Làm thế nào “Fear the Spotlight” trở thành trò chơi video đầu tiên của Blumhouse
Blumhouse ban đầu không có kế hoạch phát hành trò chơi vào năm 2024. Hãng phim này, một trong những tên tuổi hàng đầu trong làm phim kinh dị, đã công bố vào tháng 2 năm 2023 rằng họ đang mở một công ty xuất bản trò chơi video và các nhà quản lý đang tìm kiếm dự án từ các nhóm độc lập với ngân sách dưới 10 triệu USD. Mục tiêu của Blumhouse Games là hỗ trợ và xuất bản một số tựa game kinh dị hàng đầu mỗi năm, với một kế hoạch dự kiến bắt đầu xuất bản chúng vào năm 2025.
Nhưng rồi, vào tháng 9 năm 2023, các nhân viên của Blumhouse tình cờ phát hiện Fear the Spotlight. Đó là một trò chơi kinh dị với hình ảnh voxel về hai người bạn lẻn vào trường trung học bị ma ám của họ và gặp gỡ những hồn ma của những học sinh đã chết trong một vụ cháy vào những năm ’90. Những trò lừa dối ma quái và câu đố bí ẩn tiếp diễn, tất cả được trình bày ở chế độ thứ ba với một cái nhìn mù mịt và một phong cách PS One bụi bặm. Fear the Spotlight là một trò chơi PC được tạo ra bởi Crista Castro và Bryan Singh của Cozy Game Pals, một cặp vợ chồng với bằng cấp chuyên nghiệp ấn tượng: Castro là giám đốc nghệ thuật tại Nickelodeon và là người dẫn đầu về nghệ thuật trên bản làm lại của Animaniacs, còn Singh là một lập trình viên đã làm việc trên các dự án The Last of Us và Uncharted series và Journey. Họ rời việc ở công ty và thành lập Cozy Game Pals trong mùa dịch, và Fear the Spotlight là dự án lớn đầu tiên của họ cùng nhau.
Fear the Spotlight không có một sự xuất hiện ồn ào, nhưng vài tuần sau khi nó ra mắt trên Steam, Tổng giám đốc Blumhouse Games Zach Wood và nhà sáng tạo Louise Blain tình cờ phát hiện nó trên Twitter. Castro nói với Engadget cách họ đã phản ánh:
“Zach tìm thấy nó, và anh ấy cùng với Louise Blain ngồi xuống và chơi nó cùng nhau và họ nói, ôi chúa ơi, đây đúng là loại trò chơi mà chúng tôi muốn xuất bản, thực sự tuyệt vời. Hãy liên hệ với họ và xem, họ cần sự giúp đỡ không? Có gì đó mà chúng ta có thể hợp tác cùng nhau không?”
“Trong khi đó, có, chúng tôi cần sự giúp đỡ,” Singh thêm vào, cười. “Chúng tôi đã phát hành nó, nhưng chúng tôi không biết làm thế nào để đưa nó đến với mọi người. Những người đã tìm thấy nó đều nói những điều rất tích cực, và chúng tôi nghĩ, OK, điều đó tuyệt vời, nhưng giờ đây chúng ta sẽ làm gì? Chúng tôi biết cách tạo ra mọi thứ, nhưng chúng tôi không biết gì khác về marketing.”
Blumhouse ký hợp đồng với Cozy Game Pals và hỏi làm thế nào họ có thể giúp cải thiện Fear the Spotlight. Ban đầu, Castro và Singh đề xuất chuyển nó sang các hệ máy và thêm ngôn ngữ khác, những điều cơ bản để đưa trò chơi hiện có ra nhiều người chơi hơn.
“They were excited about the idea, but then they also offered more time,” Singh said. “They asked, what would you do if you had an extra year to work on it?” #FearTheSpotlight #BlumhouseGames
Blumhouse wasn’t going to publish a game in 2024. The studio, one of the leading names in horror films, announced in February 2023 that it was launching a video game publishing business and executives were scouting projects from independent teams with budgets under $10 million. The goal of Blumhouse Games was to support a few rad horror titles per year, with a tentative plan to start publishing them in 2025.
But then, in September 2023, the Blumhouse folks stumbled across Fear the Spotlight. It was a moody, voxelized horror game about two friends sneaking around their haunted high school and communing with the ghosts of students that died in a fire in the ’90s. Spooky shenanigans and mysterious puzzles ensued, all presented in third-person and with a gritty PS One aesthetic. Fear the Spotlight was a PC game made by Crista Castro and Bryan Singh of Cozy Game Pals, a husband-and-wife team with impressive professional credentials: Castro was an art director at Nickelodeon and the art lead on the Animaniacs reboot, and Singh was a programmer who worked on The Last of Us and Uncharted series and Journey. They left their corporate jobs and founded Cozy Game Pals during the pandemic, and Fear the Spotlight was their first major project together.
Fear the Spotlight didn’t have a particularly buzzy debut, but a few weeks after it hit Steam, Blumhouse Games president Zach Wood and creative lead Louise Blain happened to spot it on Twitter. Castro told Engadget how 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 Game Pals and asked how they could help improve Fear the Spotlight. At first, Castro and Singh suggested porting it to consoles and adding additional languages, basic things to get the existing game in front of more players.
“They were excited about the idea, but then they also offered more time,” Singh said. “They asked, what would you do if you had an extra year to work on it?”
The opportunity to expand Fear the Spotlight caught Castro and Singh by surprise. It also scared them, at first.
“We had never really considered a significant addition to the game before that,” Singh said. “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 chance. On October 26, 2023, about one month after Fear the Spotlight’s debut, they removed it from Steam with the promise that they’d add new gameplay, console versions and localization features. They didn’t mention Blumhouse at the time. Behind the scenes, Blumhouse Games gave Cozy Game Pals one year to create the definitive version of Fear the Spotlight, with no creative restrictions.
The revamped version of Fear the Spotlight came out on Steam, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox Series X/S on October 22, 2024, developed by Cozy Game Pals and published by Blumhouse Games. It’s the first game in Blumhouse’s publishing roster, which includes future titles from EYES OUT, Half Mermaid, Perfect Garbage, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios.
Cozy Game Pals used the year of extra development time well. Rather than messing with the black magic of the original, Castro and Singh added an entirely new segment, doubling the game’s run time and expanding on their initial ideas in sophisticated, extra-horrific ways. Fear the Spotlight, by the way, is an excellent horror experience. It has low-poly environments, low-res textures and grainy CRT effects, but its animations are smooth and the camera uses friendly third-person controls, nailing the nostalgia without compromising modern conveniences. The story revolves around two teenage friends, Vivian and Amy, and takes them on individual but connected journeys through twisted, spirit-infested versions of reality. Their dialogue and personalities feel authentic, and their emotions are incredibly relatable, whether in the face of unspeakable horrors or just when talking to a crush. It has a few good jump scares, too.
The first half of Fear the Spotlight is packed with satisfying puzzles, spooky phantoms and tense hide-and-seek mechanics. The second half, created after Blumhouse’s intervention, adds layers of emotional depth and introduces a truly terrifying foe. Vivian is the main playable character in the original version and Amy’s story takes center stage in the expanded content.
“The first Vivian story was really us figuring out how to make this game,” Castro said. “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 top of handling the art, Castro was the main writer on Fear the Spotlight, while Singh handled programming. Castro was the diehard horror fan in the relationship — he was a Resident Evil boy, she was a Silent Hill girl (read to the theme of Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi) — and together, they wanted to capture the fun of being scared in video game form. Fear the Spotlight draws from their personal lives and memories of high school, when every emotion felt new, extreme and sometimes silly. From this lens, Fear the Spotlight also deftly handles serious topics like loss, death, prejudice and love.
“It’s just such an impactful time in our, in most people’s lives,” Castro said. “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 Games as a scrappy team of horror fans, with fewer than 10 people supporting a handful of projects at once, and doing so while trying to prove themselves in a new market. On top of handling trailers and press for Fear the Spotlight’s re-release, the Blumhouse crew helped Cozy Game Pals find a contractor to do a logo and key art, a porting company to help get the game on consoles, and a localization team. More than any of that, though, Castro and Singh said the people at Blumhouse Games seem to truly enjoy the projects they’ve signed.
“They’ve just been the ideal partner, incredibly supportive,” Castro said. “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 said. “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.”
Fear the Spotlight is available now for $20 on Steam, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox Series X/S.
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