Lead designer Rob McLachlan on Still Wakes The Deep’s approach to horror
Rob McLachlan entered The Chinese Room in 2018, carrying a healthy portfolio of horror game design, including the Silent Hill series (Origins and Shattered Memories) and the highly acclaimed Alien: Isolation. Initially joining the team that created action platformer Little Orpheus, he then stepped up to the role of lead designer for Still Wakes The Deep. Here, he discusses finding the balance between horror, realism and the games of The Chinese Room’s past.
What were the crucial lessons you learned from your previous experiences with horror games in terms of what makes them effective?
Horror is both a subjective and objective thing, and it also depends on your stage in life and your life experiences. There are things that other people find horrific, but may not interest me as someone responsible for designing horror games. The conclusion I’ve come to is that, for me, the atmosphere, the immersion, of being in another world in an extraordinary situation – and feeling your reaction to that – is the critical thing. And I think that’s really neat for Still Wakes The Deep because that’s exactly how we wrote our main character, Caz McLeary. He’s an ordinary person, and the reflection of his humanity in the horror is where I think the most interesting experiences lie.
A sense of realism is clearly very important in the game to that end, most obviously in the visuals and the audio. How did you approach evoking it from a design perspective?
There’s a common thread in Shattered Memories and Alien: Isolation that carries through Still Wakes The Deep in that the enemies are vastly more powerful than you, and there’s very little you can do to fight back. Generally, the message we try and give to the player is to run. Conversely, in Silent Hill: Origins, we had a large combat system with lots of weapons and things you could throw at monsters, and it started to become a kind of rote exercise of survival horror, in that you find weapons, you find ammunition, you put them together, you line up your shot and fire. We wanted to double down on the feeling of helplessness, of being a mouse in a maze. And that idea of a maze is really important, because in Shattered Memories, Alien and Still Wakes The Deep, the way we started making levels was almost as deathmatch levels, with very strong circulation. Enemies and the player had multiple opportunities to recirculate, establish their perception of the environment, and understand their goals.
The colour yellow is used throughout the game as a kind of guiding force. Was there any resistance to using this kind of device, in the sense that it risks detracting from the realism?
I’m quite bullish about the yellow paint on t
