At Summer Game Fest, Fear the Spotlight mixes '90s teen horror with PS1 polygons

Summer Game Fest, the mid-year video game trade show that replaced E3, kicked off with a trailer showcasing several first looks from new boutique publisher Blumhouse Games. The first of these is Fear The Spotlight, an indie game that evokes the grainy polygonal look of PS1-era graphics to heighten the horror of the ghost story…but not too much.

That's because Fear The Spotlight was created to be a kind of “accessible horror” for those who are afraid of scary things, according to the husband-and-wife team behind the game, coder Bryan Singh and artist Crista Castro from Cozy Game Pals studio.

“We have people in mind when we make this game, and that's our friends and family, who don't really like horror yet, but we think they should,” Singh said. “We're trying to present everything we love about horror in a way that's fluid, kind of fun, kind of quirky, kind of charming, but still really horror.”

I chatted with Singh and Crista after playing the 20-minute demo they have of Fear The Spotlight, which opens innocuously enough: Vivian, a heterosexual teenager, has ventured out of her comfort zone to help her rebellious goth friend Amy sneak into their high school library. where they — what else? — use a Ouija board to contact the afterlife. The spirits return, with disastrous consequences.

The game's PS1 polygons set the mood, with choppy edges of characters and environments taking the player back to the days of the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill. But the homespun nostalgia only goes so far, as the sound effects are audibly crunchy but the dialogue is crisp. Likewise, if these visual effects are too much, you can manually tone down some of the PS1's vintage look. You can adjust the tracking lines on the TV, which Singh called a “VHS filter,” as well as the ambient wobble of character polygons and the game's camera.

“I think my favorite genre of horror is the genre: you don't know if you saw something in the dark corridor – I'm not sure if it was just a polygon that moved or was it a specter that I saw? And that’s something we’re really playing into,” Castro said.

“Our specific interpretation of the PS1 aesthetic attempts to reinforce this ambiguity,” Singh said.

With nods to witchy movies and other '90s culture, the game is a throwback to textures and the era of low-res scares. After two years of working on the game, Singh and Castro were approached by Blumhouse Games, who liked Fear the Spotlight's style and accessible horror appeal. After another year, Fear The Spotlight appeared in the Summer Game Fest 2024 trailer showcase. It is the first game in Blumhouse Games' burgeoning lineup to be shown to the press and the only game available during of the practical media event.

Making horror accessible means more scary atmospheres than gory or jump scares. The game has no combat; instead, when a monster arrives, the player – in the role of Vivian, a frightened teenager – sneaks away by crawling and hiding. But there's still tension, as I discovered in the demo. When Vivian gets on all fours to crawl around avoiding a security camera and the view switches to first person, her breathing quickens. This foreshadows more panic leaks to come – hence Fear The Spotlight.

There are plenty of puzzles to solve and items to collect while you wander the library after hours, or whatever after the spirits return. Wandering among the too-quiet shelves and empty tables, it wasn't difficult to find clues to their origin. I spotted a large plaque and a photo of a class mourning the children lost in a fire years ago, an image that becomes sinister once the session is successful and Amy disappears.

Only to reappear, floating, possessed, before everything goes up in flames, and I escape into a creepy red room lined with dark pixels.

“We've created a game that we're trying to pull you into like it's a roller coaster. It's like a movie in many ways. But we're also trying to lower the barrier of complexity so that it can be played by someone who is new to games,” Singh said.

Fear The Spotlight is heading to PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox One X/S later in 2024.