This morning I was minding my own business, looking around at the various horror blogs and Hollywood trades for the freshest, hottest horror news, when I came across an article over at Bloody Disgusting about a new “bodycam horror” game by the name of Deppart. Bodycam horror, did you say? Sure, I’ll see what that’s all about.
According to BD, Deppart is the work of N4bA, and built atop the mighty Unreal 5 engine. Its prototype build is now available to play via itch.io, and the whole experience takes about 10 minutes to complete. Here’s how they’re describing the game:
“Focused on realistic player movement and intense high-risk combat, Deppart‘s premise has you exploring a creepy abandoned building. As you navigate through the various rooms, you’ll find out that you’re not quite alone. In fact, the monsters that you do find tower over you, and can kill you with one hit.”
A small warning before you watch the following footage (a playthrough of Deppart from Alpha Beta Gamer, who tipped Bloody Disgusting off about the game): it contains a few jump scares, and if you’re anything like me – a seasoned professional who rarely, if ever falls for jump scares at this point thanks to a lifetime spent steeped in various horror tropes – you will still yelp out loud like a fancy little lad with a skinned knee when they occur.
This thing got me good.
That one about 3 minutes in? Whew, buddy, you should’ve heard the noise I made. You would’ve thought the spider from the end of Enemy marched into my office, asking to borrow a cup of blood. Another note: did you stick around ’til the very end? I would advise readers not to skip forward to the final minute in the footage above, where a very funny twist awaits you (you’re gonna want to feel all the terror of the preceding eight minutes or so for it to have maximum impact), but what an ending!
As for combining a bodycam presentation with horror? On the one hand, massively effective. Combined with the Unreal 5 engine’s slick graphics and lighting effects, the whole thing feels very immersive, more convincing in its reality than a lot of other first-person shooters I could name. Extremely well done on that front! But on the other hand, I gotta admit to feeling just a touch of queasiness about the bodycam angle. Typically when we’re seeing bodycam footage it’s for all the wrong, most upsetting reasons, and I’m not sure I could sit through an entire 20+ hour campaign in that format.
Anyway, genuinely freaky stuff. I think I’ll just go back to Tears of the Kingdom now, though.
