of hundreds. Based on Discord and itch.io,
Haunted PS1 regularly brings indie developers
together for month-long jams to create low-
poly horror games. Of course, much of this is
down to accessibility: it’s much easier for solo
creators to make the jump to 3D when textures
don’t need 4K resolutions, and character
models are counted in the dozens of polygons,
not thousands.
But there’s more to it than that. Early 3D
games were often experimental. The push
against technological limitations of the time led
to jerkiness and strange quirks that, whether
they were intended to or not, combined to
create a uniquely unsettling mood. No creator’s
catalogue embodies this strangeness more than
Kitty Horrorshow. For almost a decade now,
the pseudonymous creator has built a library
of short and sinister lo-fi experiences, funded
largely by support on Patreon.
Favouring an atmosphere of growing dread
over jump scares, Horrorshow’s games could be
described as the gaming equivalent of found-
footage movies, with their fuzzy imagery and
gritty suspense. With Anatomy, released in 2016,
Horrorshow builds a wholly terrifying experience
that feels less like reliving a nineties game, and
more like picking up a kid’s homemade video
recording of one. While all of Horrorshow’s
games use a striking, retro look to amplify their
tension, Anatomy feels the most like a game out
of time.
Horrorshow isn’t alone, either. An increasing
number of developers are using the nineties
3D look to make horror games. Hackett’s
community began experimenting with it in jam
projects like Broken Paradox, which kicked off
its run of tiny horror titles. “Everything is a little
less well-defined, so it’s hard to tell exactly what
you’re looking at,” explains Hackett. “Especially
PlayStation graphics, where there are jittery
vertices and the textures are warping – it feels
like the game can be falling apart at times. It’s
really unsettling and unnerving.”EMBRYONIC STATES
That’s an opinion furthered by designer Jess
Harvey. One of the three minds behindDEADLY
DEMAKES
While most of the creators
we spoke to are bringing
old ideas into the present,
there’s something captivating
about seeing modern games
deconstructed. Toni Kortelahti,
the developer behind the
98DEMAKE YouTube channel,
has been doing just that. His
low-res demakes of games like
Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto,
and Dark Souls might not be as
explicitly horror-centric as his
later games, September 1999
and OK/NORMAL, but they’re
hauntingly empty and decidedly
eerie when placed next to their
modern counterparts. Clockwise from bottom right:
Anatomy, Groaning Steel, OK/
NORMAL, Paratopic, Anatomy.Fright-teen-ninety-nineInterface
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