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‘DreadOut’ Devs Inspired by Indonesian Myth, PS2 Era Survival Horror

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Written by T. Blake Braddy, @blakebraddy

DreadOut is an Indonesian-developed survival horror game that sends players into an abandoned town with only a smartphone to protect them from the souls of tormented spirits. For all intents and purposes, it’s very much like a playable J-Horror flick ported to PC, complete with some interesting character designs and hair-raising jump scares.

The first act was released a few weeks ago, and although the game didn’t quite reach its potential – you can read my review here – the team at Digital Happiness has been nothing but humble about developing their first full-length game. One only need go to the Steam Community Page to see a group of people readily interacting with their fans to make a great game experience possible. It’s the sort of thing that makes you want to root for them in the future.

For this interview, DreadOut’s creators talk Indonesian mythology, the importance of player feedback, and the release of the game’s crucial second act. The game is available on Steam for $14.99 on PC.

BD: Recently, survival games have made a comeback, but DreadOut in particular feels much more like a concerted effort to make a horror game of a distinct era. What inspired the team to do this kind of game?

Well, most of us had a blast with video games from that era. Throwing our controller when playing Resident Evil, getting that eerie feeling playing Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Siren, Rule of Rose. I think that they tend to stick in our memories forever, And one thing is that we actually had enough playing FPS games these days, so we wanted to create what we love in a third person horror / survival game.

BD: What is the game development scene like in Indonesia?

It’s still in a developing stage. There’s no AAA developers around, mostly just for mobile games, advert gaming, and such, and there’s no government funding for games developers.

We have a lot potential talent in our country, but many of them went abroad since there’s no real game development scene over here.

DreadOut_I2

BD: The enemy designs were pretty novel-looking, kind of like Miyazaki mixed up with Parasite Eve. Which of the ghosts do you think best embodies the overall tone and feel of the game?

Is that so? Thank you very much. Hmm, I think that’s a difficult question to answer, since right now, it’s only half of our release. Basically there’s two main ghost concepts that are present in DreadOut, supernatural beings, and physical beings. Since we’re avoiding the gory and bloody stuff in DreadOut, I think the mysterious lady in red fits the tone and feel of DreadOut the best.

BD: How much of the Indonesian mythology presented in the game is true to the Indonesian experience? Will more folk legends and so forth be layered into the next release?

For Act 1, almost 80% of it is based on Indonesian myths. We have 17000 islands spread around our country, more than 50 languages, 250 million population, Naturally, it is very interesting to us and we look forward to digging those stories and present them in our game.

BD: How did you come to decide to release a manga alongside the game? Did that come out of the Indiegogo campaign?

Yes, it’s actually a working collaboration with our local fans. We wanted to expand the lore of DreadOut in a different timeline, with different characters and so on, and certain items in our game’s backstory are also revealed in the manga.

BD: The game’s first act seemed to be intentionally secretive about some of the plot details, perhaps in an attempt to keep players guessing. Can you give us a preview of where the second act will take players or what can be expected?

The second act will be our concluding act for Linda’s journey through that haunted town. She will meet her friends, perhaps even save them. Linda will encounter more terrifying enemies, also she will battle the mysterious lady in red again in a non-stop horror experience and hopefully, this time, less frustrating.

BD: Do you have a set release date yet for the second act?

We are aiming for later this year for the release.

BD: The team at Digital Happiness has been really focused on interacting with the community since DreadOut’s release. How does that sort of interaction affect how you look at your own product?

Since this is our first major title, just like with our demo, we take input and suggestions seriously. While we’re so head-over-heels when people like our game, it kind of feels like a stab in the heart when somebody got angered by or hated our game. I guess those kinds of feelings are common when we’re involved too deep into our development. Overall, it was a huge but humbling experience for us developing the game.

BD: Does community feedback right now affect how you are approaching the final tweaks for the next act of the game?

Aside from our limitations, we want players to taste the whole of experience of DreadOut. Beginning from the demo, Linda entering the haunted town, and our next concluding act. We prefer not to label it as DreadOut and DreadOut 2 and so on, since DreadOut was conceived as a finished story.

Our initial design for the second act will focus more into the horror “action.” the sense of dread will arise more during battles with the variety of ghosts in different areas. The puzzles will be more subtle. In our first act, we wanted to give players a sense of dread and helplessness with trying to exit the school. As for community feedback, we’re planning to add those “Limbo” messages, Limbo’s length, ghost vignette, blue vignette, and camera glitch mechanics as optional. In our community, part of it welcomed them and even wanted more challenges, and some want the game to be less frustrating.

DreadOut_I3

BD: What kind of feedback has been most crucial so far?

Right now the major complaint for us is the Limbo journey and some messages that some say break the immersion. Some are angered with one particular entry (We actually put it there as a tongue-in-cheek message for not taking the game too seriously even when it’s definitely a horror game.)

Some are also really frustrated by the Scissor Phantom battle. It’s not that we aren’t aware of any of these things. For the Limbo journey, actually we’ve already prepared it with a remedy for shortening the limbo journey drastically by collecting certain items. As for the Scissor Phantom, there’s actually a strategy to defeat it, it doesn’t depend on luck. But overall we are very happy that everyone have been so supportive, our community, our reviewers, we really don’t know how to express our thank you to all you.

BD: What sorts of changes are going into DreadOut right now?

Aside from preparing for Mac and Win 32, minor tweaking, mostly for GUI options, inverting mouse, gamepad optimization and so on.

BD: Is it difficult to wade through all the user comments – on Steam, say – and be able to understand what might need to be tweaked?

Of course, but the great thing is that our community has supported us, some users even helped us out by collecting all the inputs, pros and cons, it really help us lots.

BD: How about taking it to consoles?

We would love too. But since PlayStation license isn’t available for our region, we will need a helping hand from publishers to do that. But I think it would be wise for us to finish our second act first and then later porting the game into different platforms.

BD: What’s next for Digital Happiness?

To get a 10/10 review from Bloody Disgusting. Just kidding! But seriously, we hope that the second act will change a lot of minds.

BD: Are there plans for more DreadOut, or is the team going to branch out and do a new IP?

Yeah hopefully we can branch it more into some kind of “Dread” series, Dreadnight, DreadEye. Events which will happen after DreadOut ends.

Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

Interviews

“I Don’t See Retiring from This” – Joe Bob Briggs Talks New “Last Drive-In” Format and the Show’s Future [Interview]

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Hey everybody, have you heard the news? Joe Bob is back in town!

The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has returned for its sixth season on Shudder. While the show’s format has been slightly revised adopting a new biweekly schedule with one film instead of a double feature the beloved horror host’s approach is much the same.

“It didn’t really change anything,” Briggs tells Bloody Disgusting. “We were crowding all of our movies into 10 weeks once a year and then having specials, and we found that people would rather have more weeks. It’s actually more movies than we had before.

“And some of the people on the East coast fall asleep in the second movie,” he laughs. “It’s about a five-hour show when it’s a double feature because we talk so much. Also, it’s hard to get thematic double features every single time. So our specials are still double features, but our regular episodes are single features.”

The season kicked off last week with The Last Drive-In Live: A Tribute to Roger Corman, celebrating the legendary filmmaker’s first 70 years in Hollywood with a double feature of 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1983’s Deathstalker. The special was filmed live in front of a fervent audience of Briggs’ fan base lovingly dubbed the Mutant Family at Joe Bob’s Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas last October.

In addition to his usual hosting duties, Briggs conducted a career-spanning interview with Corman and his wife, fellow producer Julie Corman. They were also joined by one of Corman’s oldest friends and collaborators, Bruce Dern. In a heartfelt moment of mutual admiration, Briggs and Corman exchanged lifetime achievement awards on hubcaps.

“I’ve known Roger for about 35 years, so I’ve only known him for half of his career,” Briggs chuckles. In his long history of reviewing, interviewing, and talking about Corman and his legendary work, one emblematic encounter sticks out to Briggs.

“I remember the very first time I went to the Corman studio, which was a lumber yard on Venice Boulevard. He had a standing set for a spaceship control room, a standing set for a strip club, and I think he had one other one, and then he had all of his editing facilities there, but it was still a lumber yard. They had not really changed any of the buildings or anything.

“He’s showing me around the studio, and we were walking past a pile of debris, and I said, ‘Roger, is that the mutant from Forbidden World?’ It had just been thrown over in a corner. And he just said, ‘Yes, Joe Bob, I believe that is. He was apparently no longer needed.’ I said, ‘Roger, you gotta get with it! That stuff is worth money.’ But he was like, ‘When the movie’s over, the movie’s over.’ That was Roget to a T.”

At least part of Corman’s longevity can be attributed to his shrewd business practices and pragmatic approach to the industry, which has included working in every conceivable genre of cinema. “I couldn’t think of a single genre he has not made,” Briggs says.

“When we did this interview at the Jamboree, I said, ‘I’m gonna name the genre, and you tell me what you love about that genre,’ and every comment that he made involved money and box office performance,” he snickers. “None of it was involved with love of cinema, although I did get him to say that his favorite genre is a genre that he didn’t dabble in much other than his first movie [1954’s Highway Dragnet], and that was film noir.”

While the fourth annual Drive-In Jamboree is still in the planning stage, Briggs is delighted by the event’s continued success. “The Jamboree is something that we literally just threw together. We’ve had three of them now. It’s something where we just show up and try to come up with programming for each day.

But I really think the Jamboree is more about the mutant family meeting the mutant family. It’s more about people who know each other online gathering and partying with each other in person. It’s not so much about what movies we have. I mean, we always have an anniversary movie, and we always have some special guests and everything, but it’s more about the gathering of the mutants. It’s fun from that point of view. They’re exhausting, I can tell you that.”

The zeal among Briggs’ audience has only grown over the years, from hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, to MonsterVision on TNT from 1996 to 2000, and The Last-Drive-In on Shudder since 2018. “I’m amazed, having been in the business for this many years, that I still have a show at this time, because they say you can’t repeat TV,” Briggs notes.

“Nobody wants to see old TV, and yet I’ve done the same show three times on three different networks, and every time I try to change it everyone says, ‘No, no, don’t change it! That’s the part we love.’ I always want to do something new, and I’m always told, ‘No, you’re the CEO of Coca Cola who went to New Coke.’ You can’t do that. People will revolt. So we’re still doing it.

“It’s one of the few shows that I know of that’s just sort of grown organically over, gosh, almost 40 years. We’ve just added elements to the show. We try things. If something doesn’t work, we throw it away. If something works, we do it forever!”

The mutant family will be happy to know that Briggs plans to continue hosting and writing about movies for as long as he’s able to. “I don’t see retiring from this or retiring from writing. I’m primarily a writer, and the good thing about writing is long after they don’t wanna see you on TV anymore you can still write.

“The difference today, though, is I was pretty much the only guy doing genre films when I started. Now, there are academics that do it. There are entire books written about Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper and even lesser names than those, and there are, of course, a massive number of websites, including your own, so that when something comes out today, there’s immediately a hundred reviews of it; whereas in 1982, I was sort of the only guy, because the movies were considered disposable trash. So I have been surpassed in my deep knowledge, because who can keep up with all that? It’s impossible!”

Diana Prince, who serves as Briggs’ co-host Darcy the Mail Girl and was instrumental in getting him back in the hosting chair, has been promoted to an associate producer this season. “She was sort of always the associate producer, but I guess they finally gave her the title,” Briggs explains.

“Diana Prince is in on all the decisions about programming. I always listen to Austin Jennings, the director, and Diana Prince, the mail girl, because they come from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of movies they wanna watch, and we try to strike a balance between. You know, she’s not gonna vote for Possession, and he’s not gonna vote for Mountaintop Motel Massacre,” he chortles.

“They’re probably the principal advisors, as far as what we show. Of course, [Diana] has a lot of social media clout, and she’s extremely knowledgeable about pop culture. Wow! She has seen everything. She’s seen more than I’ve seen!”

While surprises are part of the fun of The Last Drive-In, Briggs previews some of what’s in store this season. “The place we normally live is the neglected ’80 slasher, and we still live there,” he assures. “But we’re gonna pay a lot more attention to the ’70s especially. I’ve always thought the ’70s are more interesting than the ’80s anyway. And we’re gonna pay attention to some really recent stuff.”

He teases, “We’re gonna bring back Joe Bob’s Summer School, which is something that we used to do at MonsterVision. And we may have a marathon. There’s a possibility of that. But I’ll be digging this new format of being on every other week between now and at least up to Labor Day.”

While Briggs’ hosting format hasn’t changed much across four decades, the world around him certainly has and that’s why The Last Drive-In remains relevant. He points out, “In the era of streaming, where everything is menus and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, we are that thing called a curator that can direct you to the fun places on the spectrum of streaming.

“Streaming is very confusing for people, and a lot of people don’t like it for that reason. I hope what we’re doing is cutting through the weeds and bringing things into perspective. And, you know, it’s just more fun to watch a movie with us!” he concludes with a Texas-sized grin.

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