Check Out This Horror Video Game Developed By a Filipino
There’s a small but thriving community of video game developers in the country, and, given the chance, there’s no doubt one of them has the chops to make it internationally.
Take this guy for example. Reddit user KenkoMa posted a snippet of a game he says he’s been working on for about a year. There’s not much to go on, but based on what he’s let us see, it looks downright creepy and promising. It shows a girl walking up to a caged Santo Niño lit by candlelight. She kneels before the statue right before the game asks if we (the player) would like to pray to the Child Jesus. Then there’s a really unnerving tilt shot of the scene, some quick cuts of our protagonist, and that’s it.
Esquire Philippines reached out to the OP to ask about his game. The 24-year-old self-professed “normal person with a day job” says he graduated from the University of Santo Tomas and has been working on the game when he gets time off from work.
“I've always had this goal to develop my own game ever since I learned programming back in college. I just never had the time to do it,” he says. “Lockdown comes around, I decided to try and start working on my goal. I actually had no experience or idea how to use the tools that I needed to make a game, so I ended up looking up tutorials on YouTube.
Answering questions from impressed Redditors, KenkoMa said he’s been using Unreal Engine, a 3D creation platform often used not just in video game but in film and television. He said the game that inspired him the most is an Indonesian indie horror game called “Dreadout,” which was first released in 2014.
“It was amazing for its time,” KenkoMa says. “As I was watching YouTubers play it, it got me thinking: ‘How come we Filipinos don't have a game as amazingly scary as this?’
“We actually have a few great Filipino horror games, but I wanted to do my own shot in portraying horror from our culture,” he adds.
So far, the game he’s working on now doesn't have a title yet. “I didn't want the content to revolve around the title so I just never prioritized it,” he explains “The game is a Filipino-themed third-person survival horror game running on Unreal Engine.”
KenkoMa also let us in on what the game is all about.
“You'll be playing as a young girl who's desperately trying to survive the whole ordeal,” he says. “You'll come across a number of threats and challenges hindering you from moving forward. The little teaser video that I posted on Reddit is how you save your game; you pray to the Sto. Nin?o.
“I don't want to give out too much yet but I'll be sure to post more updates on Reddit.”
KenkoMa, who is based in Pasig City, also says he’s about 30 to 40 percent done with the project but can’t yet give an exact date for the release of the full game. He says he’s aiming to finish it by the end of the year and hopes to release it on Steam, a cloud-based gaming library.
“Although I really wanna take my time in going through every single detail so it may take some time,” he says.
We’re betting it’s going to be worth the wait.
