Hey guys!
It's Ashkandi here with some extra info about Remorse: The List's art style and the references I use for the areas of the game.
When I played my first horror games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill on the PlayStation... I was really intrigued of the natural look of them. Most of the games back then had simple look, with a cartoonish and friendly art style, but the games still scared me with the realistic textures and dark areas. Often in newer horror games, developers tend to use a lot of motion blur and strong lights with blooming effects that breaks the natural and common look of things for me. The look and style that I'm trying to achieve, is what games I grew up playing looked like. Which is to do the simple look, with realistic lighting, but without the ton of use of effects.
When I walk around here in my town in Hungary at night, most of streets and underpass areas have a very dim light and because of the lack of maintenance a lot of lights are out on the streets. So I did my best to attain this in the game as well, where you can see two or three type of light colors at one section of the map. There is no big difference between them, only the cool-hot vibe feel that you get, but it still gives it that extra look.
Personally I don't enjoy the very bright, blinding lights in horror games, so I tend to use low intensity for them, but on the other hand; I always try to avoid pitch black areas or rooms. I've found myself not enjoying playing a game that involves you looking around with a small circular flashlight area for all the time in the whole gameplay.
Since I do all the in-game graphics related tasks, except animations in the team, I can’t compete with AAA game titles. I just try my best to obtain a simple, but realistic style for our game with the atmosphere of my country’s streets and houses.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little piece about the level design and style of our game, see you guys next time!
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I agree. Old horror games were raw & gritty, while new horror games has this clean & tidy look. Atmosphere-wise old horror games relied on environmental storytelling way more, the levels were built specifically to incite emotions from the player. In modern horror games the role of the game is a simple one: to scare the player by any means necessary. Jump scares, lots of loud noises, flashing screens, monsters out of nowhere and without explanation. This really saddens me, because with today's technology the sky is the limit of what a horror game can actually achieve.
Keep up the good work! Grey was a fantastic game, and in my opinion, was on par with the legendary Cry of Fear.
Man I love how much detail you put into the environments in this and Grey - trash scattered, graffiti on the walls, household supplies in the houses, leaves, grass, bricks, etc. I also love that you're going the Silent Hill route and making it open-world (even if it's a small world, nothing wrong with that). I hope players will be encourage to explore the world, and be rewarded for it - extra health; extra ammo; collectibles; goofy "out of place" things you can interact with; hidden references to Grey, Cry of Fear, or other psych-horror games, etc. (To me it'd be like GTA:SA vs. Postal 2 - GTA:SA was HUGE but there was little reason to intensely explore; whereas in Postal 2 - or even LEGO Island perhaps - the world was small but tight/up-close and personal, and had loads of secrets and rewards.) Anyway, I've written too much already, but I will say once again I hope the voice actor of Simon and Grey shows up in here again, if only a few lines or cameo. :) Great work, keep it up.