Indie Team Talks Developing Survival Horror Game Inspired By Genre Classics

Introduction

Hi Everyone! We are HideWorks, an indie game company of two people. We specialize in creating Horror Indie games. Our first game, The Devil is in the Details, was released on Steam, PS5, and Xbox, so check it out if you haven't! As for Liminal Point, we started its development shortly after we finished our first game. 

Lyra Sterling, main protagonist of Liminal Point and the Bassist in the band The Fallen Fairies

We have been wanting to make a true survival-horror game for quite a while, and we have been experimenting with and testing different prototypes of game ideas with our fans for quite some time. Liminal Point, an isometric, top-down, classic survival-horror, was the one that had resonated the most with our audience, so that's the one we chose to tackle first. But there are a lot more awesome ones to come, already planned.

Game's World & Core Gameplay Mechanics

Players can expect a very atmospheric, creepy, and scary world where exploration, dread, and uncertainty are always present. The setting is grounded and believable, but increasingly surreal as the story progresses, mimicking the state of mind of our protagonist, Lyra Sterling, a former ascending rockstar who was going to have her big debut in the island of Ashen Point, but unfortunately, the lead singer of their band (Mira Lovelace) disappeared in the night they were supposed to have their big break. Years later, Mira sends the band members a chilling voice message asking them if they forgot what happened that night, and inviting them to return to the island, as she is waiting for them.

Mira Lovelace, Lead singer of The Fallen Fairies

Upon returning, they are faced with a foggy and barren city, as the whole island has been evacuated and quarantined shortly after the night when Mira disappeared, and on top of it, something dark roams through the city. Each one of the band members has deep ties to one another, so expect a lot of tension and drama between them.

Zane Cross, drummer of The Fallen Fairies

As for the core gameplay mechanics, we are trying to preserve all the essentials of the classics while giving them a modern feel and quality of life improvements. Tense encounters, exploration, and the sense of dread of not knowing what you will encounter in the next room, scarce resources, a complex map where players can explore freely, solve puzzles, get keys, unlock doors to reveal new locations, and a complex story with three-dimensional characters to make you feel right at home in a psychological survival horror. All the good stuff. And if you want to play feeling even more like the classics, there's also Tank controls options if you're into that. 

In terms of making the game stand out, I think the theme and the stylish characters, being part of the alternative rock-music world, were part of the appeal. In essence, we are making a 90's game with 90's visual style &Vibes, as that's a time that we hold dear to us(since we were kids in the 90's). Also, let's not forget the perspective change to isometric-top-down, which is unusual in these types of games, but also very reminiscent of the 90's. So the dollhouse feeling is probably part of the appeal as well.

Inspiration

Our inspirations include psychological horror cinema (Shutter Island, Perfect Blue), character-driven series (Such as NANA or Lost), and genre games known for symbolic monster design, themes, and motifs, but also badass gameplay and scary environments (Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil).

Development Process & Technical Aspects

There are quite a few advantages, but also challenges with the change of perspective. Since there aren't a lot of survival-horror games from this perspective, there are a lot of systems and workflows and designs that we had to adapt or create from scratch, as there's not much info out there on how to make games like this from this camera angle. Therefore, we spent quite a bit of time creating tools and systems that work for the specific type of game we are making.

For example, the fact that the view is isometric and the camera is for the most part up high, could create a situation where players can see too far ahead or too much and thus losing a bit of the feeling of dread or fear of the unknown, so we had to create tools and systems to mitigate this, to cut visibility, put invisible walls that don't allow players to see what's around the corner in a tight corridor until Lyra actually can see what's in there, and things like that that keep the tension high and the game feeling scary even from this camera perspective(definitely an interesting challenge).

And of course, at the end of the day, this is a game, and a game with combat, so that face of the game also really needs to shine from the perspective we have, so we want to ensure the combat is fun and fluid and that all the gameplay mechanics play well with each other.

From the get-go, we designed the game in a way that allows us to have the bare minimum loaded and the least amount of elements on screen that need to be rendered, which is quite a good move for the type of game we are making. This ensures we can really try to push the visuals using more expensive rendering tech (lighting, raytrace, etc) but still be performant on older and lower specs machines, such as the Steamdeck for example. Regardless, we want to make sure that the game plays smoothly with good performance.

In terms of tools we use and workflow, we try to stay as much as possible in-engine (modeling, rigging, and animating whenever we can), but we also use external tools such as ZBrush, Blender, Iclone and Rokoko studio for Motion Capture.

Marketing & Building a Community

We have built our community starting with our previous game, but since Liminal Point is really taking off (with more than 100k wishlists on Steam alone), our community has grown so much and so fast since the announcement, which is delightful to see. We are always keeping our fans up to date regarding updates of the game, and making sure the game's visibility remains high, so we often produce new trailers, making of' s, and behind-the-scenes. We like to keep our community engaged and excited about our game since they are really excited about it, and in return, that fills us with joy.

As for advice, we spend quite a bit of time doing marketing; it's tough, but it's a vital part of being an indie developer, in our opinion.

Current Work on the Project, Reception, & Plans

Right now we're focused on the demo. We are almost feature complete(on the tech side), save for a few upcoming additions that we know will be necessary (like special mechanics for the boss battles), but we're also keeping an eye open for feedback when the demo comes out and see if there's anything worth adding to the game to make it better. 

There's still a lot of work to be done, though, lots of content still needs to be made. But we're making good progress.

As I mentioned previously, the community reception has been awesome! Since the moment we did our announcement trailer, the game really exploded, and gave us amazing momentum.

As for plans after release, we will do some more work polishing anything still necessary, and fix bugs, though we are also committed to releasing (hopefully) a bug-free game as our first game (essentially zero bugs from users, and passed console certifications on the first try), so that's definitely something we will try to commit to. But once Liminal Point is out of the door, we're going to test with our community which one of our next games they seem most excited about, so we can start production on it right away.

As for lessons, trying to make the game work on consoles too early did slow down the whole project a bit, which is something we expected, but we thought it was going to be a certain amount of time allocated and then keep going. However, it did slow down almost every feature and update of the game, so for future games, we will probably only start the console porting and development a bit later in our production schedule, after we have a beta and the game is playable from start to finish. Also, make sure you find awesome collaborators or freelancers to work with and have a good, continuous relationship with them. 

Wishlist Liminal Point on Steam.

HideWorks, Indie Development Team