This tech noir survival horror game is like a futuristic Silent Hill set in a post-apocalyptic English city, and it all started with a feelingWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
This tech noir survival horror game is like a futuristic Silent Hill set in a post-apocalyptic English city, and it all started with a feelingWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Headware Games)
For Hollowbody solo developer Nathan Hamley of Headware Games, the creative process all starts with a feeling. “If I know how I want the player to feel I can craft a world and narrative around that feeling, designed to further reinforce this emotional seed rooted in the early design stages,” he explains. “In Hollowbody’s case I wanted the player to be feeling a sense of discovery and intrigue that is shared with the story’s protagonist, with them both experiencing something a little familiar yet distanced from the world they know.”
Feeling the fear
(Image credit: Headware Games)
Demo lovers(Image credit: Wrong Organ)Check out thebest horror demos from Steam Next Fest.
Demo lovers
(Image credit: Wrong Organ)Check out thebest horror demos from Steam Next Fest.
(Image credit: Wrong Organ)
Check out thebest horror demos from Steam Next Fest.
This is where Hollowbody truly succeeds: the demo presents a slick and scuzzy tech noir landscape – “film noir paired with science fiction”, as Hamley neatly puts it – that is littered with environmental storytelling.
If you’re wondering what “tech noir” means in the content of Hollowbody, Hamley describes it as “a pairing of film noir sensibilities within a science fiction setting. As mentioned before, Hollowbody is a game trying to capture a specific feeling and that feeling can also be felt in the wealth of moody, rain-soaked film noir cinema. It encapsulated a lot of what I wanted to put forward with this project,” he says. “Also, tech-noir just sounds cool, y’know?
(Image credit: Headware Games)
Hamley’s atmosphere-first approach is partly why Hollowbody feels so distinct.
Hamley’s atmosphere-first approach is partly why Hollowbody feels so distinct.
I’m guessing that’s the tech noir element doing its job. These visual and temporal inconsistencies suggest that, unlike the classic survival horrors it might take some stylistic influence from, Hollowbody is a futuristic adventure that could well be set many decades from now.
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It’s a horror game, but not in the way you’d expect. Without many monsters lurking in the shadows, Hollowbody’s atmospheric dread and tension is the true antagonist. It’s this sense of old-meets-new that gives Hollowbody some added flair and vitality, especially in such a lively indie genre as horror. It’s his indie dev compatriots, Hamley says, who have helped carve out such a proud return to popularity for the horror genre in video games – and perhaps that interest never faded to begin with.
“The indie horror scene has been thriving for many years now,” Hamley says, citing 2012’s Resident Evil 6 as a pivotal moment for indie horror’s rise: Cry of Fear, Imscared, and Slender: The Eight Pages to name a few. “Not only were we seeing low budget or free indie titles getting traction, but a middle ground was forming, smaller studios with enough financial backing to make substantial games through clever design and resource management.
“I mention this because I feel – in the video game industry, at least – that this recent resurgent interest in horror games has been in no small part thanks to all of these fantastic developers that have kept the genre alive over the past 10+ years. We’re now seeing a renewed interest in horror games from the AAA developers, but this would not have happened if it wasn’t for all of the creative foundation that has been established in the indie horror scene.”
Hamley hits the nail on the head there. The fact that the horror game renaissance largely owes itself to indies is no secret, but looking at it in context almost makes me a little teary. Indie developers and their lower-budget passion projects are the lifeblood of this genre, and the short taster I’ve had of Hollowbody proves it a glittering celebration of that already.
Hollowbody is one of manyupcoming horror gamesthat we hope to see launch in 2024.
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1Nemesis review: “A magical sense of tension”
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