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Here’s Your Horror Game Release Schedule for March

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Hey, you. Yeah, you. You like horror games? Sure, sure, me too. I’m sure you remember February, and how it was a darn fine month for us horror fans. It gifted us with Dying Light: The Following, The Town of Light and Layers of Fear, among a handful of other memorable titles. That was lovely, but you know about March, right? Well, it’s here, and it’s going to be even better.

Here, let me prove it to you.

Heavy Rain

I was surprised when I realized it’s been five years since the interactive thriller Heavy Rain released on the PS3, but it’s true. It’s also true that every one of us is creeping ever closer to our inevitable deaths, and that’s a horrifying aspect of life that gets explored in by this very game.

As of today, you can also get Quantic Dreams’ other cinematic movie-game, Beyond: Two Souls, with the Heavy Rain & Beyond: Two Souls Collection. It wasn’t as well-received, but it does star the reliable talents of Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe.

Release Date: March 1 (PS4)

Mortal Kombat XL

Mortal Kombat XL is the bigger, more badass edition of the game that outsold everything in 2015, I assume, because I said it’s “a lot of fun” in my review. Master wordsmith over here.

The XL bit means it comes bundled with every character that’s currently available in the base game and as DLC — Jason Voorhees, Predator, Tremor, Tanya, and their respective alternate costumes — along with a handful of brand new additions to the fighting roster, including Bo’Rai Cho, Triborg, Leatherface and a Xenomorph.

In addition to all that, you’ll get the Apocalypse Skin Pack, all available DLC packs and the option to download the Medieval Skin Pack and Pit Stage for free. Good luck leaving your house.

Release Date: March 1 (PS4, XBO)

UnderDread

I’ll admit this one snuck up on me. It happens. If you’re not familiar with it either, I’d very much like to introduce you to a first-person horror game set in the early 18th century called UnderDread. The game follows a man whose daughter goes missing, forcing him to travel to an ancient castle that’s somehow linked to the disappearances of local children.

Release Date: March 1 (PC)

Kholat

Developer IMGN.PRO’s psychological horror game Kholat has been simmering on Steam since last June, and now it’s just about ready to make its way to the PS4. Inspired by the deeply troubling tragedy that claimed the lives of nine men and women whose bodies were found on the slopes of the slopes of Kholat Syakhl, or “Dead Mountain”, in the Ural mountain range in 1959, Kholat benefits from some genuinely unnerving source material.

It’s also narrated by the one and only Sean Bean. Winter is coming.

Release Date: March 8 (PS4)

The Guest

Let’s move away from ports and bundles for a hot sec to talk about an original horror game called The Guest. Set in the 80’s, this “gloomy adventure” game locks you in a hotel room so it can break you with challenging puzzles, riddles and a general sense of unease. This isn’t a traditional horror game, but it does seem like the sort of experience that could get under your skin.

In related news, its demo is scheduled to go live on Steam tomorrow.

Release Date: March 10 (PC)

Moving Hazard

Illfonic quietly announced a release date for their multiplayer horror game Moving Hazard earlier this week, a squad-based shooter set after an apocalyptic event has killed off most of humanity, leaving what’s left of us to fight over the planet’s scarce life-sustaining resources.

In doing so, we’ve come up with a way to enlist the undead hordes, weaponizing them in a war for survival. Illfonic is planning on keeping Moving Hazard on Steam Early Access until the end of the summer so they can make it “look and play like a big AAA shooter game.” according to a post on its Steam page. This will allow them to develop it using feedback from the community.

Release Date: March 10 (PC)

Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh – Chapter 2

When Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh released on Steam in August, it was broken up into three chapters. The game’s second chapter, The Mansion, will be added to the main game later this month.

Release Date: March 17 (PC)

At the Mountains of Madness

The first in a new wave of Lovecraftian horror games is almost here, and I sincerely hope they don’t meet the same fate as Guillermo del Toro’s InSANE, or those two Dark Corners of the Earth sequels we never got. Whatever happens, you can find me at the Mountains of Madness.

Release Date: March 25 (Steam Early Access)

Resident Evil 6

A week ago, Capcom unveiled their plans to bring Resident Evil 6 and its two predecessors to the PS4 and Xbox One in the opposite order of their initial release — meaning the best of them, Resident Evil 4, won’t get here until the fall — because they’ve developed a taste for our salty tears.

Release Date: March 29 (PS4, XBO)

The Walking Dead: Michonne – Ep 2: Give No Shelter

Telltale’s spin-off series The Walking Dead: Michonne continues this month, and you can bet it’ll bring buckets of gore with a side of feels. Also, Samira Wiley is the best.

Release Date: March 29 (PC, PS3, PS4, 360, XBO, iOS, Android)

Crowdfunding Campaigns

That’s it for the new releases, now it’s onto what’s new in crowdfunding. We’ll begin with the first-person psychological thriller The Works of Mercy, in which a serial killer will pull the ultimate prank phone call by having you lure strippers to your home for sexy murder.

This game looks delightfully twisted, and with more than two weeks left to raise the remaining $2,000, I already have my script memorized and a local sex-line on speed dial.

If The Works of Mercy gives you a tingly sensation, you can support it on Kickstarter.

The second game I’d like to tell you about may also be one of the most ambitious horror games I’ve seen in some time. Every game I’ve listed above wants to tell you a story, but the asymmetrical multiplayer horror game Kaiden is more interested in seeing what you can come up with.

The horrors in Kaidan are community driven. This means anyone with some free time and a macabre imagination can become a storyteller by submitting a tale of terror so it can be transformed into a horror game within a game. This, my friends, is what super cool industry insiders such as myself refer to as Spookygameception.

It’s a nightmarish twist on the idea that’s worked before in games like LittleBigPlanet and Project Spark, which both rely almost exclusively on content that’s been curated by the community. A number of things will need to come together for this to work, including an active community — a rarity among horror games — that produces and promotes a steady stream of content that its “Kaiden System” will then have to successfully transcribe into an effective horror game. That’s a lot.

If it works, this could be huge. But first, it’ll need $75k from us. My fingers are crossed.

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Interviews

“Chucky” – Devon Sawa & Don Mancini Discuss That Ultra-Bloody Homage to ‘The Shining’

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Chucky

Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.

If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.

Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series. 

Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with CasperI was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”

For Sawa, “Chucky is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.

Devon Sawa trapped in elevator in "Chucky"

CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)

“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue, Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”

Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this, the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.

It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?

“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two, Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”

Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”

Devon Sawa as dead President James Collins in Chucky season three

CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)

The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.

“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot, the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”

The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.

I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque, Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost, and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneathwhich is a movie I love.”

The finale of  “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.

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