When horror film specialist Blumhouse introduced its transfer in the direction of video video games, it had initially deliberate to launch its first title in 2026.
But at Summer season Games Fest final month, the Blumhouse Games crew revealed it had signed six video games, together with one which’s out this year.
“We’re sort of at capability in the mean time,” Blumhouse Games president Zach Wooden tells GamesIndustry.biz. “We’re additional than a year ahead of schedule. Our plan was to begin releasing video games in 2026. However Concern The Highlight is out this year, and we have now three in 2025, three in 2026, a couple in 2027 and we’ll keep that tempo. Just a few video games a year and ensuring we have now time to dedicate to every of them.”
The Blumhouse Games crew at the moment consists of seven workers however expects to develop as its slate expands. And it gives all the same old issues a writer gives, together with funding, advertising, gross sales, PR, QA and so forth. The place issues differ is in its deal with horror, and its connection to its mother or father firm.
“We are able to entry the broader Blumhouse organisation,” says CFO Don Sechler. “Like pairing up [horror movie writer and director] Brandon Cronenberg with [game writer and director] Sam Barlow [for the upcoming Project C]. That got here from the Blumhouse movie aspect. We tried to make that occur and we have been capable of.”
He provides: “There’s a lot of artistic assist. Whether or not it is filmmakers, administrators, writers… we are able to present narrative assist. James Wan [Insidious, Saw, The Conjuring] is a gamer himself, and we present him all the things we’re doing and he is very excited. He offers us a lot of suggestions a lot on the important thing artwork. It is a actually nice, eclectic artistic setting.”
The builders that Blumhouse works with usually retain the rights to their video games, nevertheless, the agency will get the choice to show them into a movie or TV present.
“We do not take a look at video games by that lens, however definitely that is a bonus,” Wooden says. “If one thing resonates with our viewers, we have now alternatives to make a movie or a collection, and that is thrilling.
“However we endeavour to have our companions personal the IP. We’re not serious about taking possession. It is their child. We hope to be a long-term companion for them and maintain working with them. We wish to construct a relationship. However this is their story.”
Sechler provides: “However we do wish to suppose that us having the film and TV rights is a characteristic and never a bug.”
“If one thing resonates with our viewers, we have now alternatives to make a movie or a collection”Zach Wooden, Blumhouse Games
All six titles that Blumhouse has introduced are authentic ideas: Concern the Highlight, Sleep Awake, Crisol: Theater of Idols, Grave Seasons, The Simulation and Mission C. But the agency’s movie aspect produces some well-known horror franchises, together with The Purge, Paranormal Exercise and Insidious. Wooden says they’ve already obtained pitches for video games based mostly on Blumhouse motion pictures, however the crew was wanting to show itself with authentic ideas, first.
“With present Blumhouse IP, we wish to get it proper; we do not wish to rush into something,” he says. “A lot of it is timing. It is the proper concept, the proper artistic crew to do it… followers have expectations with our movies, and we wish to be sure that we’re doing proper by these properties. We’ll finally do it, for certain. We now have seen a couple of pitches, and we’ll proceed to have a look at them. However we needed to begin with a offered line-up of originals and are available out strongly there.”
Sechler provides: “And simply construct credibility in making nice video games in and of themselves. So after we do one thing that is an IP, individuals will know the sort-of high quality expertise we’ll ship.”
So what precisely is a ‘Blumhouse recreation’? The agency’s general boss Jason Blum says the corporate is going again to its roots with small price range, low threat, excessive upside tasks which are artistic and new. And there are definitely some distinctive ideas. The Simulation is a horror recreation inside a horror recreation, for instance, whereas Grave Seasons is a bloodthirsty farming sim.
“Blumhouse motion pictures have so many subgenres of horror that they discover, and that is one thing that we wish to mirror in video games as nicely,” says Blumhouse Games artistic lead Louise Blain.
“Some individuals are stunned with some of these items. ‘Wow, actually, a farming sim with homicide?’ There are artistic twists on horror that Blumhouse does so nicely with its motion pictures, and we’re taking that throughout to video games. We wish to embrace all of the horror in all of its kinds.”
She continues: “All of these video games are enjoying in attention-grabbing methods in that horror sandbox. Individuals may suppose they’ve an concept of what horror video games are, unimaginable video games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and a few individuals may not like that. Perhaps they’re too scary or too gory. However they like horror in different kinds, like possibly they really feel safer studying a horror guide. So, it is discovering the attraction for these individuals.
“To be a Blumhouse Games, you need to be in that world and discover scary tales in a completely different means. We’re simply in search of nice issues that make you go ‘sure’. That is what occurred with Concern The Highlight. We performed it and we turned instantly enthusiastic about it. It is a nice story with tactile mechanics, it felt actually good, it is creepy… it had all these items that naturally appealed to us, and we felt would attraction to different individuals.”
Wooden, Sechler and Blain are clearly obsessed with its slate. Wooden feels that Concern the Highlight “scratches that itch” of a good Nineteen Nineties teen horror and would make a nice TV present or movie. Sechler is enthusiastic in regards to the a number of layers provided by The Simulation. “It is nothing you have performed earlier than,” he says. In the meantime, Blain feels that Grave Seasons might be a shock for gamers.
“Individuals will take a look at it and suppose it’s going to be a horror story layered over a farming expertise, however that is not what it is,” she says. “It is a cohesive recreation that is equally a horror and farming expertise. It is all the higher for that. It is embracing its style. It is aware of what it is, however it is additionally subverting expectations, too. I believe it would shock individuals in a pleasant means.”
“I do not suppose anybody will ever be bored of horror video games, so long as they’re completely different”
Louise Blain, Blumhouse Games
It is a good time for horror followers. There are upcoming new video games and remakes from established franchises together with Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Little Nightmares and Till Daybreak. There are promising new tasks from huge title recreation builders, corresponding to Slitterhead (from Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama), The Casting of Frank Stone (a collaboration between Darkish Footage developer Supermassive Games and Lifeless by Daylight’s Behaviour Interactive) and OD (from Hideo Kojima). And that is earlier than you get to the 9 video games that Blumhouse is engaged on over the subsequent three to 4 years.
It might appear congested, however horror is not a style in the identical means that ‘first individual shooter’ or ‘RPG’ are genres. And that is why the crew at Blumhouse is assured that there is not simply room for these video games, however house for a writer that is devoted completely to funding and releasing them.
“I do not suppose we’ll ever run out of methods to inform scary tales,” Blain concludes. “And I do not suppose anybody will ever be bored of them, so long as they’re completely different, so long as they’re progressive and so long as they’re artistic. I’ve been a client of scary tales since I learn my first Goosebumps guide below the covers, and the completely different means video games can inform these tales are always stunning. The human expertise is to expertise worry, and so long as we are able to faucet into that and discover that in secure areas, I do not suppose there might be any scarcity of horror to come back.”