YoIn 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Crista Castro and Bryan Singh got to thinking about what they really wanted out of their lives. The pair, an animation director and programmer respectively, had worked on other people’s cartoons and video games at big studios for years, but both had ambitions to do something of their own. They’d collaborated on weekend projects here and there, but felt that if they really wanted to make a game together, they’d have to quit their jobs. So in 2021, galvanized by lockdown-induced introspection, that’s what they did: They formed a husband-and-wife development team under the name Cozy PlaymatesAnd to top it off, they became parents almost at the same time.
They gave themselves two years to play. By the end of 2023, they had made something: a short game called Fear the Spotlight, a 90s-inspired horror adventure that looks like a lost PlayStation classic and has the feel of a teen ghost movie. They released it on Steam and it got a very positive reception from the few people who played it, but they didn’t know how to market it and it didn’t sell much. “We were like, ‘Well, I guess that’s it,’” Bryan tells me. “Let’s go look for work again. And then Blumhouse came along.”
Yeah, that Blumhouse, the successful horror film production company founded by Jason Blum, was preparing to launch its video game publishing label, and the people in charge thought Fear the Spotlight had potential. “They said, ‘Hey, we found your game and we think it’s really special. How can we help you? ’ It was a very open-ended offer,” Bryan says. “They understood our game perfectly—they’re horror fans through and through, so they understood all the references and inspirations that made their way into our game. We were excited to get back to work on it, and it gave us a ton of ideas for what we could do if we had more time.”
So Blumhouse got to work, and now here they are, just a few months away from releasing an expanded version of their retro horror project. I played through the opening scenes, in which teenage friends Vivian (nerd) and Amy (goth) sneak into their high school library late at night, steal a Ouija board from an exhibit, and conduct an impromptu séance. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t go well, and Amy is kidnapped by a vengeful monster, forcing Vivian to sneak around the school and try to escape.
Fear the Spotlight has a very nice atmosphere. That low-polygon look and minimalist sound effects create an eerie feeling, like something you half-remember. Castro introduced Singh to the horror genre and now they’re both long-time fans. “It has some aspects of Fatal Frame, Resident Evil, Silent Hill – not just horror games but movies as well,” Crista says. “Are You Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, The Ring – all the things that scared me as a kid and teenager.” The pace is fairly slow – here you won’t be manipulating a controller to shoot or fight things, so unlike those 90s horror games, you won’t get stuck. Singh and Castro wanted to make a game that all their horror movie-loving friends could play, particularly those who don’t usually play a lot of video games.
I recognized a lot of things from games like Resi and Silent Hill even in the opening scenes: the way the books and keys slowly spin on the screen when you pick them up, the deliberate movement, even the fonts. But as Bryan points out, that’s the point. “A lot of the fun of horror is understanding some of the tropes, building up some expectations, and then seeing if those expectations play out the way you want them to,” he says. “Or if they get twisted in a fun way instead.”
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