Visage: Kickass Kickstarter
By Tanner Banks
2/13/2016, 9:00 a.m.
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“For God’s sake just jump out the window!” I whispered to myself, enraptured by the 14 minute pitch by Sad Square Studio for Visage. The only thing that was going on was a slow walk through a dark and quiet house, yet I felt as if I were being slowly dragged into hell. Footsteps barely audible, no background sounds, save for the occasional “something” behind me. I didn’t know what I was expecting coming into Visage, but I left shaken, tense, and begging for more.
In this installment of Kickass Kickstarters, I had the chance to check out the Canadian team Sad Square Studio (@SadsquareStudio), and their psychological horror title Visage. While this game doesn’t look like it’ll be a gruesome splatterfest ala Friday the 13th, it’s definitely going to scare the piss out of you. The biggest thing that gravitated me to Visage, was the tagline just under the pitch video: “Each death has its visage. Would you dare look directly in its eyes?” It felt mysterious and spooky. After watching the pitch video, I’m not so sure I would look in its eyes.
Outside of a short blurb by the studio founders, the video was entirely gameplay. Lots of pitch videos will only highlight parts of the video game, whereas this was 12 minutes of continuous gameplay. And for a horror game, that’s exactly what it needed. Proper horror is about immersing yourself into the world and having that sense of vulnerability. And I’ll tell you, I was extremely immersed and felt very vulnerable. The sounds of someone or something brushing along the walls filled me with dread. A door slamming behind me had me bouncing like a rabbit high on a double espresso. And once I heard the clicking sound of a locked door in front of me, my eyes were trying not to pop out of my head. In terms of pulling you into the game and feeling scared, Visage did more in 12 minutes than most games do in hours.
Built on the Unreal 4 Engine, the visuals and sound give a real sense of “presence” to the game. It looks and feels like you are in the house. Despite the fact that I was watching it in a well-lit gym with the wonderful background noise of grunts and clacking weights going on all around me, as far as I was concerned, I was in the game and I was terrified. The designers talked about how the game was inspired by P.T., Penumbra, and Silent Hill, but I felt like I was back in Poltergeist. I kept being teased about whatever might be behind me, and the tension was getting to me. I was begging for whatever it was to just show itself. Rather than get a quick scare by flashing something scary in front of you, Visage slowly sinks its claws into you and pulls you in. Like the story of how you can boil a frog by slowly turning up the heat, I was a goner before I knew it. This game just gets the difference between scaring you, and making you scared.
Gameplay looks like it’s going to be akin to the aforementioned Penumbra, as well as Amnesia: The Dark Descent. You’ll need to keep yourself from getting too terrified in game before you start to hallucinate from the stress. You’ll need to look for clues everywhere and pray you find it, before it finds you.
You can run, you can hide, but can you survive?
The game still has nearly 30 days until the campaign is over, and it’s already starting to plow through stretch goals. While you can choose between a console or Steam release now, I’m going to suggest you play the PC version for one reason: Virtual Reality. This was one of the earliest stretch goals, and if I can get that scared watching on a crappy little notebook, I shudder to think how bad it’s going to be on an Oculus Rift. Scratch that, I’m jumping for joy about how sweet it’s going to be.
https://twitter.com/SadsquareStudio