How Fear the Spotlight channelled 90s scares and became the year’s cosiest indie horror game

I sat down with the team at Cozy Game Pals and Blumhouse Games to find out how Fear the Spotlight became the spearhead for an all-new movement in indie game horror.

In a year stacked with excellent indies that pay tribute to survival horror games of the 90s, Fear the Spotlight has carved out its own niche by distilling the supernatural story of two friends into a gorgeous lo-fi aesthetic.

When Bryan and Crista of Cozy Game Pals initially released Fear the Spotlight on Steam last September, they thought they were done with their unabashed throwback to 90s survival horror. Little did they know then that revered movie studio, Blumhouse Productions, was looking to break into video game publishing – and had enjoyed the pair’s debut indie just as much as players. The two sides quickly got talking about how they could enhance this initial version of Fear the Spotlight together should the two-person team be given more time. Alongside developing it for multiple languages and launching on additional platforms, Cozy Game Pals set itself the task of introducing new story content to show another side of Amy and Vivian’s school-set horror tale.

The result is the Fear the Spotlight that released recently, which just so happens to be one of the year’s best horror games (indie or otherwise). Centred on Vivian and her friend Amy’s descent into the supernatural, it isn’t long before the two’s decision to use a Ouija board sees Vivian traverse the school’s labyrinthine environments while avoiding obstacles and solving puzzles in the effort to save the Amy. Fear the Spotlight may be lo-fi in terms of art style, but it still packs in plenty of scares just in time for this year’s Halloween season.

To learn more about this unusual road to re-release, Fear the Spotlight’s unique polygonal aesthetic, and what the game means for future Blumhouse Games titles going forward, I spoke to Bryan Singh and Crista Castro of Cozy Game Pals, as well as the publisher’s creative lead Louise Blain.

At what point did you know that you would be Blumhouse Games' first title out the door?

Crista Castro: Pretty early on. As we were having conversations with them and figuring out how much time we would have working on it they were like, “this could potentially be the game we release in 2024”.

Bryan Singh: I’m guessing that’s part of what they saw in this game initially. They saw a game they were excited about and was pretty much done. Maybe they could squeeze it into the front of their lineup? And so when they came up to us with an offer of more time it wasn’t a ton of time, it was a year-ish to ship the game again. It’s insane how much we were able to do. We almost doubled the size of the game with that extra year.

Louise Blain: What’s exciting for us is by having Fear the Spotlight as our first release it really epitomises everything that we want our games to be. Bryan and Crista are incredible, creative humans. The incredible characters, great narrative, tactile gameplay… everything about it is juicy and brilliant and you won’t want to stop. It ticks everything you’d want indie horror games to be. In that way, we couldn’t imagine a better first game.

The retro VHS aesthetic is having a renaissance in games currently. What do you think it is about it that works so well?

Crista: We hadn’t played any [others] until we had already finished our own project, so it was really fun to see everyone else’s interpretation. Really, it feels like the nostalgia of the horror we had growing up – the Silent Hills, the Goosebumps, the Are You Afraid of the Darks. Playing through Silent Hill 3 had such a huge impact on me, because as a young teenage girl I saw the protagonist of this horror game as a young teenage girl. That just meant a lot to me. To see her on this crazy journey that was really gross was a huge influence.

Bryan: I think our formative memories of this genre really are basically Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and the memories we have of those games are the vibe, atmosphere and tone. We looked at what we could accomplish as a two-person team. Crista literally did all the art for the entire game – all the environments, all the characters, all the textures. We had to find an art style that lets her do that, and the tools have gotten good enough that what’s possible for a small team like ours is raising.

As we settled on the art style for pragmatic reasons, the more we played with it and the more we explored, the more we realised we can really tailor it to emphasise the horror in our game. Having the polygons wobble a little bit, or the colours dither out into the darkness, they all added to the tension of the horror that we really love.

In terms of the art style, did you ever limit yourself in accordance with what was possible during the PS1 era?

Crista: This is technically my first game, so I think as far as rules go I didn’t have any. It was looking back with rosy glasses about how I remembered games looking back then. I didn’t want to be influenced too much by things, but seeing big pixels was a big thing, and being able to see the angularity of the models. Like Bryan was saying, a lot of it was time. “How much time do I have? I’ve got to get this out of the door so I can keep writing and make other content”. It was really turning it down just enough so that when my brain starts to fill in details, that’s the sweet spot.

Bryan: My observation from seeing Crista work is that it was very gut based. She’ll have Photoshop up next to the game running, so she’ll have a character propped up against a poster for example, and then she’ll be painting the poster and seeing it update in real time. This let her see if it was too much or not enough detail, then she’ll start to feather the level of detail that clicks with her and then let it stay there.

Are there challenges with scaring people using such a scaled-back aesthetic?

Crista: I think it’s more about the situation we put you in. It doesn’t necessarily matter if its full HD or it’s showing you fully the ghost. You don’t need to see the muscles in the face to know that, “oh, that thing is… I don’t want to go there”. It’s about really putting you in that situation and if you’re willing to play along with our game and stay immersed, we can really evoke those feelings of fear.

Bryan: Our art style is very situational, atmospheric, and a lot of the environment and atmosphere comes through ambiguity and through sound. Our audio is actually still quite modern in terms of design, which helps your brain fill in a lot of the gaps and make guesses about what’s going on. Even though the visual art style is retro inspired, a lot of elements are contemporary. It still leverages a lot of things that game designers have learned over the years.

It’s a tough time for the industry right now. What does success look like for you as an indie studio?

Crista: For us it’s sustainability; being able to do this forever. This is our dream job, this is what we want to do. We love working together and making things together. If we can make enough to keep living our lives and keep making games that would be beyond successful for us. That’d be perfect.

Bryan: We left pretty prestigious and well-paying studio jobs to do this because we saw this as more fulfilling. The hope is to continue that fulfilment. Continue to be able to do things that are for us and hopefully invite other people to share in our joy with the things we find exciting and inspiring. We’ve tried to operate lean, and we’re not just trying to grow, grow, grow or earn, earn, earn. The mentality of Blumhouse seems to be pretty similar. Their team is very small and scrappy. Each person there is probably doing more than they should be. They’re trying to support independent creators.

Finally, do you see the future of the studio as exclusively making horror games?

Crista: The name Cozy Game Pals really describes us as people and not necessarily our games. I think I’d be willing to make [another] horror game because I’m always down for horror, but we also love variety. We love action games, strategy games, and sim games. We’re just trying to find the fun in what excites us and what that is next we’re not quite sure. We’re still having fun right now.

Bryan: I’m excited to see what our take on different genres is. Fear the Spotlight is still a horror game with some elements of our personalities injected in there. I’m excited to see us do that with other genres and other styles of games. I’m also interested in doing a straight-up cosy game. Our tastes are so varied that I wouldn’t rule out more horror in the future, but I wouldn’t commit to just horror.

Fear the Spotlight is available to play now on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC.