Happy Halloween, everyone! This is an exciting day for all of us on the Until Dawn team with our minds occupied by ghouls, beasts, and other things that go bump in the night. We love teen-horror movies (“DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR,” we cry… but alas, they always do). That’s why we’re so excited about Until Dawn: this game provides a truly interactive teen-horror experience!

Until Dawn puts you in control of eight teenagers, stranded in a remote location, under threat and trying with all their might to survive ’til sunrise. Since today is Halloween, we have a special treat from Supermassive Games hinting at some of the scariest moments in the game. Don’t worry: no spoilers here.

Even though you won’t see any spoilers, eagle-eyed viewers may spot some details that spark lingering questions. Who owns the items on the wall? Are the pictures portraying past victims or those who remain? You’ll have to wait for Until Dawn to arrive on PS3 in 2013 to find out!

Stay safe tonight and have a Happy Halloween!

It’s important to note that Until Dawn is firmly a teen horror game, trading in the healing herbs and bullet counting of the survival-horror genre for quips, jump scares, and salacious scenarios that wouldn’t seem out of place in Friday the 13th or I Know What You Did Last Summer.

After Until Dawn’s gamescom debut, I had a chance to speak with SuperMassive’s executive creative director Will Byles, who discussed the game’s genesis, HUD-free presentation, and adaptive storyline.

PlayStation.Blog: Until Dawn got a great response at gamescom. What do you mean when you say it’s “unashamedly a teen horror”?
Will Byles, Executive Creative Director: Teen horror is where we started. It’s where you have a group of teenagers disappear off to some remote location. The power is usually out; the phone is always out. And then, one by one, they get killed off. And they’re always trying to get it on with each other, often at inappropriate times.

PSB: Until Dawn has no HUD at all – no onscreen button icons, no text. Why is that important?
WB: We think it’s massively important for two reasons. We wanted to make sure this game was fun to play, but also watchable — we wanted a couple or group of friends to sit down and those that weren’t playing would be really happy to watch the whole thing. It just seemed like a much better way of doing it.

Every time we put something on screen, it breaks your suspension of disbelief just a little bit. So we try to keep it to a minimum. We wanted to try and keep all the shocks and scares first-person, so they’re happening to the player, with as few abstract elements as possible.

PSB: Until Dawn’s use of PlayStation Move is fascinating and helps make it a very tactile game. When did you settle on Move, and why?
WB: The game was designed from the ground up for PS Move. We started off making a first-person teen horror game that was flashlight-based — everything you needed to do or navigate used the flashlight. And PS Move is perfect for that; it looks like a flashlight, it feels like a flashlight. The T button underneath it handles your walking speed. Then, when you’re interacting without the flashlight, we map the PS Move controller to what your hand would do.

PSB: Until Dawn’s story adapts to your play decisions, so this isn’t a linear game in the traditional sense. How many variations are possible?
WB: I don’t want to give too much away about the story, but we’ve got two things going on. The story adapts to what’s happening. A massive part of teen horror movies is people getting killed one by one; with our game, we want the fate of the character you’re playing is in your hands. Another thing: If you die in this game, you die. The story will change, adapt. There’s no reset or respawning — that’s it. You’re onto the next character.

During development, we did a lot of testing to make sure that there was a pacing to the fear. We did galvanic skin response (GSR) tests, which sounds quite technical, but it measures the conductivity of people’s skin — like a lie detector. Then the person would play the game, we would film them and see what’s onscreen, and we’d get this graph showing how frightened or relaxed they were. It’s quite interesting: The scene when Michael and Jessica are in the lodge and it starts to get amorous, we saw some interesting skin galavanic responses when some of the younger men were playing it. [laughter]

PSB: Heavy Rain is the last time we’ve seen this kind of branching story. Was Heavy Rain an influence for you at all?
WB: I think Heavy Rain is a great innovator in interactive narrative, [the team] is phenomenally good. David Cage is a great leader in that, so yeah, we definitely took some inspiration there.

PSB: The game seems to have a good sense of humor, such as that scene where you use PlayStation Move to begin disrobing your girlfriend.
WB: We keep coming back to the game being unashamedly a teen horror. If we didn’t do that stuff, I think that people would feel cheated. We’ve got to go there, we’ve got to do it. People see teen horror movies as date movies, and we’re trying to do the same thing here….To us, the three words of teen horror are scary-sexy-funny. Things like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream…on TV, Buffy or Supernatural. All of those have the same sort of feel — they’re teen horror.

Subscription Links:

• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe via RSS here
• Download the MP3 here on PS3, PS Vita or PC (Right-Click->Save As)

We wrap up our Gamescom 2012 coverage this week with a trio of scintillating new interviews with some of the the stars of the show. Self-proclaimed “teen horror” adventure Until Dawn brought the house down in Cologne, fusing immersive PlayStation Move-based exploration and immersive puzzle-solving. Executive Creative Director Will Byles joins us to share details on this thriller where the fate of the main cast lies entirely in your hands.

Then, Insomniac’s Shaun McCabe drills into the competitive multiplayer of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, complete with new details on the game’s PS Vita version and cross-play functionality. Finally, Criterion’s Executive Producer Matt Webster runs through the finer points of Need for Speed: Most Wanted and why the PS Vita version is the spitting image of its PS3 big brother.

Of course, that’s all in addition to the normal volley of weekly info: Next week’s North American PlayStation Store releases, new “player queries” and tips, a hand-plucked PSN Gem of the Week — Nick even busts out a tough new Mystery Theme. Listen in and let us know what you think!

Stuff We Talked About

Until Dawn

Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault

Need for Speed: Most Wanted for PS Vita

YouTube for PS3

Sound Shapes

Voice chat

Dishonored

Datura

The Cast

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game
details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating
descriptions.]

• Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music. Special thanks to Astro Gaming headsets for providing audio gear.

To give you a sneak peek at what’s in store, check out our announcement trailer…

So, what did you think? We’ve been working on this game for a while now, working with Hollywood writers and US TV talent, doing our best to bring the a new horror experience to the PlayStation Move. Inspired by classic movies like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and SCREAM, we expect that Until Dawn will draw you in with its characters, chilling setting and shocking, twisted story.

On the anniversary of their friends’ disappearance, a group of classmates visit the site of the mystery to bury their ghosts and get some closure. Little do they know, they’ll end up burying each other instead…

Just like in classic horror films it’s isolated, the power’s out and the phones don’t work! You’ll play through the story as multiple characters, sometimes with a friend and sometimes on your own to discover who it is that’s intent on killing off you and your friends. It’s up to you how you play, so we don’t know how your story will go or who’ll be there with you at the end.

To play the game you’ll use the PS Move controller in a totally natural way. It’ll act as your flashlight, guiding your way through the darkness, or when you want to use something the controller will intuitively map your actions in the real world to those of your character’s hand in the game world.

We really hope you’re as psyched about Until Dawn as we are, coming next year exclusively to PlayStation 3. Get ready to be scared.

Check out all the news coming out of Gamescom 2012 on PlayStation.Blog

Media Molecule’s New Project Revealed: Tearaway for PS Vita

See the First Trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified on PS Vita

PlayStation All-Stars Gamescom Reveal: Dante, Sackboy, Spike, Ratchet and Clank

Gamescom: New The Last of Us Trailer

Watch the GamesCom Trailer for Killzone: Mercenary

PSone Classics Coming to PS Vita via the latest System Software Update (v1.80)

The Curtain is Raised on Puppeteer, a New PS3 Adventure

PlayStation Plus Coming to PS Vita, Online Game Save Storage Getting Upgraded

Are You Ready for the God of War: Ascension Multiplayer Beta?