LogInALIEN Studio's Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly shared how the studio managed to create an engaging experience in its horror VR title, Deadness, told us about the wheelchair mechanics, and revealed the future plans of the studio.
On February 22, ALIEN Studio released Deadness – the new survival horror VR title available for PC and Viveport. With its sinister environments, frightening character design, and realistic graphics, the wheelchair-bound game is going to immerse the player into the atmosphere of fear and anxiety.
Before the release of Deadness, we asked ALIEN Studio's game director Martin Vančo and the project lead Anton Tokoly about the game's concept, its mechanics, and future plans.
The ALIEN Studio
Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly: The ALIEN studio is a 3D animation and VFX studio, with almost 20 years of experience, oriented mainly on photorealistic animation for advertising and film. During our existence, we have produced a lot of campaigns, that brought us many awards including The Best 3D Film award at Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards, Art Prix award for studio’s artistic contribution to Slovak advertising, and Best Film Craft on Slovak advertising festival, Zlatý Klinec.
Around 2017 we got our hand on the first HTC Vive set and immediately we saw the prospective of combining our skill and experience with the potential of virtual reality. So, the idea of creating our own game was born.
Creating Engaging Experiences
Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly: When we decided to make our game, we compared VR titles that existed at the time and realized that graphics-wise there was still a long way to go. So, our goal was to create realistic graphics, that would immerse the player into the game more than ever. Therefore, we do not have any health bars, inventory, or HUD which would break the immersion. Everything is just happening right in front of your eyes to distract you after you press the "New game" button.
Horror Game for VR
Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly: We still think that fear and horror are the strongest emotion for humans. Players have been drawn to it for years and will be for many more. We are big fans of the horror genre, so we wanted to contribute with our "drop in the ocean". As mentioned above, our work field is commercials and movies, where we produce photorealistic graphics. With VR, we wanted to bring the player even closer to our visuals. You can have 4K monitors, big screens, but nothing brings you closer than VR. The player is literally in our graphics, and we can do with him/her whatever we want. The original plan of this project was not to create a game but to create an experience.
Creating Tense Atmosphere
Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly: As the horror genre has been here for a long time, lots of ideas have been reused and copied. Some principles still work after years, some are washed up. We combined two things: bringing the new mechanic into the game (the wheelchair) that has never been used before and fulfilling our homework upholding the laws of horror. We tried to create resourceful and memorable ideas, that will resonate with the player long after putting down the headset.
Wheelchair-Based Game
Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly: The story behind the wheelchair is simple. In the beginning, we were playing a lot of VR games, but the movement always broke the immersion. Either teleporting, moving with the trackpad, or the movement was limited by the space and tracking sensors. So, the idea of a wheelchair was born. You play seated, moving only with hands, like on a real wheelchair. And it also fits our story. Without spoiling too much, I can say, that you wake up as a patient in a run-down facility, where experimental research for paralysis and other disabilities has taken place.
The movement itself can be frustrating, but as in real life, when on a wheelchair, you have an obvious disadvantage to someone with working legs. As for now, we are planning to release the game for HTC Vive and Steam Index system, which gave us a lot of time to test and optimize the game for these controllers.
Roadmap
Martin Vančo and Anton Tokoly: Right now, we are concentrating on releasing Deadness, which is planned for February 22. We plan to add support for other VR systems later this year. Primary our field of business is not games, but 3D and VFX for commercials and movies. This is rather a pleasant detour for us. We have some ideas for the future and depending on the success of Deadness who knows, maybe we will orient our business towards game development.