When news broke that Silent Hills had been cancelled, I don’t think I was alone in dramatically tearing my shirt open and shrieking into the sky in disbelief and woe.

All the signs were looking rather promising. We had Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro taking the mantle, both visionaries and masters of the arts in their own rights, with Norman Reedus bringing some much needed star power to a series which was looking about as appealing as a ham sandwich without any butter. Recent drab, disingenuous releases in the Silent Hill series had left it clinging on for dear life, which is what made this new trinity of creative endeavour so intriguing and promising.

Of course, with Konami being Konami, they saw a good thing was about to happen and promptly fucked it off, most likely because of production costs and creative differences. Their new CEO, Satoshi Sakamoto, has shown himself to be a money-driven “professional” with little interest in fan service, shown by their recent revelation that they will be embracing the mobile market in lieu of console releases. You can only shudder at the thought of the future of the once great gaming company, which is potentially why Hideo Kojima’s long-term relationship with them came to an end.

With the dust settled from Silent Hills‘ cancellation, a light appeared in the darkness by the name of Allison Road. A cheeky nod to P.T. here and some terrifying scares there, it looks to have very easily transitioned into the gap left by Konami’s terrific mistake.

Early indications suggest that this will be a taut, polished survival horror game which takes place over the course of five nights in a seemingly cursed British townhouse. This isn’t your copy-and-paste generic Steam horror game as the passion of Allison Road’s developers, Lillith Ltd, seeps through every pixel and polygon of its teaser trailer to create a pure sense of dread, no matter how often you watch it.

With the project deep in development, I talked to Project Lead Chris Kesler about what we should expect.

Hi, how are you? What was the last thing you ate and what would you give it out of 10?

I’m good, thank you! Busy as always. How are you?

And the last thing I ate was muesli just now, and I’d give it a 7. I love myself some good muesli… but it’s only muesli after all. So, it can really only be a 7.

Tell us all about Allison Road in the form of a haiku.

Alright, how about this. It’s not exactly a haiku, but my buddy 50 Cent wasn’t available to help out:

the claustrophobia of time.

a deadly embrace

grasp everything of nothing.

the mind adrift

You’ve been labelled as “the spiritual successor” to the now unavailable P.T. In a way, does this make you Jesus Christ?

You know, for some people that actually makes me the antichrist! Disturbance of the peace of the dead and all.

How did the project go from being a one-man band to what it is now?

Well, every band needs a bass, some drums and possibly a second guitar.. and maybe a DJ. You know how it is!

Since I only know how to play the guitar, I figured it’s really time to look for some band members, because I ain’t getting any younger and if ‘Firm Bizkit’ was ever to succeed we needed to get cracking full force.

So here we are, recording, touring, partying… and every now and then we work on a video game.

Konami have recently decided to abandon sense and move to mobile gaming, as well as removing Kojima’s name from the new Metal Gear Solid and cancelling Silent Hills just before that. What do you think is going on over there?

I have no clue what might be going on over there. However, their very awkward (and very public) handling of this situation was pretty unfortunate in my opinion because this event will be burnt into the minds of an entire generation of gamers, sadly.

There’s no way you could ever talk about Hideo Kojima and/or Konami now without thinking of this nasty split.

Sad.

Having said that, for Kojima that might actually be the best thing that happened to him in a long time, because he’ll be free to do whatever he wants. That’s exciting!

What’s been the best feedback you’ve received so far?

People saying: “Where can we throw money at this? Kickstarter?”

Strictly speaking that’s not exactly ‘feedback’ of course, but it’s really amazing that folks want to support something with their hard earned money that came out of nowhere and is made by a bunch of guys no one has ever even heard of before.

When was the last time you were properly terrified? Playtesting Allison Road doesn’t count.

I was watching ‘Identity‘ last week. I was properly terrified when I realized that I will never get these 90 minutes of my life back.

In fact, I still have sweaty palms just thinking about it.

You’ve stated that you will be implementing virtual reality within the game. Is it fun thinking of new ways to make people brown their pants?

It is! :D But equally it’s also quite challenging. There are some serious performance concerns to keep in mind and if you look at stuff in VR you can see every single thing that’s even just the tiniest bit off. Say a cup that’s just a tiny bit too big.

You need to pay a lot of attention to detail, that’s for sure.

You hear a knock on your door at night. What do you do?

We got new neighbors about a month ago and their doorbell is broken. So that happens rather frequently actually.

I tend to just ignore it and leave people out in the rain.

Can you see yourself sticking to horror once Allison Road is out, or will Lilith Ltd be moving onto another genre? Hello Kitty, for instance?

That’s a good question! :) Let’s try and get Allison Road done first, haha. Then we can think about that.

Hello Kitty surely sounds intriguing, though.

You have five horror movies to take to a desert island with you (don’t ask why). What do you choose?

1. Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2. John Carpenter’s The Thing

3. Alien

4. Saw 2

and then for when it’s time to end it all…

5. Keeping Up with the Kardashians

And finally, why should we be getting our grubby mitts on Allison Road as soon as it’s available?

Because it’ll be proper ‘back to the roots’ horror. For 90s and pre-90s gamers, it’ll be a return to what they’ve dearly missed over the last few years.

And for post-90s gamers it’ll be something they’ve presumably never seen before: there are actually games that don’t rely on non-stop jump scares!

Dum dum duuuuuuuuuuum.