Horror video game set in Macau releases internationally

The first multi-console video game set entirely in Macau has been released internationally. The game was developed by a local company called 4DMacau.

Nearly two years in the making, multiplayer, horror-survival game “Fight the Horror” was released on PC in April. Although it can currently only be played on PC, its lead developer, Tony Lam, told the Times that the team is working on a console version for PS4 and Xbox ONE.

In an interview with the Times last year, when the game was still being developed, Lam disclosed that team consisted of seven members. Yesterday, when Lam talked with the Times again, he said the team had grown to a staff of 10, in addition to a number of casual helpers.

Despite the expansion, Lam said they still faced various challenges. “There are many different challenges at different times,” Lam said. “We’re new in developing games in the market, [and] with such a small team we’re lucky to have made a product in such a short time.”

He has poured his savings into making a project that he describes as the game he always wanted but could never find. “I wanted a game like this and one didn’t exist,” he told the Times. “I have been waiting for this sort of game for a long time.”

The developer brought the game to the 2019 Taipei Game Show for a preview and it received rounds of applause from the players in Taiwan, according to Lam.

However, it has received a mixed response on popular video game distribution platform, Steam. Out of the 45 ratings for the game on the platform, 19 were positive and 26 were negative.

Lam thinks it is too early to comment on the game’s feedback because it is only at the early stage of launch and, as he emphasized more than once during the interview, that the project is on-going.

The horror-survival game pits intimate, multiplayer teams against each other in a seven- day test of endurance and has five storylines in total. There are other elements to the game for players to explore as well.

Fight the Horror relies on its story and atmosphere to deliver the thrills. There are seven ghost stories in the game and all of them are based on real tales from Macau.

In one game trailer, ghostly apparitions are seen wandering around the Ruins of St. Paul’s. In another, a young boy is seen starting up at a grotesque adaptation of the Kun Iam statue in NAPE and saying, “I can’t stop staring at that statue… I’m afraid that when I turn my back on it, it will come to life!” Staff reporter