The two teens who killed Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese may have learnt to survive in the wild from a violent video game.

Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, who were found dead in dense bushland earlier today, were fans of the survivalist video game Rust and were part of a video game network that worships the Third Reich and whose platforms include profile pictures of the infamous imperial eagle from Nazi Germany.

In Rust, players must build a shelter, find water and tools, and they’re encouraged to kill animals and other players “for meat”.

One reviewer called the title “one of the cruellest games”, saying no other title had “ever indulged our lack of humanity quite like Rust”.

It features a wide range of weapons from bows and arrows to hammers and assault rifles.

Schmegelsky and McLeod’s Facebook pages both show links to Illusive Gaming, but the network’s Facebook page has been shut down after a Canadian newspaper report went live.

Port Alberni locals also say the teens had links to far-right extremist content. Lisa Lucas, who lived next door to Schmegelsky’s grandmother, told the CBC British Columbia that her son went to school with the 18-year-old.

She said Schmegelsky’s friends felt “uncomfortable” after he showed them pictures of himself wearing the Nazi armband.

“After a while he started making people feel uncomfortable, just with the comments that he would make and how much he was into video games, a little bit more on the violent side of the video games,” she said.

“Bryer seemed to take it very seriously … My son told me that he would mention things like, ‘What if this was real? Can you imagine if this was real?’ when playing video games. He’d get a little too excited about it.

“Everybody just got a little bit uncomfortable around him. He seemed to have less and less friends as time went on, later into junior high.”

Schmegelsky and Bryer were obsessed with video games, according to Bryer’s father Alan Schmegelsky.

“My son, he’s like, they’re huge into video games — all kids are — and two Christmases ago he asked me for an Airsoft gun, which is a replica gun, right?” Mr Schmegelsky told CHEK News earlier this week.

“So he was telling me: ‘Well, me and the fellas, we like to go in the woods and play war’, right?”

Mr Schmegelsky told reporters the teens were “good kids” before the news broke they were officially being viewed as suspects by police.

He said he thought their disappearance was strange, but if they were threatened they would know what to do.

“So knowing that the both of them are totally into (war games), if there was any threat, they would have done what they’ve actually trained themselves to do, and they would have camouflaged themselves in the woods,” Mr Schmegelsky said.