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‘Dementium’ Could Have Been a ‘Silent Hill’ Game
Renegade Kid is a name you may recognize if you’re familiar with the Dementium series of (mostly) mobile horror games. The developer clearly drew some inspiration from survival horror classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, with its emphasis on exploration, atmosphere and puzzle-solving. According to the studio’s co-founder, Jools Watsham, this relation runs a little deeper than that.
Dementium: The Ward was originally pitched as a new Silent Hill game for the Nintendo DS, before it became its own thing.
“Little known fact: We pitched “The Ward” to Konami in 2007 as something that could have become a Silent Hill DS game,” explains Watsham in a recent tweet.
IGN was able to get more context from him.
“Our goal was always to release The Ward as an original game, but we were also open to the idea of turning it into a licensed horror game and approached Konami to see if they wanted to work together to mold it into a Silent Hill game for the Nintendo DS.”
The publisher agreed to a meeting, but it sounds like they might have done so as a courtesy. A few minutes in and Konami decided they weren’t the right fit for Silent Hill, I’m assuming, because they had plans to bury it themselves.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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