Blumhouse wasn’t going to publish a sport in 2024. The studio, one of many main names in horror movies, introduced in February 2023 that it was launching a online game publishing enterprise and executives have been scouting tasks from unbiased groups with budgets beneath $10 million. The purpose of Blumhouse Video games was to help just a few rad horror titles per 12 months, with a tentative plan to start out publishing them in 2025.
However then, in September 2023, the Blumhouse people stumbled throughout Concern the Highlight. It was a moody, voxelized horror sport about two mates sneaking round their haunted highschool and communing with the ghosts of scholars that died in a hearth within the ’90s. Spooky shenanigans and mysterious puzzles ensued, all introduced in third-person and with a gritty PS One aesthetic. Concern the Highlight was a PC sport made by Crista Castro and Bryan Singh of Cozy Sport Buddies, a husband-and-wife workforce with spectacular skilled credentials: Castro was an artwork director at Nickelodeon and the artwork lead on the Animaniacs reboot, and Singh was a programmer who labored on The Final of Us and Uncharted collection and Journey. They left their company jobs and based Cozy Sport Buddies in the course of the pandemic, and Concern the Highlight was their first main mission collectively.
Concern the Highlight didn’t have a very buzzy debut, however just a few weeks after it hit Steam, Blumhouse Video games president Zach Wooden and inventive lead Louise Blain occurred to identify it on Twitter. Castro informed Engadget the way it went down:
“Zach found it, and he and Louise Blain sat down and played it together and were like, oh my gosh, this is exactly the kind of game that we want to be publishing, this is really great. Let’s reach out to them and see, do they need any help? Is there something here that we can work together on?”
“Meanwhile, yes, we did need help,” Singh added, laughing. “We had released it, but we had no idea how to get people to know about it. The people that were finding it were saying very positive things, and we’re like, OK, that’s great, but now what do we do? We know how to make things, but we don’t know anything else about marketing.”
Blumhouse signed Cozy Sport Buddies and requested how they may assist enhance Concern the Highlight. At first, Castro and Singh advised porting it to consoles and including further languages, basic items to get the prevailing sport in entrance of extra gamers.
“They were excited about the idea, but then they also offered more time,” Singh stated. “They asked, what would you do if you had an extra year to work on it?”
The chance to increase Concern the Highlight caught Castro and Singh without warning. It additionally scared them, at first.
“We had never really considered a significant addition to the game before that,” Singh stated. “And we also had what we thought was a finished game that we were really proud of. So it was really, really difficult to figure out how to add to a thing that we felt was finished; we didn’t want to ruin it. Part of it is our taste and our work, but also part of it feels like black magic. Like, if we mess with it, is it going to come out in a way that we’re proud of?”
Castro and Singh took the prospect. On October 26, 2023, about one month after Concern the Highlight’s debut, they eliminated it from Steam with the promise that they’d add new gameplay, console variations and localization options. They didn’t point out Blumhouse on the time. Behind the scenes, Blumhouse Video games gave Cozy Sport Buddies one 12 months to create the definitive model of Concern the Highlight, with no artistic restrictions.
The revamped model of Concern the Highlight got here out on Steam, PS4, PS5, Swap and Xbox Collection X/S on October 22, 2024, developed by Cozy Sport Buddies and printed by Blumhouse Video games. It’s the primary sport in Blumhouse’s publishing roster, which incorporates future titles from EYES OUT, Half Mermaid, Excellent Rubbish, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios.
Cozy Sport Buddies used the 12 months of additional improvement time effectively. Fairly than messing with the black magic of the unique, Castro and Singh added a wholly new section, doubling the sport’s run time and increasing on their preliminary concepts in refined, extra-horrific methods. Concern the Highlight, by the way in which, is a superb horror expertise. It has low-poly environments, low-res textures and grainy CRT results, however its animations are clean and the digital camera makes use of pleasant third-person controls, nailing the nostalgia with out compromising fashionable conveniences. The story revolves round two teenage mates, Vivian and Amy, and takes them on particular person however linked journeys by twisted, spirit-infested variations of actuality. Their dialogue and personalities really feel genuine, and their feelings are extremely relatable, whether or not within the face of unspeakable horrors or simply when speaking to a crush. It has just a few good soar scares, too.
The primary half of Concern the Highlight is filled with satisfying puzzles, spooky phantoms and tense hide-and-seek mechanics. The second half, created after Blumhouse’s intervention, provides layers of emotional depth and introduces a really terrifying foe. Vivian is the principle playable character within the authentic model and Amy’s story takes heart stage within the expanded content material.
“The first Vivian story was really us figuring out how to make this game,” Castro stated. “But then by the time we were making Amy’s, we had so many lessons learned. I feel like the monster is better, the puzzles are better, the storytelling is more streamlined. The second half wraps it up really nicely.”
On prime of dealing with the artwork, Castro was the principle author on Concern the Highlight, whereas Singh dealt with programming. Castro was the diehard horror fan within the relationship — he was a Resident Evil boy, she was a Silent Hill lady (learn to the theme of Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi) — and collectively, they needed to seize the enjoyable of being scared in online game type. Concern the Highlight attracts from their private lives and reminiscences of highschool, when each emotion felt new, excessive and typically foolish. From this lens, Concern the Highlight additionally deftly handles severe subjects like loss, dying, prejudice and love.
“It’s just such an impactful time in our, in most people’s lives,” Castro stated. “I grew up playing these games in the ’90s or in the early 2000s, like Silent Hill one and two and three. So thinking back to high school and how I felt, writing the story was just like, I can only write from my own personal experience. Having a crush and feeling awkward, and when you actually bond with someone, how special that is.”
Singh continued the thread, saying, “I think the home-life stuff — we bond over a lot of our shared experience, which is also represented in the game. Families are complicated, family structures. Having a father that’s not present in your life, or the loss of a very close family member, it just changes you and affects you. Those are just pulled from our lives.”
Castro and Singh lovingly described Blumhouse Video games as a scrappy workforce of horror followers, with fewer than 10 individuals supporting a handful of tasks directly, and doing so whereas making an attempt to show themselves in a brand new market. On prime of dealing with trailers and press for Concern the Highlight’s re-release, the Blumhouse crew helped Cozy Sport Buddies discover a contractor to do a brand and key artwork, a porting firm to assist get the sport on consoles, and a localization workforce. Greater than any of that, although, Castro and Singh stated the individuals at Blumhouse Video games appear to actually benefit from the tasks they’ve signed.
“They’ve just been the ideal partner, incredibly supportive,” Castro stated. “They really let us decide everything for our game, the game is completely our vision. We would show them prototypes and level designs and of course, they had feedback and thoughts, but yeah — ”
“They know our game really well,” Singh stated. “They’re genuine fans of the original release. They know our game intimately and can talk to us about our ideas from a very informed perspective.”
Castro concluded, “They come from it from a support perspective. Like, how can we help you guys create your vision that you care about, that you’re happy with. It’s been amazing.”
Concern the Highlight is offered now for $20 on Steam, PS4, PS5, Swap and Xbox Collection X/S.
