Building a sense of atmospheric dread with the liminal spaces of Interior Worlds

gamedeveloper.com:

Interior Worlds is a journey through liminal spaces—locations where you transition from one place to another. In it, you’re tasked with taking pictures of seemingly-ordinary locations and things. From the eerie drone of nearby lights and machines to the pounding heartbeat you hear as you get close to a photo op, it feels like you’re creeping closer to some unseen horror. But will you ever actually find that creature?

Game Developer caught up with developer Sodaraptor to talk about the haunting power you can evoke using unclear visuals, how they drew from background ambient noise to create the game’s chilling atmosphere, and how they carefully created a sense of unease by getting players to photograph seemingly-ordinary places.

Game Developer: Interior Worlds sees players exploring liminal spaces and taking pictures of them. What inspired you to create this experience?

Ever since the big liminal space movement started back in late 2019/early 2020, I've been super interested in the topic. Several times, I even found myself going out to physical locations to take my own photos with a similar aesthetic. Eventually, I formed this idea of going around and doing the same thing in an urbex-style game where you're seemingly all alone.

How did you decide on the locations you wanted to create? What drew you to the late '90s-early 00s era that the game takes place in?

At first, I just drew up a few different moodboards with various "popular" liminal space locations, such as a parking garage and hotel. Then, I started taking more inspiration from places I had actually been to while growing up that gave off that same sort of feeling. So you could say a lot of my decisions were influenced by my nostalgia and childhood memories of that