Description

USE PSYCHIC REMOTE VIEWING in ATAMA to see through the eyes of giant heads trying to kill you, to avoid detection as you investigate a cursed rural Japanese village. You can't fight back; you must rely only on your ability to see through the eyes of your pursuers and your wits to avoid being caught. Inspired by Forbidden Siren and Junji Ito's "Hanging Balloons".

History

I (slowbeef/Michael Sawyer) was on this Podcast for Hardcore Gaming 101 where we rank video games in a giant list and this particular episode was Forbbiden Siren for PS2, a game I really like. We had another guest on who worked in VR and thought that Virtual Reality was bad for Siren because it would be "too scary."

This is maybe the worst reason not to make a horror game I'd ever heard.

Logistically, though, seeing through the eyes of humanoid enemies is weird for VR (when you look around, are you moving their heads?) so I was thinking a flying enemy would make sense and being a Junji Ito fan, I was reminded of Hanging Balloons and the idea was born.

To keep scope down, I wanted to make a demo or vertical slice, so I dropped the VR part.

I saw a tweet that said "no video game is ever made alone" so I tweeted out "who wants to make a game with me?" I have some history as a content creator so I have a lot of followers and a few people bit and we formed a ragtag group of people who'd never made a game before.

Well, what you create ends up differently than what you first envisioned. I think we all discovered Atama was bigger than a demo or a vertical slice, as we were designing and working on it, so mid-2021, we resolved to make it a full indie horror game. Over a year and half later, here we are!