Video Games
Bloober Team Talks Upcoming ‘Blair Witch’ Game
Bloober Team took everyone by surprise with their E3 announcement that they’d not only be creating a Blair Witch game for PC and Xbox One, but that they’d also be targeting August 30 for the release. That announcement didn’t exactly have a lot of meat to it, so in an interview with Eurogamer, writer Basia Kciuk and team developer Maciej Głomb sat down to do a little explaining.
According to Bloober, the project began about two years ago after the team had finished up Observer. The team was looking for a new project, and coincidentally, Lionsgate was looking for a company that would “transition…the Blair Witch cinematic universe to video games”.
With that, the Observer team was split into three, with one team focusing on Layers of Fear 2, the second team the Blair Witch game, and the third team focusing on a project “which [Bloober] can’t really talk about”.
As for what the game would be about, Kciuk stated that it was a complicated question. “So far, we focus more on the psychological layer of the story. With the original Blair Witch, there wasn’t so much of this psychological element. We observed how the characters are reacting but the film didn’t dwell on backstory. We got a great chance from Lionsgate to tell our own story. We both wanted this entrapment in a forest, this feeling of being alone, of being surrounded by something greater than you, something you can’t really fight with, and we wanted this psychological layer of the story.”
That being said, Lionsgate gave Bloober a lot of freedom with the game. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, the Blair Witch can do this, this and this.’ No. It’s like, ‘Blair Witch is this concept for us – work with it.'”
As for combat, the game will be similar in style to the mechanics of Alan Wake, but without guns. “It’s similar in the way you also have a flashlight, but in Alan Wake you have a flashlight and conventional weapons,” says Głomb. “You don’t have that here because it was not really fitting to the universe; you don’t really see anyone running with a shotgun around the Blair Witch forest. So your only weapon is a flashlight. It’s more of a way for you to get rid of the monsters, to escape them. You don’t really kill them, you fend them off.”
For inspiration, the team drew upon a variety of games. Slender Man was one inspiration, but due to the length of that game, it was only “for a moment”. “One we really liked, although it’s not a horror game, was Firewatch. It was a great adventure in a forest while being, technically, alone – you can talk with another person but otherwise you are alone out there. Although it was not scary, it was more of a mystery, it was great to look at the mechanisms, to look at the how the story unfolds, the pacing.”
The team also drew inspiration from Outlast and Silent Hills, but also films such as [REC] and Paranormal Activity.
When asked about other platforms, Głomb and Kciuk were reluctant to talk about PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch. “For now, we are focusing on Xbox and PC but we will discuss the other platforms in the future,” says Głomb. That being said, there’s always the possibility of a later release. “The Switch version [of Layers of Fear and Observer] wasn’t released at the start but it came out finally, so it might be a similar situation here.”
I’ve mentioned in multiple reviews that I’m a huge fan of the recent trend in indie gaming where developers transform typically innocuous jobs into genuinely disturbing pieces of interactive horror. That being said, I usually prefer the single player variety of these freaky job simulators, as the added chaos of online multiplayer tends to dilute scares and can even get in the way of telling a proper story – especially when you’re playing with strangers.
I think this pre-existing bias is why I was so thoroughly impressed with Happy’s Humble Burger Cult, as this disturbing fast food restaurant simulator boasts a surprisingly engaging single player mode that’s already worth the price of admission. However, the experience truly shines once you add other players into the mix and realize that the project was sculpted from the ground up to be one hell of an online party game.
Clearly inspired by multiplayer classics like Overcooked! and Phasmophobia, Scythe Dev Team’s latest release is actually a bigger and more elaborate follow-up to their cult-favorite 2021 title, Happy’s Humble Burger Farm. While the new game is similar to that first release in that it also miraculously blends the time-sensitive thrills of working as a fry cook with randomized paranormal phenomena in a twisted simulation, the added multiplayer elements and increased polish make this the definitive Happy Humble Burger experience.
Clock In, Cook Fast, Survive the Shift
In the new game, players take on the role of a masked test subject trapped inside of a procedurally generated labor experiment orchestrated by the mysterious Paragon Corporation. During your shift at a simulated fast food restaurant, you’ll be expected to prepare cleverly named dishes ranging from Meat Heater burgers to Agent Orange soda and serve them to zombie-like customers in an attempt at satisfying your automated overlords. Unfortunately for you and your minimum wage buddies, the simulation tends to degrade over time, meaning that life-threatening anomalies will inevitably take over the workplace by the end of the shift.
In gameplay terms, this means that the main loop here consists of rushing around the restaurant in first-person and taking orders from bizarre NPCs while you sort through unsanitary ingredients and questionable prep stations before the timer runs out, though you can also spit in your customers’ orders if you feel so inclined. Meanwhile, you’ll also have to deal with common kitchen mishaps like grease fires and interdimensional pest control.
The game also reacts to your microphone, with certain words and phrases activating anomalies that can both help and hinder your progress as you attempt to hit your quota for the day. Naturally, this is only really a factor when playing online, but there’s plenty of opportunity for emergent gameplay here as the unpredictable nature of co-op means that there will be plenty of unintentional incantations going on in the background.
Then we get to my favorite part of the experience in both the game and real-life labor: the final moments of each shift where you have to ritualistically close up shop before you’re allowed to exit the simulation. During these climactic sequences, players have to run to turn off appliances, take out the trash, and perform an assortment of other seemingly menial chores while being chased by a demonic manager with a mean streak and a nasty habit of preventing you from walking away with a paycheck.
Infinite Replay Value in the World’s Worst Restaurant
In between shifts, players will find themselves transported back to a dystopian hub/lobby area where they can engage in a multitude of mini-games ranging from blackjack to janky basketball, and even purchase useful items as well as cosmetic upgrades. It’s here that you realize how the experience is specifically tailored for multiplayer, as this space is obviously meant to be a bustling base of operations for a group of weary co-workers trying to have a good time despite their hellish predicament.
This highly detailed hub also contains most of the lore and story elements that provide narrative context for the overall experience. I honestly felt kind of lost during my first few hours with the title since I had never actually finished Scythe Dev Team’s original Happy’s Humble Burger game, but I ended up looking forward to more of their surprisingly in-depth worldbuilding here after each shift, with the story only getting wackier the deeper I fell into this satirical rabbit hole.
This steady drip-feed of new content, including terrifying/humorous collectables like in-universe VHS tapes, is enough to keep you going for several shifts despite the relatively simple controls and mechanics. The stylish visuals and ominous atmosphere also help to cover up most of the title’s indie blemishes, such as occasionally wonky physics, but it’s really the addicting gameplay loop that’ll keep you hooked to Happy’s Humble Burger Cult.
You’ll inevitably find yourself wanting to fulfill orders faster and faster as you make more money and continue to serve customers in increasingly bizarre situations. Being able to compete/collaborate with friends gives you even more incentive to keep coming back to work -especially once you unlock a unique outfit for your masked guinea pig- with the whole thing feeling a lot like a team-building exercise from hell (but in a good way).
Couple that manic multiplayer energy with procedurally generated challenges and six unique restaurants to manage and you’ve got an interactive horror-comedy experience with nearly limitless replay value.
That being said, I have a feeling that Happy’s Humble Burger Cult might just cause the end of a few friendships due to the game’s high-stakes approach to the junk food industry.
Happy’s Humble Burger Cult is available now on Steam.
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