Anomaly

"Anomaly" is a collection of analog horror games, where the player takes on the role of an aspiring neighborhood watch member training through a collection of VHS tapes. Each member of the team was in charge of creating their own tape with only sparse assistance from others. My game is an Audio Test, testing the player for their ability to locate "anomalies" through only audio queues. 

Description of Work:

Programming and all audio work in my game are done by me. This audio work includes editing on the voice acting and sound assets, creation of the drone piece, creation of the text-to-speech assets, and collaborating with voice actors. Additionally, all script writing for my game was handled by myself. In addition to this, I also created the basic plot and narrative for the collection of games as a whole. While a good portion of my work was ultimately not in the games of my group members, I did handle the organization and creation of documents such as early game ideas and narrative structure for our game. Finally, I also took notes during meetings and made sure all of the previous documents and assets were kept in an organized fashion on the discord channel.

Artistic Statement:

Despite being a fan of the analog/fourth wall breaking horror genre, I’ve never actually made a game or piece of media around it, until now. My main focus was to create an unsettling vibe for the player, to create something that would unnerve them and make them maybe look over their shoulder a couple of times after playing. Two of the biggest inspirations for this game were “The Mandela Catalog '' (a youtube analog horror series) as well as “The Watson-Scott Test” (a game that seems to be a simple quiz, but is much more underneath the surface). Together, they created the framework of a simple test that quickly becomes stressful, with the general aesthetic and mood that comes with analog horror.

As for tools and techniques, I decided to go with Phaser due to having more experience with it than any other programming language. This was because I wanted a game I could tailor to my strengths, and I wanted to make something that used audio as a primary driving force for horror rather than visuals. Phaser would let me do this, as I would not have to worry about learning an entirely different language or brushing up on one I hadn’t used in years. Because of this familiarity, I would be able to focus more on all of the audio I wanted in the game. For said audio, I used the Reaper DAW, as it’s the DAW I’m most familiar with, and I wanted to add details to the audio such as EQ and proper mixing rather than just creating wav files and adding them to the game, and this was a task that I felt most comfortable tackling with Reaper’s suite of tools.

In-Game Screenshots: