Fear the Spotlight launches on PS5 and PS4 on October 22 – PlayStation.Blog

Now, readers of the PS Blog, if you would place both fingers lightly on the planchette of the spirit board in front of you, we can begin.

We’re super excited to reveal that it won’t be long before you can join Vivian and Amy for a séance in Fear the Spotlight. But before you step inside Sunnyside High, we wanted to talk about how we drew inspiration from classic PlayStation experiences to bring our modern horror adventure to life. As you may have just seen in the recently released trailer, the aesthetic, gameplay mechanics, and tone all stem from a deep nostalgia for games of the past.

Play Video

Our studio name, Cozy Game Pals, actually came about long before we decided to make a horror game, but we do find that there’s something exceptionally comforting about the classic, original PlayStation art style. It’s nostalgic, and reminds us of playing our first horror games, huddled around the TV in bedrooms with siblings, and daring to brave the original Silent Hill. We find that Vivian’s journey in Fear the Spotlight is actually a welcoming one into a world of high-fidelity horror graphics.

There may not be 4K blood running down the walls of Sunnyside’s hallways, but that doesn’t mean you’re not on your toes. Another benefit of this particular art style and its deliberate dithering (the name for that grainy, retro look) is the fact that it gives you just enough to let your imagination run wild. Was that a shape between the shelves in the library? Did a head suddenly appear from around the corner and disappear again? Or are your eyes playing tricks on you?

In Fear the Spotlight, the above may be true, but like all the best horror movie experiences, we want to make sure you paint a picture of horror in your head that’s far scarier than anything we could ever show you.

Not only is the original PlayStation art style comforting, nostalgic, and provides some seriously atmospheric jump scares, but it also suits us on a practical level. Cozy Game Pals is just the two of us, Bryan and Crista (hi!). A lo-fi approach to visuals has allowed us to be efficient and really lean into creating the mood and pacing throughout the game. We like to play with your expectations, and this art style fits that perfectly.

We understand that this look can be intense for some players, so we’ve even made sure that you can choose how ‘classic’ you want the visuals to be. We’ve included sliding scales for the TV filter, polygon wobble and ambient camera wobble to ensure that players can feel as 90s as they want. Of course, a lava lamp next to your TV is completely optional.

Fear the Spotlight takes its cues from classic survival horror experiences, but this is much more of a scary teen adventure than something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. You’ll need to make sure Vivian has her asthma inhaler with her just in case, but we’re focused on solving atmospheric puzzles while uncovering the history behind a tragic school fire that happened decades earlier.

And here too, we’re inspired by classic experiences. We love the point-and-click style puzzles of OG survival horror, so we’ve introduced tactile first-person puzzle solutions. Whether you’re dialing pay phones one by one or opening drawers, we wanted Fear the Spotlight to be a modern evolution of the puzzles of those classic horror experiences. We’re not here to replicate them – don’t mess with perfection! – but wanted to make sure that our love of these horror games found its way into our own unique mystery.

Our wish for Fear the Spotlight is that it is a perfect game for those who love the genre and can recognize its influences, but also for players who are new to horror games. We want our friends who love scary movies to step into Sunnyside, even if they have never encountered the classics.

We can’t wait for you to experience Fear the Spotlight and hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoy creating it. Just don’t forget the candles on October 22nd…