But what if that world toyed with you, too? How would you respond?
That’s the thrill of Question’s The Blackout Club, a four-player co-op immersive horror sim that bends the rules of the genre in more ways than one. Some of those ways are so mysterious that our recent chat with Lead Designer Jordan Thomas left us with a cryptic teasing that players will unravel with the game’s 1.0 launch on July 30.
We caught up with Thomas to find out more about the game’s multiplayer environment and the cultish lore behind the game, all while trying to get to the bottom of its mysterious Enhanced Horror feature.
GameSkinny: When I first heard about The Blackout Club, I likened it to Left 4 Dead meets Stranger Things, but for reasons we’ll get to momentarily, I now feel like that doesn’t fully capture the game’s essence. For those unfamiliar, what’s the basic premise of The Blackout Club?
GS: Playing The Blackout Club at PAX West last year, I was surprised to learn the National Radio Quiet Zone is a real thing here in the U.S. Was the intent to always place your game in this area or did that come later as you fleshed out what The Blackout Club would be?
You can also play a traitor kid called The Stalker, who is trying to catch the Blackout Club kids on camera. It’s harder, because you’re all alone, but can be thrilling. Some of the kids report hearing voices that claim to be ancient, and know things they should not — and part of the game involves interacting with those voices.
GS: What were some of the chief inspirations for The Blackout Club?
Redacre, our fictional town, is on a private network controlled by the antagonists, and they have people watching the borders. Though the NRQZ is our unique take on that for this game, it was a decision we made fairly early.
Plus, nobody believes a group of kids who say, “Hi, you don’t know me, but my town’s possessed.”
GS: How scary is it intended to be?
As far as TV and film — Twin Peaks, It Follows, Stranger Things, The X-Files, Supernatural… some folks have drawn parallels with American Gods. Our goal was to draw on a great number of sources, but synthesize it into something that feels like its own animal. It’s very gratifying to hear that now, you might feel we’ve done that.
In games, I’d have to say Eternal Darkness. Horror that seems to reach back out through the controller to grab you back.
GS: The central villain is The Shape, a monster pulled right out of horror cinema in some ways. Can you talk about the ways in which The Shape interacts with players?
Accounting for that tonal variance was pretty key for us early on, and another reason we chose to go with teenage protagonists — humor is a defense mechanism, after all. That said, it is extremely satisfying to hear a certain kind of player go from cocky and vocally dunking on the challenge level to impress their friends to shrieking in front of those self-same friends a moment later. And that’s just within typical gameplay.
There are times when The Blackout Club makes things more personal for players who have enabled Enhanced Horror — and some of the things they report, we definitely did not put in the game. That may sound like hyperbole, and to an extent, sure, I’m being mysterious. But it’s true: the feature’s black-box nature causes players to project a lot of meaning onto what happens, and we are listening to what they believe, and altering the world, by degree, in response.
GS: Who and what else will players contend with in Redacre?
When one of them has committed too many sins while running a mission, a menacing song plays on the city-sized instrument under the town’s streets, and it is deployed to hunt that kid down. It cannot be seen unless the player closes their in-game eyes, and then it appears as a kind of burning shadow that … changes as things intensify.
When it gets ahold of them, at first, it turns them into a sleepwalker that acts as a roving alarm system against fellow players. If their friends rescue them and they’re caught a couple more times, however, The Angel’s mercy runs out and it ends their lives.
In the morning, they remember nothing — they wake up with aches and pains, so families often have one or more people who are subconsciously spying for the enemy.
Lucids have bare faces, but the populace of Redacre has been brainwashed to see their faces improperly, a sort of concentrated face blindness, so they appear to be a writhing swirl of features. Unlike the sleepwalkers, they are fully aware of the conspiracy and are always trying to play Mr. Friendly with the kids, talking them out of hiding. The savvy Blackout Club kids are rarely fooled, however.
Finally, there are The Voices. Most of the kids report hearing one or more. Some of them claim to be demons, or even deities. They offer the kids knowledge, and better control over their potential talent — but at a price.
GS: Those who have been playing in Early Access share their stories of the Enhanced Horror feature. This is something which, as far as I can tell, no one has done before in games. Understanding you want some of the fun to remain hidden until players see it for themselves, can you detail how Enhanced Horror works? What is the game like if players elect to turn off Enhanced Horror?
GS: Some of you on the team have a history with immersive sims like BioShock and Thief. How has that work history informed the design of The Blackout Club, and what’s it been like trying to map some of those features onto a multiplayer game?
In a way, occult amusements like that are a bigger inspiration than any of the media we talked about. Players in co-op are already chattering all the time via the in-game voice or Discord, etc. In The Blackout Club, what they say actually matters. To name a particular god or demonlike entity with its proper name, for example, might provoke a surprising result. Out of a match, players can use a Ritual Item to ask questions of the voices in their minds, and everything they say … actually matters.
Finishing a mission gives them a Dream, which lets them eavesdrop on what other players have asked for or stated, via these — and listen to the replies they received. If you’re lucky, your question might be the one that becomes a public Dream.
Players’ knowledge of the world lore is being driven by this system, in part, and they are quick to rush to Discord to speculate on what it means. Already, these interactions have shaped the story, gently, and behind a veil of mystery. They seem to get something out of it they can’t find elsewhere, which makes us wildly happy.
GS: What is the game’s map like? Is the town fully accessible right away or must players work to progress through new areas?
In The Blackout Club, you’re supposed to feel like a disempowered teenager from some of the media we discussed above, so those abilities are distributed across you and several other players, and the combinations require you to coordinate with them, or at least to get the drop on your enemies first.
GS: With the game involving a live element, how do you see it evolving over time?
The maze is a giant musical instrument as we’ve talked about, and it plays a central role in the fiction. That function hugely alters the appearance of the maze — I’m very proud of the work Stephen and CJ have done on the environment art side, it feels like no other game world I’ve ever seen.
“The Blackout Club makes things more personal for players who have enabled Enhanced Horror — and some of the things they report, we definitely did not put in the game.”
GS: Similarly, considering how the game changes with Enhanced Horror, does the team at Question have settled lore to build on or are you adjusting to player interactions as time goes on?
Periodically, we want to build larger updates and release them, reflecting the results of that great search for truth, but, of course, the amount of that we’re able to do will be driven by how well the game does.
GS: What does player progression look like? How does one beat The Blackout Club? Is there an ending to see or is it meant to be played more as repeat-friendly levels like Left 4 Dead?
So it will be a hybrid of the world as it is, and the world as they want to see it. Fitting, I hope, for a story that involves an element of growing up and grappling with reality. I’ll let you and the player community hash out how well we’re pulling that off!
The Blackout Club exits Steam Early Access and comes to Xbox One and PS4 all on July 30. You can read our early impression of the game here.
Of course, if they send enough ritual offerings asking for something else, who are we to deny the power of belief?
