As you all know, I am a horror fan, loving each and every bit of the genre. I looking deep in the genre to find the best I can out of it, finding the most talented people out there that made something under the radar or just gets very little publicity. The one I found back in 2017 was barely in a playable state, but it’s concept is well established and stuck with to this day. Although the game is given a lot of public attention, this one seems to be brushed off by most media than fans who stumbled upon it like I did. This game is Negative Atmosphere, a game that is inspired by many games of the horror genre like Dead Space, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill, but it appears that this is where it ends. The rest seems original, given a lot of thought and love to give itself its own identity. I love that about it since it looks so much different compared to Dead Space, a game that Negative Atmosphere is constantly compared to. It seems like it’s more open, giving the player choice on how to move on his journey and that any path with take you to your destination. It’s ambitious and I love it.

I took the time to ask the owner of the company SunScorched Studios, the indie studio behind this project, Calvin Parsons. This won’t be his first interview, but this will be our’s here on Fuse. So without further ado, welcome to this exciting interview about the game, Negative Atmosphere.

1. The one thing that amazes me and most people is the enemies you have the game. I mean you revealed some amazing concepts like the Bone Spitter and Stilt Walker. As frightening as they are, will they have some sort of way to kill them? As far as I could’ve seen, you haven’t talked about the game’s overall combat. Will it be like Dead Space or Resident Evil where you have to shoot specific spots in the body or are they going to be something to pepper bullets with?

Answer: Yes, there will be many ways to kill them, our enemies have weak points such as at the limb joints or exposed areas of flesh (chest cavity) but they are nothighlighted nor glowing and the player has to find them himself via gameplay and experimentation. E.G – What happens if I shoot this enemy here?

2. And since we’re on the topic of enemies, I see you guys haven’t shown newer enemies besides some shamblers in weapon demos. Do you plan on making more difficult enemies be more of a bullet sponge to create a situation of tension for the player? Or will you make resources so scarce that shooting anything smaller than a certain enemy worthless?

Answer: Ammo will be very scarce (there are no shops, you have to scavenge) and enemies will not be bullet sponges. In the demos enemies go down in 1 hit as the logic system for injured movement is not yet ready to show, but enemies will appear to be much stronger when we’ve got them setup so that; taking an arm off only slows them down (same with the legs) which drastically modifies the effectiveness of your weaponry as your welding laser doesn’t kill them instantly anymore but instead merely slows them down, until you finish them off (which uses more valuable ammo). Many fights you will be able to avoid via stealth or alternative routes, but not all.

3. And seeing you’re revealing more of the main character’s face, will you be giving him a personality soon? And if so, what is your direction with the character? Like are you going for a more tough and mature character like Isaac Clarke or Chris Redfield? Maybe something swaying more toward someone who copes with the horror through small quips like Ash Wiliams? And, of course, do you plan to give him a name?

Answer: He has a lot of personality already and he already has a name, we have posted about this on our Discord, Youtube and Twitter in the past. The lore about Samuel we can release at this time is limited but it’s shown here:

—————————————————————-

[UESN PERSONNEL DATABASE: WELCOME, Supv. Andreanne Millington]

///ERROR READING PERSONNEL FILE.

///ATTEMPTING RECOVERY.

///PARTIAL DATA RECOVERY SUCCESSFUL

—————————————————————-

—————————————————————-

“…Dr Samuel Edwards is an Emergency Physician aboard the TRH Rusanov…”

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“…Born in 2185 on Earth, Canada, Edwards grew up with both his parents, a sister and one brother. Not much is known about his

family life but Edwards keeps to himself on the matter.

Engaged in 2202 in the Space Pioneer Royal Regiment (SPRR) as a combat medic, alongside training in the

SEL (Sapper / Engineer / Logistic) program. Initial combat training and field

exercises demonstrated Edwards to be a competent soldier and someone who was fairly sociable, a supportive and reliable team player….”

—————————————————————-

“… %^%$£W£$ a$%$£r hap$%^%$£ed during the “%$£$% “!””£ 213…

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“specifically deployed to take and hold the perilous urban region of Lysonia on $£!£-21%$£EE, where a mixture of heavy F-PAC

fortifications and resilient insurgent forces resulted in bloody fighting that echoed and magnified horrific urban conflicts of the

past with room to room, building to

building and street to street fighting. Casualties were [DATA REMOVED]”

—————————————————————-

“k$%%£ in action, and out of Edward’s entire infantry section…”

—————————————————————-

” $%$$%$ one of the %$%^$$ surv&$ng squads”

—————————————————————-*

“….While the specific events and actions c^%$£ted by Edwards are unknown, his re£$%^!sal to talk about this incident and his cold demeanour

since they are suggesting a deeply disturbing emotional response ….”

“… t////%$%””///// career happened during the “Ma^%$££$ of Eden-213…”

“… the highlight of his ^%$£%” %^%$£ DGTR3EDGFDD ned during the “M$£”!”£”sacrE of Ede%^^%”!n-$£%£”3…”

“… t%^%$£” $%^%$£ military career happened during the “%^&%$£%$£///>//$%^&”

“… £$%^%$£”£$% %$£% [READ FAILURE] Massacre of Eden-213…”

“…pragmatic, sensible individual who does have somewhat of a temper, and largely keeps to himself.

He abstains from drugs or alcohol barring $% !”$$£ medication he takes for his $.”£$!”£ED”

—————————————————————-

[FURTHER INFORMATION HAS BEEN REDACTED BY ORDER OF UESN SYSTEM AUTHORITIES]

//ACCESS ATTEMPT HAS BEEN LOGGED, YOUR SUPERIOR HAS BEEN NOTIFIED…

Samuel Edwards is also a broken ex-military man haunted by PTSD which gets worse and worse throughout the course of the game, but whilst he remains sane he is essentially “Canadian space lumberjack” and screams and shouts in anger at all his problems, like anyone would in his situation. He is fully voiced and is the total opposite of a strong silent character. He’s very much like Chris Redfield or Joel from the last of us. A mature man who’s just angry at his situation.

4. Through some concept art you’ve thrown at the community, it looks like you’re going to do some kill animations. Are you going to go wild with the player deaths with some guts or crazy concepts that challenge reality or are you going to be a bit tamer and do some long deaths that are painful to watch? And, if you don’t mind me asking, do you have concepts of a few you want to share?

Answer: A mix really, a few wild and super graphic and a few more tame and long lasting, all equally painful and horrific to watch. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for the ingame death animations, but here’s a few of our concept keyframe drafts:

5. Since from what I can see, you’re taking a lot of inspiration than just Dead Space, you seem to be going Old School. And with that, are you going to add any kind of replayability? Hardcore Mode? A 4th Survivor kind of mode would be perfect for this game if you can.

Answer: Hardcore mode is the default mode 😀 This game is unforgiving, there is no “locator system” you must find your way via signs through the Rusanov, and figure out gameplay mechanics yourself the tutorials are very limited, objectives are not direct and do require some figuring out of what you must do. You will get lost, you will get frustrated, but that’s good for making a horror experience as it will just make the player more and more tense and thus scared of his environment as he does not feel familiar, safe or at ease within it. The game is a singleplayer only semi-open world experience which means there are multiples routes you can take to each objective, these can be explored in multiple playthroughs and you will encounter different random encounters each time. For example, there may be security guards in the med deck in one playthrough but in the next they have already been overrun and are corpses littered on the floor.

6. This will be my last question about the game’s properties, the next one will talk about development. Since you’re going for more of a Shodan approach with the story, do you plan on taking a few pages from System Shock 2? Maybe some audio logs about the people aboard the ship before or during the outbreak? Would make a lot of interesting lore seeing what you have right now.

Answer: Yes, we have fully voiced audio, video and text logs made by crewmembers on the ship during and after the outbreak. We also have lots of lore you can find in the way of readable books, magazines and advertisements.

7. Are you doing this alone? Got some friends or hired some folk to help you out throughout the development? What part are you taking on the development?

Answer: We are a studio of 11+ individuals. We are global team hired via social media and collaborating via Discord, most of us have not met each other IRL but we get on like a family. We are a student team, with many of is in full time education, so this is a great learning and work experience for us.

I am the lead programmer, level designer, systems integrator, games designer and project director / team lead. I’m the guy that tells everyone else what to do and when to do it for, and although this started as my vision it’s grown to incorporate the visions of all other team members.

8. I’ve followed you for a while, probably since Roanoke advertised your game and since then you had a lot more videos showcasing the development of this game compared to what you have now. Lots more. What happened to them? Youtube didn’t like them? You wanted to make the game little more secret on your motives? Maybe they were some scrapped ideas? What’s the story behind that?

Answer: We decided the older content no longer represented our game as it is now and it would be “false advertising” to keep it up. Expect much more new content soon.

9. Okay, you’ve probably been asked this a whole bunch, but do you plan on giving this game to the console owners out there? Are you going to make it an exclusive as well? I know that developing a PC game for the console can be hard since the hardware can make some complications, so overall I just want to know if you’re up for the task.

Answer: We plan to do so yes, but we are not considering it until we release on PC, as we want to ensure the game is as smooth as possible before applying for a console certification, as they are notoriously difficult to get with an early in development product.

10. And as a good last question, what are places you will not go with this game? developers have a lot of things they will never touch with their games. What kind of boundaries will you never try to cross? I know you told me that Jumpscares will not be utilized, but what about other elements? Are you going to leave out wave sections, escorts, what?

Answer: Jumpscares will be utilised but sparingly, there will be no co-op or multiplayer features of any kind, no lootboxes or microtransactions of any kind, no cosmetic DLC and any cosmetic DLC will be free (Excluding patreon cosmetic rewards which will be given prior to release). There will be wave sections (but not ridiculous amounts of enemies), there will be escort sections but the NPC will be escorting you not the other way around (such as hacking a security bot to follow you).

With such great answers to such a great game, we conclude this interview. Overall, I think the answers I was given by Calvin Parsons didn’t disappoint me. A lot are innovating and let us know that they want what’s best for the game. You don’t see that often in the industry and seeing the studio is full of student developers and designers, it shows that they’d make a great fit in the future industry. I give the best of luck to Calvin and his team, and I’m more than excited to play this game upon release. If you guys are interested in the development of this game, go check out their Youtube channel, their Reddit Page or their Twitter. Or if you want to go the extra mile and support them, go to their Patreon. Thank you for reading and ‘til next time…



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