Hudson is trying something new with Calling. This Wii title is their first horror game, a stark change from their legacy games like Adventure Island and Bonk.
Perhaps, the most important element in a horror adventure is creating an atmosphere of trepidation. We asked Kazufumi Shimizu how he achieved this on his first attempt with Calling.
“What makes people scared and how we can increase the scary feeling within them were very important to us. Of course, fears that stem from threat or attack are important but we want to put more thought into creating a scary atmosphere from psychological fear or pressures such that players will feel fear just see something there or the thought that something might happen,” Kazufumi Shimizu, Director of Calling, mused.
“We researched the various Japanese horror materials already on the market. We didn’t want to go too crazy. We didn’t want to include concepts that weaken the player’s experience within the game, even though they may be common in movies or TV shows. We tried to incorporate the abnormal events of the game with a sense of balance.”
Calling takes place in the “real world” where four all too curious Internet surfers visit the Black Page. All of the people who visit the website die after a set number of days and are added to the site’s hit counter.
“From this perspective, we made each character’s personality and abilities that of an ‘ordinary person.’ We tried to avoid suddenly giving them a special power or having them behave unnaturally to finish the adventure – for example, we didn’t want the characters to be shooting guns in a place like The Mnemonic Abyss. If I had to face the situation like this game, the only thing I can do is desperately try to escape.”
