Cosmic horror game Rotten Flesh is a dog-owner’s worst nightmare

polygon.com:

Cosmic horror game Rotten Flesh takes the creeping survival horrors of Amnesia, Outlast, and Silent Hill and gives it a compelling twist: You’re searching for your lost dog, Roy, and the only way to track him down is to call his name. But Roy’s not the only creature who can hear you as you beckon him to return. Terrifying, flesh-eating monsters roam the sewers where Roy has escaped, and they can track you by your shouts of “Roy!” too.

Developer Steelkrill Studio — which consists of a single person — reinforces Rotten Flesh’s clever pitch by letting players use their actual voice to call their dog. The game supports microphone controls, meaning you have to shout “Roy!” to call for your furry friend.

Rotten Flesh looks like a nightmare for dog owners like me, who adopted a dog that has zero recall ability. If he (Teddy) were to ever escape, there’s a non-zero chance he’d run gleefully to his own death and never return, no matter how many times I shouted his name.

Ryan, who runs Steelkrill, isn’t a dog owner, however. The Malta-based indie dev, who studied game development while working in a factory, told me in an email, “I love dogs and used to have a chihuahua that I dearly loved when I was younger but today I have a cat named Biscuit and she’s the best sidekick ever.”

Rotten Flesh, Ryan says, is based on his love of classic horror films and video games: The Thing, Event Horizon, Silent Hill 2, Alone in the Dark, etc. His new game — Ryan’s fourth survival horror effort — is styled after games released on the original PlayStation. “These low-res poly games creeped me out way more than modern games do, so I wanted to try something like that which was what got me in creating Rotten Flesh,” he said. “I just feel right at home when making a [horror] game. I also just love also seeing people’s reactions to them.”

Part of the inspiration for implementing voice controls came from a previous game of Ryan’s, The Backrooms 1998, a found-footage survival horror game that can