Five of the most impressive and promising indie horror films from domestic developers that you probably didn’t know about, as well as reasoning and analysis about whether ours will eventually be able to do as good as abroad?
Autumn is in full swing, which means the time for high-profile releases, including highly anticipated horror films, has reached its peak. Many of you have probably already read them and formed your opinion about them. Some people liked them, some didn’t, but absolutely everyone would probably agree that there was nothing truly new in them. And this is understandable, because in AAA games you rarely see innovation, and therefore all hope remains only for indie games. Games from free developers who are free to do whatever they want, without regard to publishers. However, is there anything interesting among such games?? After all, many perceive indie games as something small and unsightly, and not for everyone, for example, if it’s horror, then it’s something like from the SCP series, or endless clones of Slander, but nevertheless, you will probably be surprised to learn that there are projects, looking at which you will probably decide – this is a new hit from a global publisher! Of course, many will think that such games are most likely made abroad, and by people who previously worked in large studios, as in the case of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, for example, they will be right, but not entirely. As it turned out, even here in the CIS, there are a lot of interesting things “behind the scenes”! T.To. I’ve been developing games myself for the last year, and I’m also participating in one project (which I’ll tell you about in the future), I learned about many really cool games that went unnoticed, and even met their developers! And today I will tell you about the five most impressive indie horror films from domestic enthusiasts, which are already close in quality to world hits, and I will try to answer the main question: “do they have a future and will they be successful??»
So, what are these projects?? In fact, these are completely different games in terms of genre and stylistic orientation. However, they have one thing in common: quality! Until now, you probably haven’t seen a single sensible game from our, and even indie, developers: endless clones, fakes and mini-games, that’s all that horror game development in the CIS is associated with. But these five have all the makings of full-fledged successful games that are not inferior to full-fledged Western competitors, to begin with, at least with the fact that they are all based on the advanced technologies of CryEngine and Unreal Engine 4, which means that you won’t have to worry about the graphics, especially if they approached this with a special approach, from which the next point follows – attention to detail. Every project that you will see on the list is simply incredibly well-designed, because these are indies that have virtually no PR/budget, and therefore the game should take advantage of everything, including graphics, and therefore, here you can see high-resolution textures, and a lot of details, mixed with the latest technologies that the engines have, as well as, of course, their own graphic style in which these games are made. All this is inherent in each of these projects and therefore there is no need to consider it separately in each, but I think all of you will agree that the point is not in the graphics and quality of the game’s development, but largely in the plot and gameplay, and this is where the fun begins. Each game tries to draw us in in different ways, some with a plot, some with gameplay or style. And this is exactly what I will try to consider in the projects: can they ultimately (after all, many of these projects are still in the development stage) become successful and be popular with players, cleverly drawing them in with their interesting features, or will they remain faceless “creatures” of the domestic gaming industry? Let’s look at these games as an example!
The Cursed Forest: Remake
Our list opens with a game, perhaps not so inconspicuous, called The Cursed Forest, or to be more precise, its remake, and this is not without reason. The original game was released (by the way, you can download it here) a little more than six months ago, and even then it made a lot of noise around the world, even flashed more than once in the local “Indicator”! This project was perhaps the most atmospheric and at the same time frightening among all the free indie games of this kind in the CIS, and it was also created by just one person! It is based on the famous CryEngine 3 technology, then still of the old generation, so even then this project surprised me. Not because it was created by one person and has a good atmosphere, no, because.To. I myself am developing my long-running project on it, I saw that the entire game consists entirely of standard (!) content! And this is not a minus, this is a huge plus in the author’s karma, because there are very few standard resources in the engine editor: a meager set of vegetation of different colors, all sorts of small houses, benches, etc., and even of poor quality. Never, no one before him, could make something worthwhile out of this, and even with an atmosphere, but here is a whole game! It is not surprising that such famous let’s players as BlackSilverUfa and Western star PewDiePie filmed a series of let’s plays based on this game, which gained great popularity. Anyway, enough of the eulogies. I suspect there are still a lot of people among you who were not familiar with this project, so I will tell you a little information about the game itself, and even a little exclusive about the remake of this project! And I’ll start right away with the fact that I was able to contact the author of the original project, and learn quite a lot of interesting things about him, and how this idea originated!
Who am I? Yes, in fact, the most ordinary person who has never worked in game development before. Afterwards, I combined game construction with my main jobs (worked from gas stations (as a gas station attendant) to a security guard), but it didn’t work out well with the teams, I became interested in game construction itself since about 2008. Now I’m unemployed and completely immersed in development (I devote 6-10 hours a day to the project, well, a small penny also drips from turbosquid. Regarding the emergence of the idea, everything is simple here, I just wanted to create something of my own, but at the same time quite interesting, and at the same time, everything turned out somehow spontaneously. The idea for the plot also doesn’t have much of a story, it basically came over the evening, one might say, I just lay down on the sofa with a netbook and began writing notes that I came up with, one might say, spontaneously, although mostly there’s probably a lot of cliché in there. Nevertheless, everything turned out quite well, interesting, and judging by the reviews, even original.
Andrey "KRUZO" Sukhachev
Author of the original The Cursed Forest
Actually, what is this project?? The gameplay is vaguely reminiscent of Slander and here, of course, many will probably say indignantly: “Didn’t you, dear author, promise us that these projects are not cheap copies of Slander?", but here I would strongly advise against rushing to conclusions. The fact is that this game is more similar to what the games themselves about the well-known “Uncle Styopa” should have been ideally. Personally, what I liked about this project is that there is no incoherent gameplay here: everything is quite well justified by a very interesting plot. In short, it reads as follows: the main character’s mother has a heart attack, and he, of course, immediately wants to come to her to help and just support. The path to it was not close, and the only short road led through the forest, which the locals called cursed. T.To. the hero was not superstitious, but he wanted to get to his mother as quickly as possible, but he still decided to take a risk. From this moment the gameplay of the game begins, but further details were scarce and were given exclusively through notes. But nevertheless, these same notes have a completely different role than in Slander and the like, they only reveal the plot, while they do not affect the gameplay in any way. And by the way, the gameplay here, even for the original version (which is what I’ve been talking about all this time), is very rich. You will have to pacify an ancient evil spirit that has taken possession of the body of a young girl named Sarah, and for this you will have to collect ritual stones, as well as do a lot of other interesting things before performing the ritual. Sarah herself, or rather what’s left of her, will not be chasing you all this time. This is not a game where you only scare with jump scares and other things. The atmosphere itself will put pressure on you, and Sarah will try to kill you with cunning, and this is the most interesting thing: you are too curious, went to the wrong place or saw a strange cut-scene? Then get ready to die, or even run away! The game has a lot of interactive and beautiful moments when the player simply needs unrealistic patience and the need to overcome his fears! All this makes the game incredibly exciting, varied, and at the same time very scary, although the game is not scary at every turn. And it would seem that everything in this game is pretty cool, and it hasn’t become very outdated yet, but then why does it need a remake??
But the thing is that the author of this project, as I found out, was very lucky, and a whole team of very experienced developers decided to fully recreate his project! This is all a very interesting and separate story, and therefore I will also quote it.
“It so happened that the opportunity to do a remake fell out of the blue. No one thought much about it except Andrey, it was his idea. Having figured it out, we found out that a remake needs to be done either now or never, because the original was forgotten more and more every day, despite its serious popularity, and in a year almost no one would remember about it. Therefore, we made a strong-willed decision to start doing so as not to lose a potentially successful project, which looked much more profitable against the backdrop of Hypnos (see. below, approx. author), about whom almost no one knew. Moreover, the development promises to be short-lived, so Hypnos was slowed down for a while.»
Igor Hope
Team leader Noostyche
“It all started with the fact that my email, which was registered to PayPal, which I very rarely visit (once every 2-3 months and then on occasion), received a letter from the publisher Majesco Entertainment (which I saw almost 2 months later) in which they wrote that they wanted to work with us, I wrote this letter to the team’s general chat, Igor said that most likely they want us to make a remake of the forest and they would act as a publisher. We wrote a response letter and began to wait, the publisher replied that he was waiting for something else, so we also wrote a letter with a hint that if they give us money, we can do a remake or continue making Hypnos, but there was still no answer, while we were waiting for an answer, I couldn’t resist and started making a new location for the forest (transferred the map and resources from the old version to the new engine (version)) and got a little carried away (showed them in the chat, and Igor then suggested doing the remake ourselves like this as there was no answer from the publisher for almost 3 weeks, well, it was stupid to disagree since the game seems to be popular, the reviews are good, etc.d.»
Andrey "KRUZO" Sukhachev
Author of the original The Cursed Forest
What will we get in the end?? The most complete game as the author originally intended it, because in the current version, a lot of things were not included in terms of plot and gameplay, and judging by the statements of the developers (and these guys can be trusted, t.To. I’ve known them for a long time), these changes will completely transform the game and bring it right up to the level of world indie hits! So, for example, the plot will tell a very interesting prologue, about the very place of the “cursed forest” – as it turned out, this place is located somewhere in the CIS, and was formed as a workers’ village during the construction of the railway, probably back in the days of the USSR, but the project was curtailed, and the workers settled in the village. However, one of these workers, while still working, found ancient ruins in which a certain demon was imprisoned, he moved into the consciousness of the worker and began to essentially control him, and later, by “happy” circumstance, he was also elected head of the settlement, and then a very interesting action should begin. All the residents of the village followed his orders, which at one time the demon gave in order to free himself, but at the same time, he, of course, lied to everyone that he would give enormous power, which many bought into. Well, then there are spoilers, although I think many have already become clear about the further development of events. But as for the gameplay, even more goodies are promised: the Noostyche team promises not only to replace all the standard content with its own higher quality and created from scratch, but will also add its own animations, cut scenes, gameplay elements, sounds, soundtracks and much more!
Of course, such a game will now be commercial, and therefore the developers went to Steam Greenlight, where, by the way, they recently received success! However, the project still needs your support and criticism, so if you have questions, you can ask them directly from the developer, in the VK project group, which I managed to find.
Perhaps one of the most successful projects in the entire CIS, because he “could”! Not only did it collect, albeit modest, but still more than 26,000 rubles, it also passed Steam Greenlight and went on sale on Steam! But, alas, not many have reached this point: many of the other projects that are on this list, even if they have passed Steam Greenlight, are very far from being sold, which once again proves the level of its quality.
This project really looks at the level of many world indie horror films, if not in terms of plot and gameplay, then in terms of the quality of level development, graphics and animations, for sure! In addition, it also plays very well, which, of course, significantly raises the bar for the quality of all the few commercial indie horror films made in the CIS for many years to come. Unfortunately, this project is shrouded in mystery, and in many senses of the word. The plot itself is very confusing and sometimes somewhat incomprehensible, but the narrative is in the style of the well-known “indie hit” of past years – the game Dear Esther, and the gameplay/genre, the game is in exactly this style, but more on that a little later. After all, not only the plot is mysterious here, but also the developers, from whom, no matter how much I tried, I was unable to extract even a word from them for details, moreover, except for the alleged leader, and one more person from the team, no one else knows the composition of their team, and contacts, so unfortunately, information about this game will be almost devoid of exclusivity, which, of course, is somewhat sad.
So, the main plot story is that https://bet9jacasino.co.uk/games/ the main character is an ordinary guy who, after the death of his girlfriend, lost the meaning of life, and in another attack of “depression” he decided to get drunk, and then drove a car just to forget himself, but of course, unable to control the control in this state, he crashed. However, he miraculously survived and, moreover, with his car, he made an entrance to an ancient and forgotten cave, which led to a very unusual place called Morturium. The place looked abandoned, but as the gameplay progresses, we still understand that this is not so. The game itself belongs more to the class of interactive adventure games than horror games, essentially a sort of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, only in a darker atmosphere, with a minimum of mysteries and more narration. Yes, and the game came out much earlier than The Disappearance of Ethan Carter, as it began to be developed. And although, of course, this game doesn’t even look bad, it is, of course, very far from the masterpiece from “Astronauts”, although it was not going to compete with such giants. And yet, it’s hard not to admit that, unfortunately, you’re unlikely to feel the real pleasure of playing through it, because the game is still quite sparse in details and interesting gameplay moments, moreover, it’s very short and essentially ends at a very interesting moment. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that the game never gained good popularity, although the “sociability” of the developers probably also played a role here, because not many knew about this project, or still do. Nevertheless, I still advise you to play this project, because this is the first project of this kind from “ours”, and even on sale (for very modest money, by the way), so you don’t need to judge it harshly. And despite all its shortcomings, the game still collected the required minimum in sales, albeit a little longer than the authors apparently expected, and now they are restarting the series, adding, oddly enough, not a sequel, but a spin-off called Coma: Dreamland. There is very little information about this project, as in the case of the previous one, we only know that it will not be horror at all, but some other genre, perhaps even closer to Dear Esther. Well, all I can do is wish them good luck, encourage you to vote for the new project on Greenlight and, if you want to know all the news about it, join their group on VKontakte!
This project is of course already familiar to you, t.To. I myself announced it here, however, it’s impossible not to mention it again. Moreover, many did not understand the main concept of the game, which is why there were quite a few negative reviews about it. Since then, I decided to work closely with this team, and even now I began to take part in the development, so now I really have a lot of information on this game, so get ready, in some way, for an exclusive! To begin with, I found out for you a little history of the creation of this project from its leader, asking a few questions in a mini-interview, and this is what he answered:
The idea itself arose at the beginning of 2012 and by the end of March had formed into a relatively stable concept, so March 2012 can be called the beginning of development.
At first, a small horror film was planned, about 15 minutes long, with three small locations. Subsequently, the idea was expanded and supplemented, the game began to improve, thereby becoming larger. As a result, the concept expanded significantly.
The new concept had a huge drawback – it could not be implemented with the resources and capabilities of that time.
At first, we wanted to take a risk and try to perform with it on some crowdfunding platform, having first released an alpha version. During the development of the alpha, there were a lot of thoughts about “is it even worth pursuing what is currently impossible to implement?”? Should we rely on luck and someone’s help??». In the end, we decided that it’s not worth it, it’s better to do what we can be guaranteed to do, even if it’s easier, but it will be completed with a high probability. In general, we discarded “rosy dreams”. This is how a new concept was born, which we now adhere to.
During the development process, various difficulties arose both in terms of lack of knowledge and skills (at the beginning, one might say, we couldn’t do anything), and various others, which led to long interruptions. Despite this, progress has moved forward. The project developed on the fly, something was cut, something was added, then cut again… After all, it’s better to have a couple of well-functioning features than a lot of features that work somehow – less is better. So step by step we came to what we have. As a conclusion, I can say that before you start developing your game, you need to thoroughly learn in the direction in which you are going to work on the game, otherwise nothing will come of it and understanding such a simple thing as learning and then just doing it will come after a ton of virtually wasted time.
Igor Hope
Team leader Noostyche
So what is this game?? Let me remind you that, in fact, we have before us a somewhat unusual horror with an adventure element, again somewhat similar to Dear Esther, but unlike Com’s, it is made in a completely different setting, and close to a resident of the CIS. The project is one of the first that was able to reach the level of essentially a full-fledged game, with its own content and so on, on the CryEngine 3 engine, and has been developed, in fact, almost from the very beginning of its appearance on the market. All this means that, as the author of the project said, the game has been in development for almost 3 years, during which time it has managed to change several times, change the story, partly the design, and also noticeably grow in quality, especially with the advent of the new, 4th generation of the engine (although formally, this is still the 3rd version, just noticeably more updated) and the transfer of the project to it. But let’s not talk about graphics, let’s talk about the most important thing – the plot and gameplay.
To begin with, I would like to note that the game takes place in the CIS, or rather even the period close to the end of the USSR era, which is of course pleasing, because the level design and history really evoke nostalgia for “oldfags” about those times, and newfags will notice how accurately the atmosphere of those places is conveyed. If you have already watched the teaser, you probably noticed a characteristic room, with a carpet, an old wardrobe, curtains and other things, which is painfully reminiscent of many apartments of the 80-90s, and of course, even despite the fact that no one has created this before, such a room will not be the only place, and this, coupled with excellent graphics, in general, causes only positive emotions in everyone!
But of course, the game is not based on one atmosphere, although with such a genre, this is one of its strengths. The game also has a very unusual plot, with numerous riddles, references to Greek mythology, and much more. Unfortunately, t.To. the game will ultimately be very short in terms of completion (but nevertheless very rich), then there are a lot of unnecessary details – this is an extra spoiler that will kill any desire to go through this project, therefore, all I can tell you is the following: There is a certain scientific research complex called “Hypnos”, which studies remote methods of influencing and controlling the consciousness of a person in a dream. The main character is one of the former employees of the complex. The project was canceled partly due to his fault, which greatly torments him. After the incident, the main character is overcome by nightmares and pangs of conscience. He decides to go to the complex to try again to figure out what really went wrong. Perhaps that’s all you need to know. However, so that you can understand exactly what kind of game is in front of you, I asked the leader of the development team to describe it himself.
The essence of the game is to understand who the main character is and what is his role in everything that is happening. The game is about the main character and his experiences.
The main feature is a special interpretation of the main character’s memories expressed in various events occurring in the complex.
Players should be attracted by a special eerie atmosphere, high-quality graphics and an attempt to give a special narrative, coupled with the usual notes.
The game is a simple adventure filled with various events, in which you have to solve simple problems, explore the environment and read notes.
Igor Hope
Team leader Noostyche
I’ll also add that the plot really does present various interesting surprises and Easter eggs, which is good news. The game has a very interesting soundtrack, a huge number of beautiful animations and cut scenes, which will make the passage unforgettable. The game will not have any material enemies, like in some Outlast or the recent Alien: Isolation, there will be other ways to scare you, and believe me, they work! And remember, this is also an adventure game, so you shouldn’t expect constant tension, which of course is good, because there will be places in the game where you can “relax”, although there won’t be too many of them. In general, the game, of course, may not be the best horror game that they have made/are making in the CIS, but it is clearly worth playing when it comes out, and especially, of course, “our people” will like it, so let’s wait for “screenshots with carpets” :)
As you understand, the game is of course not out yet, although it is very close to it. Therefore, if you want to track the development progress and communicate with the developers, then join their group on VKontakte, or check out their page on IndieDB. However, we will now have to wait a little longer for this game, because the developers have slowed down progress in order to help in the development of The Cursed Forest: Remake, because, as said earlier, they are “the same guys” who decided to help the author, for which we thank them! However, there is no reason to be afraid, because.To. this project already has a solid foundation, its development will go a little faster, which means Hypnos will also not be delayed too long.
A very fresh project, which I myself recently learned about, and to be honest, in its place there should have been an original project by these developers, but…To. progress makes me happy almost every week, so I decided to tell you about it. So, the “Dispatcher” project is something of a warm-up project for the development team of perhaps the most famous and acclaimed indie horror film Born. This project attracted the attention of many people, including let’s players, of which the well-known BlackSilverUfa stood out the most, which essentially helped finance the game by RuNet users for more than 200,000 rubles on the Boomstarter site! By the way, this is still a record for the collections for games of this kind for all domestic venues. Actually, when asked how they managed to interest such a person as Arthur Black, the author answered rather modestly:
Arthur Black loves horror games with unusual mechanics and when he learned about us, he decided to help.
Georgy Kukhtenkov
author of the Born and Dispatcher projects
The project itself is a survival horror, from a first-hand perspective, with an unusual style and design. As the authors wrote on the pages of the project, Born is a dark story of a man with a difficult past, a painful present and an illusory future, who, against his will, finds himself face to face with the forces of chaos. The history of its creation began, it is very interesting, and moreover, it is connected with another game from our “list”.
Previously, I passively participated in the Coma: Mortuary project and at that time I was developing a small mod called Born. Over time, the project grew and became stronger, I decided to abandon the idea of creating a mod and make a full-fledged game. For accessibility and ease of use, we chose the Unreal Engine 3 – UDK, but now we have abandoned it in favor of Unreal Engine 4.
Georgy Kukhtenkov
author of the Born and Dispatcher projects
And yet, Born is not the hero of today’s article. To be honest, I didn’t watch this project very actively, but its major updates were hard to miss, but in recent months there haven’t been any at all. Therefore, to understand what was what, I went to their page on VKontakte (link), and was a little surprised by the fact that most of the posts here were reposts from a group of another project, and this project was “Dispatcher”. Wanting to satisfy my curiosity, I, of course, did not neglect to ask the author a question about him in my mini-interview, and the answer turned out to be very, very interesting!
As development progressed, the Born project regularly acquired new game elements and distinctive features, and also grew in quality. Unfortunately, a stalemate has developed. On the one hand, without these features, Born will lose its face. On the other hand, at the moment there is not enough money for the full implementation of ideas.
After numerous and lengthy discussions, we managed to come to the most optimal plan of action: the creation and release of a small project, Dispatcher, with the subsequent raising of funds to complete Born.
The release of Born:Prolog has been postponed indefinitely. But thanks to the additional investment received from a small support project, all parts of the Born project will be significantly expanded quantitatively and improved qualitatively (and, importantly, this improvement will in no way affect the final price on Steam).
Georgy Kukhtenkov
author of the Born and Dispatcher projects
It is noteworthy in this situation that this project, although it is essentially secondary, nevertheless, it looks very, very cool already at this stage. I think many of you, even before you’ve really recovered from Alien: Isolation, will probably even find similarities in the design, and it’s no coincidence! After all, “The Dispatcher” is a special mixture of futuristic horror (by the way, also in the Low-Fi style), which not only has RPG elements, but it also plans to have a full-fledged cooperative! This is a very interesting project from the point of view of gameplay, because if you believe the author, we will be faced with such situations in the game when any of your friends can become an enemy, and your main nightmare, so maybe there will be more!
The features of the game are that you can move secretly and explore locations, solve original puzzles and interact with other survivors, and most importantly, you will also have to sacrifice your life at any time… The plot is still quite simple, or rather its details have not been disclosed. What is known is that humanity has finally reached the era when flights to the far reaches of space have become possible, and the game tells the story of their origins and the pioneers in this matter. Space is still so far unexplored, and people take unnecessary risks when going there, but along the way, apparently, something happens, and this “something” is what the game will have to show us. Of course, this is not a complete list of what will be “delicious” in the game, I could continue to write it in my own words, but why?? After all, it’s better to insert a quote from the developer himself, who was so generous and one of the few who paid me due attention in the mini-interview:
Key Features:
– the atmosphere of a bygone era of classic space science fiction of the 60-80s of the XX century;
– thanks to the random algorithm for constructing levels, “Dispatcher” has great replayability, each level is unique;
– quests built on the need for interaction between players;
– a customization system and sets of perks for characters, the elements of which are unlocked as you gain experience;
– several unique game modes, including the ability to become a merciless death machine by controlling one of the selected monsters;
– a spectacular finishing and damage system that allows monsters to tear survivors apart;
– and also: girls in tight suits, blood, screams, eating corpses and the ability to rip out a heart through the butt -)
Georgy Kukhtenkov
author of the Born and Dispatcher projects
Well, that’s probably all for this project. All that remains is to wish these guys good luck in development and excellent sales, because the release of the long-awaited Born will depend on them! And on top of that, this project also received the green light, you know where, apparently, the Halloween atmosphere gives horror developers good attention! And of course, in no case will I neglect the opportunity to share with you a link to their community on VKontakte, where there is a lot more interesting things!
Crossing the Line
Well, I want to complete my list with a really very high-profile project called Crossing the Line, from a new domestic indie studio called Zomboko Enetrthainment, which for a long time consisted of only one person! This project is interesting primarily because, unlike other games presented on the list, this project, indeed, without any exaggeration or concessions, can be compared with AAA-level hits, both in graphics and design, even foreign publications emphasize this, so something really large-scale awaits us! What is most striking here, of course, is not the graphics themselves, or the beauty of the design, but the quality, very cool atmosphere, effects and animations (some of them can already be seen in their teaser on the off.website)! As a person with experience in this field, I can say with absolute confidence that creating such high-quality locations, and even with such a level of graphics, is extremely difficult! But what do we see here??
Unfortunately, the author of the project did not have time to answer my questions, however, I knew him even before that, about half a year ago, when this project was still nothing more than a simple but high-quality prototype. And now a funny situation arises, then I saw potential in this man, and I wanted to invite him to my team so that he could help us with the project, and then, of course, as you can see now, he refused, saying that he wanted to do his own project. I tried to dissuade him, because many people started like this, tried to do something alone, and often in the end, after spending a lot of time and getting a mediocre result, they usually abandoned game development, but this is a special case! This man, not only did what he first did alone in less than a year (!) more than our entire team, in almost a year, and also in recent months, his project has become very successful, which has found a lot of fans, as well as an excellent team of essentially real professionals! And now progress has become even faster, and the quality, without exaggeration, has almost increased to the AAA level. So, this project is essentially a real phenomenon in the domestic game development!
However, what is the project as such?? In fact, it’s not even a horror film anymore, but a very interesting and intriguing dark detective story. The main character is a former policeman who cannot come to terms with the fate of his wife, who died in the explosion of a business center. The investigation into this incident stretches on for many years, and ultimately comes to a dead end. The grief-stricken husband ultimately decides to take on this difficult task himself, and perhaps almost from this moment the game will begin. At first, it seems that this is some kind of new Max Payne, but reading the description further, we understand that rather something in the spirit of Murdered: Soul Suspect awaits us, because the main character will have control over two worlds: our world and the world of shadows. It’s not yet clear exactly what it will look like, but judging by the existing developments, everything will be quite epic, beautiful, and perhaps even scary, so we’ll wait for new details!
Nevertheless, this is probably all. After all, I could not contact the author for an interview, and therefore no details regarding what interesting gameplay features, plot details, etc.d., will be in the game, still couldn’t find out. What is known is that the player’s abilities will be able to change the course of events, which means that we are promised at least several endings! So, as they say, “we’ll keep our fingers crossed” for this game, and we wish these guys good luck! And also, those who are interested can, of course, also follow the progress in the project’s VK group.
Now that I have told you about the five most promising horror games being developed in the CIS, each of you, of course, has already decided for yourself what our indie developers are capable of. However, observing each of these projects, as well as indie game development in the CIS in particular, I conducted a detailed analysis and made my forecast and opinion on this matter.
What we see today is certainly huge progress, and this is only in the horror genre, and how many other interesting projects of this level of quality are being developed in the CIS! Just 3-4 years ago, there was essentially not a single indie game that was even remotely reminiscent of current developments in terms of quality. In those years, there were no necessary game development tools, all that was available was Source, on which only mods were often made, and then still very crude Unity 3D, and its even more meager analogues, like Torgue3D. There was also CryEngine 2, of course, but it could also be used exclusively for mods. Large engines, like Unreal Engine 3, were simply not available to ordinary users, and cost a lot of money. A t.To., no one had such sums in those years (and even now), so such options were used incredibly rarely. So it turns out that in those years, if anyone wanted to create a beautiful, functional game, he had to invest a lot of money and, most likely, also write his own engine, so only studios and publishers were involved in such things, but as for indie? Yes, they simply weren’t there! There were modders, there were just enthusiasts, but not indies. And large studios simply did not have such large finances to make a truly beautiful game. The very concept of “indie” was just emerging in the West, just as crowdfunding was emerging, a la Kickstarter. So, this is where the opinion was formed that we “don’t know how” to make games. And this is not true at all! You would be surprised to know how many talented people from the former USSR are now working in large game and film special effects studios. Moreover, they not only work, but are respected!
As for today’s period. This is where things get more interesting: around 2011, the most interesting thing begins: the rise of indie all over the world. On a free basis, a slightly simplified version of Unreal Engine 3 is released, called UDK (Unreal Development Kit), as well as a slightly simplified free editor called CryEngine 3, called Free SDK. This radically changed the game development of independent developers. Finally, they were exposed to the possibilities of tools previously available only in large studios, and at the same time it was all quite understandable! The most interesting thing, of course, was that all this software was also regularly updated, giving more and more new opportunities. Meanwhile, understanding all the delights of indie development, and the fact that this business is beginning to become widespread, many developers of supporting software, for example, 3D modeling, began to make more favorable prices for their software, or even create student free or inexpensive paid versions. A lot of auxiliary software has appeared for the 3D packages themselves, various assistants to speed up the process of modeling or converting a model into a game one, various programs for creating your own “pseudo-volumetric textures” without using the modeling itself, or even quite good generators of all the necessary types of textures from a simple photo, as well as generators of landscapes, fabrics and much more! All this gave a real leap in the field: now dozens of people were not required to do something complex, because thanks to such tools, one person could do much more work in a short time!
And finally, a trend such as crowdfunding also began to bear fruit: developers no longer had to look for investors or publishers, now they could ask for money from the players themselves, and sometimes even received much more than they needed! At the same time, they also received the attention of the players themselves, which automatically made their game extremely successful, in terms of sales and so on. Perhaps the only thing that until recently repelled many from making the prototypes of their games completely commercial and full-fledged, rather than beautiful free crafts, was the license and a set of tools. The authors of both engines demanded almost a quarter of the profit of your product if it was sold, and this is not counting other other taxes, but that’s not all: as mentioned earlier, these editors had extremely limited functionality, and differed from the full versions by the lack of source code for all the main gameplay tools, as well as some graphics tools. However, the turning point in this matter came, oddly enough, this year! Developers of the world’s largest studios have finally understood the importance of indie developers, and have provided the latest and most complete versions of their engines to everyone! T.e. now, you can absolutely freely download Unreal Engine 4, although there is no longer even 4, but 4.5, and also CryEngine 3.6! Yes, now they are not free, but they cost ridiculous money, 19 and 9 dollars per month respectively. For comparison, full licenses of these engines used to cost large companies more than a million dollars! Now everything is simpler, and this means that nothing now stops absolutely any person, even without education, from eventually making a game at the AAA level! And this is no joke, because on the Internet, in addition to social media, there are now a lot of lessons, even from real professionals who will explain everything clearly and help solve any problem.
In this regard, all these games that began to be developed a year or two ago, I could now breathe deeply and no longer worry about “if there is little money, then there will never be a high-quality game,” because now this is not a problem! Considering such trends, we can now safely assure and answer the main question: yes, now horror, and indeed any indie game, has a future! T.To. Considering the great interest of newcomers in this area, there will be quite a few more games waiting for us. Which, in just a few years, will be able to compete on an equal footing with the best games abroad, and perhaps even with AAA titles from publishers!
