Deep Dive: Chasing an authentic cinematic experience with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Game Developer Deep Dives are an ongoing series with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren’t really that simple at all.
Earlier installments cover topics such as how indie developer Mike Sennott cultivated random elements in the branching narrative of Astronaut: The Best , how the developers of Meet Your Maker avoided crunch by adopting smart production practices , and how the team behind Dead Cells turned the game into a franchise by embracing people-first values .
In this edition, l ead game designer at Sumo Nottingham, Steve Kirby, breaks down how the team took an iconic IP and turned it into a horror game.
When The Texas Chain Saw Massacre film was released in 1974, it was met with heaps of controversy, as director Tobe Hooper and writer Kim Henkel’s macabre masterpiece shocked the world. Filled with tension and unease, the film immediately gained a huge, incredibly loyal fanbase and has gone on to generate a swell of sequels and spin-offs and now, almost 50 years after its release, a video game.
When we were approached by Gun Interactive in early 2020 about making a game based on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie, they had one rule: it has to feel like the movie.
The team at Gun are huge horror fans, so the pressure was on us to prove our slasher skills were up to the challenge. When you’re working on an IP that is so beloved with a legacy spanning five decades, there are certain rules you have to follow, and, yes, you have to become a bit obsessed.
The whole team at Sumo Nottingham started to do their homework—with many of us watching the film every single day—and something
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