Australia is already notoriously riddled with creatures that can kill you, from the snakes and spiders that can surprise you in the shower to the sharks and stingrays that circle our shores. Still, that hasn’t stopped developer Weforge Studio from drafting in a malevolent monster from another dimension and inserting it at the very top of the Aussie food chain in Macabre, a co-op ‘stealth extraction horror’ adventure that aims to fuse the bowel-loosening cat and mouse thrills of Alien: Isolation with the gadget-based teamwork of Phasmophobia. After a brief hands-on with a very early build of the game, I can attest to the prowling predator’s stalking prowess since I didn’t actually get a good look at the beast until it was suddenly dragging me through the snow-capped forest setting and knitting a sickening scarf out of my entrails.
“To start with you are very helpless, and this thing’s going to terrorise you and tear you apart,” says creative director Jay Topping. “It's not like this dumb meandering thing, the way that it interacts with the player is that at first it's cautious, then it gets closer and [once] you're out on your own it's gonna start [picking you off].”
The core gameplay loop of Macabre, which in its current pre-Alpha form takes place in and around an alpine lodge setting inspired by Australia’s Snowy Mountains region, sees up to four players investigating a mysterious rift in time and completing objectives provided by an exceedingly Australian guide named Banjo. In order to survive, players must scavenge for materials like batteries, electrical tape and old mobile phones to craft makeshift gadgets that both detect and distract the interdimensional assailant that hunts them from the shadows.
The map itself is marked with ominous trails of blood and shadows that appear to be either cast by the branches of the surrounding snowgum trees or the spindly limbs of a quadrupedal murder beast depending on how much you trust your fluctuating paranoia levels. Meanwhile, the map layout is randomised each time you enter it, further heightening the sense of panic and disorientation as you try to evade a deadly killer that silently studies and gradually learns to anticipate your behaviour. Yet although it’s effectively four against one, it’s worth highlighting that Macabre is not an asymmetrical horror experience like Dead by Daylight, and its monsters are solely AI-driven.
“When you play games like [Dead by Daylight], I think you lose a bit of the mystery and magic that comes with an AI-controlled monster,” says Topping.
“Player-controlled stalkers learn popular strategies from other players that make it repetitive, but they also mess around and do stupid shit, which really ruins the immersion. So the biggest inspiration [for Macabre’s monster] is Alien: Isolation where it's constantly adapting and changing. You can't just hide in the same closets or cabinets, eventually it's going to figure out that you've hidden that same cabinet three times [in a row], and it’s going to come and kill you.”
While its core development team is based in Sydney and its initial map is inspired by Australian terrain, Weforge Studio’s plan for Macabre’s roster of deadly destinations is to expand beyond its southern hemisphere starting point.
“These rifts are kind of like portals, bubbles of time, that have popped up all over the place and they’re interconnected,” says Topping. “So while [Macabre] starts in Australia, it can kind of go anywhere including [destinations] beyond our own dimension.”
The key is that each map will have to offer its own gameplay point of difference beyond mere texture swaps in order to consistently evolve the experience. One example given by Topping is the remote Australian outback town of Coober Pedy, an arid, desert area once featured in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome where residents build their homes in caves bored into the sandstone hillsides, which would serve as an ideal subterranean setting for a highly claustrophobic form of terror. Another potential Macabre map would be one located in China’s Kowloon Walled City, a densely populated slum that would bring a greater sense of vertical scale to the stealth horror.
“Kowloon Walled City would offer a great [visual] contrast of really dark areas and really bright neon-lit areas,” says Topping. “But its twisting corridors would also allow us to have a creature that runs around above you, below you, and in the walls.”
“It would be terrifying.”
The monster itself will apparently adjust its form and behaviour to suit each location, meaning that the unnatural enemy you encounter in the Australian Snowy Mountains won’t resemble the beast you encounter in say, a Mayan temple in a South American rainforest. In fact Topping compares it to the alien from John Carpenter’s The Thing or Pennywise from Stephen King’s It in the way it adapts to each environment. According to Topping, its ability set will also randomise along with the map elements each time you start the game, and that will determine which gadgets from your expanding list of blueprints you’ll need to craft.
“You’re not just dealing with the same thing every time,” explains Topping. “In each map there are different artifacts to find, and the combination of artifacts that are in there unlocks the abilities for that specific monster. You might go in and it will be moving super quietly and it’s invisible for most of the time, then [you’ll] need to [craft] this tool, this tool, and this tool [in order to combat it].”
However, the interdimensional apex predator isn’t necessarily the only monster that players will have to contend with, as Weforge Studio is currently brainstorming ways for players to betray other players, potentially by steering them into the claws of the beast and then pilfering the loot off their freshly dispatched corpses.
“[In a way] that sounds like a good idea, but [the risk] is that you get into a realm where everyone is going to kill each other, and so why would they ever trust each other?” says Topping. “I think the feeling that we want to create is something like [social deception survival game] Dread Hunger where everyone works together, but in the back of their mind they're kind of like… are we working together?”
“Our end goal is to create the feeling of… you've got the main monster and then you've also maybe got all these other little monsters around you [in the form of your fellow players], and you can’t ever be completely sure if you should trust what everyone else is saying.”
Exactly why the rifts have appeared and exactly what sort of dark forces are behind them is a mystery at this point, and at this stage Weforge Studio is keeping mum about the actual ‘extraction’ part of the experience – it’s not clear whether the goal is to gather resources and safely extract yourself from the area, or eventually somehow trap the monster and extract it along with you. However, what is clear is that Topping and his team have no shortage of ambition as far as the Macabre experience goes, and have apparently got a lengthy narrative backbone constructed that extends beyond just one game.
“Ultimately, we’re not just trying to create one game; we’re trying to create a universe, like a Tolkien universe,” explains Topping. “Maybe [Macabre] is like The Hobbit and we’ll [eventually] get to The Lord of the Rings, you know? It would be so cool to build out a world around this so that it doesn’t just end at this game. There’s so much more that we want to discover.”
Weforge Studio has just launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the development of Macabre, which is now live on Kickstarter. But it’s not just financial support that the team is seeking, but the feedback from fans to help shape the scope and design of the Macabre experience.
“The idea with the Kickstarter is that we want to get community involvement,” says Topping. “And I think we also want to do that during Early Access as well. Because ultimately, we can make a game for ourselves but [there’s no point] if no one's there to play it.”
“So we want to hear what people want to see. We've set the parameters, the [template] of these [maps that] you can play in. Where do you want to go?”
Even in its early state there’s a lot to like about Macabre and it’s strong potential for serious scares, and I’m certainly keen to see how it – like its main monster – continues to shapeshift and surprise as it progresses deeper into development.
Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN AU. He's more afraid of social media than he is of murderous beasts from another dimension, but on the rare occasions he does tweet you can find him here.
