Among history, there's been some games that had a Mental Health department to assist during game design so the game can be more accurate to what they were trying to portrait. Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice is one great example. So in our case, we thought. What if we bring a Psychologist to our team and create something different with horror, explore deeper into the mind of the players and people in general to understand Psychologicaly what's fear to them. How can they relate to the characters they are playing and see, and that's how the role for Psychologist Advisor was created in our team, and how finally our team was completed with the addition of this last member.
Having a Psychologist Advisor helps a lot, so now we can fine tune situations and transform them into environments, music, Voice Acting and sounds. Creating an eerie environment and making the immersion feel more real, so now the players can get involved into what the protagonist and the antagonist may be feeling and what drive them to do what they to. Feel their anxiety, their fear. The same way as if this was happening to them.
Using psychology in horror is not something easy to do, there's a lot of research that has to be done in order to explore the unconscious and understand how different players will react to different stimulous, but in the end using Psychology is really rewarding, because you can see how deep you can connect with players, the emotional feelings that can bring. For us gaming meant a lot while growing up, a nice escape and a happy memory. Now we are trying to give all of that back to the gaming world while creating something that can make people forget of everything for a few minutes and get immersed into this weird psychological world.
In your case, How deep you want to get involved with the character you are playing?
Wanna check our work and try to see how you feel playing our demo? come give it a try:
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