Necropolis Suite seems to be a unique sort of horror experience. It’s equally inspired by the insight system of Bloodborne and experimentation of immersive sims like Dishonored, while its narrative seeks to be a combination of Gone Home and The Outer Wilds. With the game having recently been revealed, I sat down with Freesphere studio head Mark Gregory and technical designer Stuart Ralphson to talk about what the game hopes to achieve, and how it’s ascending above the typical expectations we have for cosmic horror in the world of video games.
Taking place in Whitechapel, London in 1886, you play as Detective JP Chambers, a troubled man who finds himself investigating the house of a madman who has turned himself into the police, leaving behind a trail of mysterious devastation in his wake. What awaits in the house remains unclear, but Gregory tells me it won’t be a traditional horror adventure, instead seeking to unsettle you with a procedural horror system that reacts to your actions in real-time. Think of it like Bloodborne’s insight system, but one that changes in the moment depending on the hero’s psychological state.
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“Once you hit insight level 40 [in Bloodborne] the world begins changing around you, we start seeing the amygdalas, and the skyboxes change, but none of that’s done in real time,” Gregory says. “You spawn back into the Cathedral Ward and the world has changed around you. As cosmosism goes, I don’t think that’s hitting the mark. I’ve always been interested in things happening in real time. That was the premise [of Necropolis Suite], taking that system and expanding upon it but from a first-person perspective.”
This aspect of the game will hinge on a sanity system, which on the surface feels like a combination of Bloodborne’s cosmic interpretation and the oppressive insecurity of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. However you slice it, your mental state will have a profound impact on moment-to-moment gameplay. “The way that you interact with the world drives the agency of the game, giving players a real sense of agency and knowing that they’re controlling what’s happening,” Gregory explains. Take your insight all the way up to insanity and eventually you’ll die, or you can drop your insanity by taking consumables like gin, alcohol, and other types of narcotics. As you go up tiers of insight, the world changes around you and becomes more horrifying. We change the ambience, we change the layout of the house depending on what level of insight you’re at. If you drop this down by taking narcotics, you’ll start to see the world again just like we do.”
As you may have noticed, Necropolis Suite is filled with language relating to mental health issues, with insanity and ways of dealing with it being thrown around in a way that could come across as insensitive or sensationalised. The team at Freesphere assure me the game right now is little more than a vertical slice, and doesn’t reflect the themes they hope to express in the finished product. “Our vertical slice is derivative of the main narrative,” Gregory says. “We’re focused on the small scale story that we want to tell in the vertical slice, but it’s on the radar, and something we’re consciously aware of.”
Ralphson also chimes in, noting that the game is “more about the cosmic nature and the greater being that is messing with the player as opposed to actual clinical issues.” This is a hard balance to strike, although I’m told Detective JP Chambers is a character who has been through a lot, and will use his situation throughout Necropolis Suite to come to terms with his own demons, or potentially succumb to them depending on what direction the player decides to take. It’s a fascinating premise, but one with thematic elements I hope are handled with delicacy.
When it comes to the cosmic horror of the game, Gregory and Ralphson are keen to avoid falling into the trap of making everything a homage to the creations of H.P. Lovecraft. While the author is hugely influential in this space, he’s far from the only pioneer, and Freesphere feels it’s important to highlight that. The first part of this process – no tentacles. “I’m a big proponent of avoiding showing people the monster,” Ralphson said, hinting that perhaps Necropolis has a big bad of sorts, but not one we’ll be seeing much of. “It’s sad to do that because it never lives up to what your brain is envisioning. It’s always good to keep it hidden and let the player wonder what is stalking them.”
Such an approach doesn’t mean you won’t be in any danger, however. On the contrary, a failure to acknowledge your surroundings and constantly react to them will ultimately result in your downfall. “The [insight] system is actively working against the player, it is essentially trying to kill you,” Gregory explains. “Once it kills you though, you’re able to start your run again. You then have a form of meta-knowledge where you can go ‘Okay, this item gives me insight, this is a progression based item, and I know that I need to do this, this, and this to unravel the next part of the mystery.’ Anything that you’ve learned or picked up is added to your inventory and noted in our diary system, so you still have that knowledge alongside any shortcuts you unlock as well.”
The run-based nature of Necropolis Suite ties in with its themes of cosmosism, instilling a sense of paranoia in the protagonist as they come to realise they’re experiencing the same sequence of events over and over again. Yet this also lends itself to the pool of knowledge mentioned earlier, something that works thematically given everything Chambers’ has and will go through. “JP does retain that knowledge and we leverage that against the player in some aspects and as part of the level design,” Gregory says. “The game has multiple endings, and that’s been baked in since the very beginning to give more replayability and more uniqueness to your ending. I grew up playing games like Deus Ex, Thief, and stuff like that, and it also harkens back to Silent Hill 2, which is one of my favourite games of all time.”
Freesphere is also keen not to overstretch its ambition, with the team comprised of professionals, hobbyists, and students all working on the game in their spare time. It’s a true indie effort, and one that seeks to highlight the efforts of creatives trying to break into the industry and prove that the world of cosmic horror has so much more to offer than spooky tentacles. Necropolis Suite doesn’t yet have a release date, but you can check it out for yourself on Twitter and Facebook.
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