when folklore stops being lore and becomes mechanics. So, I’m excited to hear about Hunter’s Moon coming to PS5 which appears to make listening to what a community believes about you part of survival itself. What I find interesting is the suggestion that belief itself might be…
Research Log
The Power of Absence: What an Empty Room Teaches Us About Environmental Storytelling
This week I am thinking about Environmental storytelling in game design and I’m going to start with a seemingly silly question, can a room still feel occupied even when no one is in it? It is, I think, quite normal for game designers to fall into the trap of obsessing over character arcs and scripted…
Research Log
The Art and Power of Horror Game Design
Horror game design, I shouldn’t need to tell you, is a craft that takes our everyday reality and transforms it into a landscape of fear. The essence of a great supernatural horror game, I repeat again, isn’t only about jump scares or monsters; it’s about the uncanny, the familiar made unfamiliar, and the echoes of…
Research Log
Designing Fear Without Ghosts: How Hauntology and Potentiality Shape Supernatural Horror
I’ve long been interested in the potential of designing fear without ghosts. We all know that the most terrifying ghosts are not the ones we see, they are the ones that might be there, somewhere, in the darkness. In this blog, we have spoken, many time about t fear not being in the jump scare;…
Research Log
The Crossroads Experiment
Through my recent work in supernatural horror game design, it has increasingly become apparent to me that, if translating the supernatural into real, tangible, game experiences is my goal as a game design academic, there is a need to re-immerse myself in the tools, the code, the magical language if you like, of what makes…