As the resident horror sicko here on SmashPad, it fell upon me to check out Deadcam, a self-proclaimed analog indie horror game from developer Joure Visser. Currently in early access, Deadcam is an anthology horror game that will tackle multiple subgenres, like thrillers and psychological horror. We don’t quite know how many episodes (called “files” here) the finished game will have, but you can play its first found-footage-style jaunt in full now. Titled Onryō, it takes place inside an abandoned Japanese high school and takes heavy inspiration from classic Japanese horror films like Ju-On and Ringu, or The Grudge and The Ring here in the states, but we don’t talk about those. You take on the role of Kenji, a former teacher at the school, as he explores the dilapidated grounds and encounters the vengeful ghost of Hitomi, a student who was bullied and murdered by cruel classmates.
You explore the building, solve puzzles, and fight terrifying ghosts of other schoolgirls in this roughly three-hour horror house. The UI takes inspiration from handheld camcorders, relics of the 90s, complete with playback time, speeds, and the in-game button prompts, all of which can be toggled on and off to tailor your immersive experience. You play through a sort of CRT-like filter, which not only gave me a bit of motion sickness, but absolutely tanked performance. I was about a half hour in, tolerating constant frame dips and stutters, when I discovered I could remove the filter in the settings and play the game normally. Sure, taking the filter off definitely harms the terrifying immersion, but I’d sacrifice that for performance any day. It was smooth as butter after this.
As a horror experience, Deadcam checks every box you’d hope for. Its dimly-lit, macabre atmosphere will make your hair stand on end, and (as I always say) a key pillar to the success of any survival horror game is in its sound design. The Japanese voice acting and few-and-far-between bits of music are extremely well done, but it’s the environmental sound effects and creepy heavy breathing of the enemies that ensured I played this game with the lights on. But as a video game, many horror titles tiptoe the line between immersive and, well, super annoying. In Deadcam, you have a flashlight to help you navigate the corridors of the haunted school. No batteries needed to charge, no limited time use, so on and so forth. But whenever you’re attacked by enemies, it does its best rave impression and flickers on and off nonstop until you defeat them. Terrifying, hair-curling immersion? Absolutely. Bad design choice? I’d say so. This is a video game (read: designed to be finished), and I’d like dark horror games to at least be a bit more fair. Silent Hill 2 from last year suffered from this same issue.
Another glaring design choice is being able to pause. Now I can understand the action not stopping when you’re in your inventory or checking a map, but Deadcam doesn’t even stop if you’re in the system menu. So if you’re wanting to adjust the volume, check out accessibility settings, or turn off that nausea-inducing filter, you’ll have to either run away to a save room (there aren’t many) or exit to the main menu. You can, however, pause in real-time as a game mechanic, but it’s not as helpful as you’d think. The camcorder’s controls allow you to slow down time, speed it up, and pause, all for a limited time, as measured by a bar in the upper left above the play time. The first two options make sense, as sprinting is somewhat slow, so you’d want to speed up your traversal time around the school. Slowing down time is nice, since you’ll often get swarmed by ghost girls and need to plan your next move. But the pause button, which doesn’t even toggle on and off (seriously, you have to hold it), is one of the most pointless and questionable design decisions I think I’ve ever experienced in a game.
That brings us to combat. Deadcam offers little in the way of deep combat mechanics, which I welcome and I think helps with immersion. Early on in the game, you’ll come across a katana and use that to defend yourself from the onslaught of the terrifying ghost schoolgirls. You’re able to block attacks with it, making it extremely useful in a pinch, but you’ll have to get in close. You can also find a couple of firearms and limited ammo spread across the school. Another interesting (and deliberate) design decision here is when aiming guns. In the year of our lord 2025, you’d be hard pressed to find a gamer who doesn’t already have FPS design logic seared into their brains; hold aim, point, and shoot. In Deadcam, you push the aim button once and the gun is up until you toggle it back off. While aiming, you move slower and are a bit more vulnerable, but landing shots is a bit easier. This mechanic isn’t necessarily a detriment to the experience, but it definitely comes with a bit of learning curve.
As far navigating the world goes, it leaves a bit to be desired. The map only displays your immediate area, and you don’t have the ability scroll around and plan your route through the school. Again, I understand and can appreciate that this is a horror game and these design decisions are an intentional way of enhancing immersion, but I’m on the fence about what it has to offer as far as accessibility for new gamers and those with mobility issues goes. I do, however, like that I had to rely on my memory of the building’s layout instead of constantly taking a step, checking the map, and rinsing and repeating.
Overall, Deadcam is a solid survival horror experience. I’m genuinely surprised I haven’t seen much chatter about it online, as it seems to me to be the perfect streaming game; it’s relatively short, genuinely terrifying, and has an interesting story with complex characters. Despite a bit of clunkiness and questionable design decisions in the name of deeper immersion, I’m extremely interested in what lone developer Joure Visser brings to the table in the indie horror scene. Deadcam‘s first file Onryō checked every box for what I’m looking for in a horror experience, and I eagerly await news for what’s next. I just hope some quality-of-life improvements accompany future files.
As the resident horror sicko here on SmashPad, it fell upon me to check out Deadcam, a self-proclaimed analog indie horror game from developer Joure Visser. Currently in early access, Deadcam is an anthology horror game that will tackle multiple…
As the resident horror sicko here on SmashPad, it fell upon me to check out Deadcam, a self-proclaimed analog indie horror game from developer Joure Visser. Currently in early access, Deadcam is an anthology horror game that will tackle multiple subgenres, like thrillers and psychological horror. We don’t quite know how many episodes (called “files” here) the finished game will have, but you can play its first found-footage-style jaunt in full now. Titled Onryō, it takes place inside an abandoned Japanese high school and takes heavy inspiration from classic Japanese horror films like Ju-On and Ringu, or The Grudge and The Ring here in the states, but we don’t talk about those. You take on the role of Kenji, a former teacher at the school, as he explores the dilapidated grounds and encounters the vengeful ghost of Hitomi, a student who was bullied and murdered by cruel classmates.
You explore the building, solve puzzles, and fight terrifying ghosts of other schoolgirls in this roughly three-hour horror house. The UI takes inspiration from handheld camcorders, relics of the 90s, complete with playback time, speeds, and the in-game button prompts, all of which can be toggled on and off to tailor your immersive experience. You play through a sort of CRT-like filter, which not only gave me a bit of motion sickness, but absolutely tanked performance. I was about a half hour in, tolerating constant frame dips and stutters, when I discovered I could remove the filter in the settings and play the game normally. Sure, taking the filter off definitely harms the terrifying immersion, but I’d sacrifice that for performance any day. It was smooth as butter after this.
As a horror experience, Deadcam checks every box you’d hope for. Its dimly-lit, macabre atmosphere will make your hair stand on end, and (as I always say) a key pillar to the success of any survival horror game is in its sound design. The Japanese voice acting and few-and-far-between bits of music are extremely well done, but it’s the environmental sound effects and creepy heavy breathing of the enemies that ensured I played this game with the lights on. But as a video game, many horror titles tiptoe the line between immersive and, well, super annoying. In Deadcam, you have a flashlight to help you navigate the corridors of the haunted school. No batteries needed to charge, no limited time use, so on and so forth. But whenever you’re attacked by enemies, it does its best rave impression and flickers on and off nonstop until you defeat them. Terrifying, hair-curling immersion? Absolutely. Bad design choice? I’d say so. This is a video game (read: designed to be finished), and I’d like dark horror games to at least be a bit more fair. Silent Hill 2 from last year suffered from this same issue.
Another glaring design choice is being able to pause. Now I can understand the action not stopping when you’re in your inventory or checking a map, but Deadcam doesn’t even stop if you’re in the system menu. So if you’re wanting to adjust the volume, check out accessibility settings, or turn off that nausea-inducing filter, you’ll have to either run away to a save room (there aren’t many) or exit to the main menu. You can, however, pause in real-time as a game mechanic, but it’s not as helpful as you’d think. The camcorder’s controls allow you to slow down time, speed it up, and pause, all for a limited time, as measured by a bar in the upper left above the play time. The first two options make sense, as sprinting is somewhat slow, so you’d want to speed up your traversal time around the school. Slowing down time is nice, since you’ll often get swarmed by ghost girls and need to plan your next move. But the pause button, which doesn’t even toggle on and off (seriously, you have to hold it), is one of the most pointless and questionable design decisions I think I’ve ever experienced in a game.
That brings us to combat. Deadcam offers little in the way of deep combat mechanics, which I welcome and I think helps with immersion. Early on in the game, you’ll come across a katana and use that to defend yourself from the onslaught of the terrifying ghost schoolgirls. You’re able to block attacks with it, making it extremely useful in a pinch, but you’ll have to get in close. You can also find a couple of firearms and limited ammo spread across the school. Another interesting (and deliberate) design decision here is when aiming guns. In the year of our lord 2025, you’d be hard pressed to find a gamer who doesn’t already have FPS design logic seared into their brains; hold aim, point, and shoot. In Deadcam, you push the aim button once and the gun is up until you toggle it back off. While aiming, you move slower and are a bit more vulnerable, but landing shots is a bit easier. This mechanic isn’t necessarily a detriment to the experience, but it definitely comes with a bit of learning curve.
As far navigating the world goes, it leaves a bit to be desired. The map only displays your immediate area, and you don’t have the ability scroll around and plan your route through the school. Again, I understand and can appreciate that this is a horror game and these design decisions are an intentional way of enhancing immersion, but I’m on the fence about what it has to offer as far as accessibility for new gamers and those with mobility issues goes. I do, however, like that I had to rely on my memory of the building’s layout instead of constantly taking a step, checking the map, and rinsing and repeating.
Overall, Deadcam is a solid survival horror experience. I’m genuinely surprised I haven’t seen much chatter about it online, as it seems to me to be the perfect streaming game; it’s relatively short, genuinely terrifying, and has an interesting story with complex characters. Despite a bit of clunkiness and questionable design decisions in the name of deeper immersion, I’m extremely interested in what lone developer Joure Visser brings to the table in the indie horror scene. Deadcam‘s first file Onryō checked every box for what I’m looking for in a horror experience, and I eagerly await news for what’s next. I just hope some quality-of-life improvements accompany future files.
by Myles Obenza
