Amy: The Faces of Horror

If you’ve been following the development of Amy, you probably know that we’re trying to make a unique survival-horror game for PSN. As explained in my previous post, we’re working hard to bring a different gameplay based on a deep interaction between Lana, a young woman who is the lead character, and Amy, an eight year-old child, set in a horrific environment. Soon, we’ll give you many more details on some of the key elements of the gameplay.

But for now, we wanted to show you that, even for a downloadable game, we’re trying our best to bring you real flesh-and-blood characters. You can meet two of them in the new videos below.

First, a quick primer on the world of Amy. It’s 2035, and global warming has intensified beyond mankind’s control. Floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are claiming lives with increasing regularity. And in Silver City, the site of a recent comet impact, a mysterious viral outbreak has begun transforming a large percentage of the populace into horrific monstrosities. This is the final straw for Father John, a priest in Silver City: He’s convinced that the outbrerak is final proof that Armageddon is near. From his shelter-church, he tries to organize the human survivors to resist what he sees as a demonic invasion. The second character, Professor Raymond, is much more mysterious. Lana, the lead character of Amy, often refers to Raymond when speaking on the phone with another mysterious character, Lavigna – a woman she seems to rely on.

As you can see in the videos above, our goal is to create characters that convey emotions and that show their feelings physically, not just through dialogue or scenarios. Moreso than any other genre, horror games are based on what characters want – not just what they are doing.

For secondary characters, it might be ok to take a more traditional approach, to make them what you’d expect. But for the primary characters, facial features, expressions and the way they move are things we spent a lot of time on. Above all else, one of the most important aspects lies in their eyes. As you can see from the video, Father John’s eyes are not only highly detailed, but appear very human – at least, as close as we could get! And this is not just a technical and artistic challenge; the subtlety of human expression has a real impact in the game, especially for Amy and Lana.

As you probably already know, Amy is impaired – she doesn’t speak. Hence, in order for Amy to communicate with the player, her body language and facial expressions are of critical importance. If Amy sees a gruesome creature behind you, she won’t have to yell: you will know, just by looking at her face and body language, that she’s terrified.

Stay tuned for more details on Amy. In the meantime, support us on Facebook and check out the official website. See you soon!