This will be my very first published indie game. I’ve always wanted to publish something I actually built myself, but I found it difficult to come up with ideas. Some of them seemed too simple, and some were simply out of my reach.
This project is the perfect balance. It’s not too easy, nor too complex. For a first game, it’s quite ambitious. I’m not even using existing component libraries, add-ons, or plugins. The only relevant external tool is TerraBrush. Everything else is built from scratch.
The Idea
I’ve always been fascinated by horror games, especially psychological ones. Finding a good concept for a psychological horror game is not easy, particularly when it’s meant to be short. My personal favorite in the genre right now is From The Darkness (yes, not PT). I wasn’t directly inspired by it, but what I loved about that game was the feeling of being constantly watched without ever realizing it. In my game, Unmasked, the same feeling drives the experience.
Another concept that inspired me was the uncanny valley effect applied to masks. Masks tend to be unsettling even when they are not intentionally scary. They hide the true intentions of the person wearing them. Picture this: someone chasing you with a machete while wearing a cute bunny mask. That dissonance is exactly what makes it scary, creepy, and uncanny.
Unmasked plays a lot with that idea.
The Setting
You play as a new night guard at Elkwood, a small public park. The year is 1996. Before the shift starts, the owner walks you through the whole place. He’s cordial in that measured, careful way some people have. The park is ordinary: benches, a children’s playground, a grove, a gazebo, a fountain with an elk statue at the center. The kind of place you pass by and don’t think about.
Then he leaves. And the shift starts.
Design Philosophy
A few decisions shaped everything else.
No supernatural elements. Not as a genre exercise. I genuinely check out the moment a horror game introduces something inexplicable. The scariest things have rational explanations. I find that far more unsettling than ghosts.
No cheap jumpscares. If something startles you in this game, it’s because something is actually there. I’m more interested in dread than in surprise.
I’m a strong believer in show, don’t tell, especially in horror, where spelling things out kills the mood. This is a 15-to-20-minute game. The player should be connecting the dots, not reading about them.
The Look
It’s not the typical PSX style. I went for pixelated textures but using all the available channels, such as metallic, roughness, normal… This way light can still affect the model while maintaining a crisp look.
Trees are modeled in Blender and scattered with ProtonScatter. A wind shader moves the higher vertices more than the lower ones, simulating natural sway without skeletons or animations.
Under the Hood
Godot 4. Almost everything is built from scratch: no pre-made systems, no borrowed components. The exceptions are TerraBrush for terrain sculpting and ProtonScatter for vegetation.
It’s a lot for a first game. I know that. But the scope is narrow enough that I think it’s finishable, and building things myself is part of the point.