Blog
Notes from the tape.
Essays, build notes, and the story behind the footage we recover.
Essays
Recent posts
Essay
Dread, not jump scares: the horror that makes you look
Jump scares borrow a second of your heartbeat and give it back. Dread keeps it. Here is why the slow, scanning kind of fear lasts longer — and why we built a whole game around it.
Essay
Train your nerve: how to play scarier games without flinching (and why it is worth it)
Being easily scared is not a fixed trait. It is a response you can work with — by breathing differently, reframing the jolt, and choosing your conditions. Here is a practical, no-nonsense guide to handling fear in horror games, grounded in the actual science of the startle response.
Essay
Horror games to play with friends, and why fear is better shared
Fear shrinks when you are alone and grows when you are in a group all feeling it at once. Here is why horror is one of the best things to do with friends — and how a six-digit code turns a quiet, dreadful game into a loud room.
Essay
How to play Spot Evil: a guide to hunting the evil in 360°
A scene loads in the dark. Something in it is wrong. Here is exactly how Spot Evil works — the controls, the modes, the scoring — and a few honest tips for finding the evil before the tape runs out.
Essay
The sound of almost nothing: designing horror that never tells you when to be afraid
Most horror audio is a tell. The music swells, you brace, the thing appears. We built the opposite: a soundscape that refuses to warn you, that you can mute entirely, and that makes the room scarier by staying quiet. A note on why restraint is the loudest tool we have.
Essay
Hidden-object games grew up: from seek-and-find to seek-and-fear
For years the hidden-object game was a cosy, comforting thing — a cluttered desk, a list of items, a relaxing afternoon. Then someone realised the same loop, lit differently, is one of the most frightening structures in games. On the quiet horror hiding in seek-and-find.
Essay
Short horror, big dread: why a 30-second scare can stay all night
You do not need two hours to be frightened. The most durable fear often comes in the smallest dose — a single image, a few seconds of searching, one figure you find too late. On the strange power of very short horror.
Essay
Bad signal: why a degraded image frightens us more than a clear one
VHS tracking lines, dead-channel static, a face dissolving into compression noise. The worse the picture gets, the more afraid we become. Here is why low fidelity reads as more real than 4K — and why we keep a little decay in every Spot Evil scene on purpose.
Essay
The art of hiding the evil: designing horror you have to find
Make the evil too obvious and there is no game. Make it too hidden and there is no fairness. The whole craft of Spot Evil lives in the narrow band between, where a thing can be in plain sight and still go unseen. A note on how we hide it.