[Qoo News] Singaporean indie horror game gets praised for going against the trend

When there are so many horror games trying to impress audience with realistic graphics and lots and lots of exploration, Gattai Games from Singapore is going backwards with simple lines in black and white, or in other words, they are too fashion-forward.

At Casual Connect Asia 2017, the Gattai Games crew showcased a demo of Stifled, which is far from many gamers’ wishes for great graphics. The screen composition is filled with mass blackness. Whenever a sound is made, whether through players’ audio input or ambience, an audio pulse is produced to make the surrounding visible in the form of white lines, all at the cost of having an enemy eating them up.

This idea stands out in the world of horror games, and thus earning the studio more than four awards among 13 nominations. This is actually not the first game that is sound-based and involves the use of echolocation. Its predecessor, Lurking, is also a similar game but much shorter and free.

▲ Screenshot of Lurking

Lurking is a successful project that has gained four awards and a number of large Youtube stars to play it. After this success, designer Andre Pong said, that they decided to make it commercial by creating a more comprehensive successor. Pong also added practical and creative considerations to why Stifled carries on the legend of Lurking instead of one that finds itself being a brother of big horror titles. First of all, a small indie development team cannot compete with big producers’ hyper-realistic and hyper-detailed art which requires much more skill and cost. Also, the idea of pure darkness produces more fright than a game that has things that look just like real.

▲ Gattai Games’ designer Andre Pong

"You see two white lines. Is that a pillow or is that something else," Pong explained, darkness never allows the players to see what’s ahead of them, and hence the tension-ramping sense of facing the unknown.

To Pong and his co-workers, sound design is half the battle for a successful horror game. This applies not only on Stifled, but also on horror games in general. "What makes you think it’s a kind of creature or a specific object? It’s the sound you hear." They believed good design alone can contribute to a gigantic portion of the players’ imaginations and the feeling of uncertainty.

Unfortunately, the achievement of the two horror titles will not lead to another one. Pong said they would be going for a completely different direction. Pong exclaimed, "we are really tired of horror!"

Of course, the horror master did not give a hint about what the next title will be, but it will very likely to be, as described by Pong, "fun and happy".