Summary
During the COVID-19 pandemic, formerNaughty Dogdeveloper Bryan Singh andNickelodeonart director Crista Castro quit their jobs to form Cozy Game Pals. They had two years’ worth of savings and a dream; to make a game that they “would have loved to play” when they were younger.
Even the best-laid plans rarely work out as expected, though. The two years quickly passed, their savings wore thin, and the duo were left in a predicament. InFear The Spotlight, they had a game they were happy with, but Castro said it didn’t “feel complete.”
Needs must, though, and after doing all they could with their limited resources, the couple’s ‘00s-inspired horror title was released onSteam. Despite positive feedback on the early game, the pair were left in a state of mourning — that is, until Blumhouse stepped in.
The legendary horror producer saw something special in Castro and Singh and, with grand plans to replicate its movie success in video games, struck a deal that allowed the duo to continue their ambitions.
We sat down with Castro and Singh, alongside Blumhouse Games creative lead Louise Blain, to tell the fascinating story of how this indie game came to be.
Humble Beginnings
Fear the Spotlight started as a passion project for Singh and Castro. Initially, it was a small, 15-minute demo named ‘After School,’ born from a love of horror games, retro aesthetics, and making things together. It was released in the HauntedPS1, a compilation of horror games inspired by Sony’s inaugural console.
The After School demo wasn’t the couple’s first attempt at making games, though. Although never released, Singh and Castro regularly attended game jams where they tell me they “had the most fun.”
It was this that sparked the desire for them to “just make something for ourselves,” and Cozy Game Pals was born.
After making the big decision to quit their jobs, Singh and Castro didn’t really know what their plans were. “We had no idea what the scale of it would be,”Singh tells me. He said that the pair didn’t think of their venture as “starting a company or a studio” and that they “had this urge to try and make something for themselves.” The process hit an almost immediate but wonderful hitch. “After we quit our jobs, we got pregnant, and then we got our little doggy, so it was a lot of risky things.”
It really was capturing that excitement of all the different things there are to love about horror.
While they didn’t know what the end goal was, the couple did know that they had a “perfect Venn diagram” of skills. At the time of the company’s inception, Castro was an animator for Nickelodeon, where she worked on shows like the Animaniacs reboot, and Singh was a developer working on triple-A games likeUnchartedandThe Last of Us. These skills formed a perfect starting point for the company.
Singh shares that the initial idea was to “make little demos and find one that hits,” a process that didn’t take long. “The first demo we made was Fear the Spotlight. And we’re like, oh, okay. Maybe there’s something here. Let’s give it a shot.”
The first demo was inspired by horror from a range of media. While video games likeSilent HillandFatal Framewere some of Castro’s favorites as a preteen, things likeGoosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and The Craft all factored into the creative process. “It really was capturing that excitement of all the different things there are to love about horror and also the idea of introducing horror to more people,” she says.
With inspiration and a target audience (teenage Castro), Fear the Spotlight began to evolve. 15 minutes turned into 45, 45 turned into 60, and the game kept growing in scope.
“It just doesn’t feel done.”
“Before we knew it, we had used up our full two years of runway,” Casto says. “And we’re like, alright, if we’re going in on something, let’s just make it the best we can and at least be proud of it before we have to go back to ‘real jobs’.”
After some tinkering, the then-final version of Fear the Spotlight clocked in at just a few hours long. Singh and Castro considered this the “complete version” of the game. But despite being so proud of it and having so much fun working together, they were left with mixed feelings, because they expected to have to “go get jobs again.”
A glowingly positive reception gave the pair a final impetus to try and make Fear the Spotlight work, but they struggled. The game had built a small but enthusiastic audience. However, reaching more people was hard. “This is a thing that a lot of indies struggle with, just getting people to even notice you", Singh explains. “ We’re trying to reach out to publishers because maybe they could help us. We’re trying to reach out to other indie devs who saw our game and were also excited for us. But in the back of our minds, we were like, ‘Yeah, this is this is it, let’s go back to jobs.’”
Blumhouse First Contact
While Singh and Castro began to accept that they’d be returning to their old lives, Blumhouse Games and Louise Blain were about to become their saviors. “I was actually flying from London to LA, and Zach [Wood, Blumhouse Games president] had seen the trailer on Twitter through a mutual friend and said, ‘This looks great.’ I only managed to download the demo for the plane,” she recalls.
The next ten hours of the flight were tough. Fear the Spotlight’s demo left such a strong impression on Louise that all she could think about was playing the rest of the game. Fortunately for her, as soon as she touched down in LA, she and Wood “sat and played the full game together.”
It was a “joyous” experience for the horror veterans, with Louise reminiscing that the pair had “such an emotional response to it.” Louise was enamored with Fear the Spotlight, telling me, “It’s got a great narrative, such incredible tactile mechanics, interesting puzzles, and at its heart, there’s a really incredible mystery.”
It’s got a great narrative, such incredible tactile mechanics, interesting puzzles, and at its heart, there’s a really incredible mystery.
These two short but sweet moments with the game, the demo, and the full experience, were more than enough to sell Blain on it and meant that she couldn’t resist speaking to the team to “see how we can help.”
Before she could do that, though, Singh and Castro started to notice their newfound attention, “Someone who shared our Twitter post of the trailer happened to catch the eyes of the people at Blumhouse…and then they started following our accounts,” says Castro.
Curiosity, and maybe a tinge of impatience, got the better of the duo, who jokingly told me, “If they’re following us, that means we can message them right… so we did,” and an instant connection was formed.
“As soon as we poked them, they immediately came out like, ‘Oh, we really like your game. Let’s start chatting.’” Exciting conversation after exciting conversation took place, culminating in the dream scenario: the pair “pulling the game [from Steam] to have the opportunity to work with Blumhouse.” This was something the couple had “no hesitation” in doing.
The Finishing Touches
It was only after releasing the game that Singh and Castro really “figured out what the game’s identity was.” This meant that withBlumhouse’s help, which Castro said “touched my heart” they were able to “really hit the ground running” when development restarted. Castro tells me that getting back to work on Fear the Spotlight “felt, in many ways, like working on a sequel.”
However, while the team had dozens of new ideas they wanted to implement into the game, they had to be “really meticulous and really careful about how we were gonna even approach modifying what we felt was a complete game.” This process of avoiding disruption to the rhythm, flow, and pacing took two months, or more, with the pair carefully jotting ideas down on paper before touching the code, “to make sure we weren’t destroying something that we cared about.”
The Future
Summer Game Fest 2024was a huge moment for Singh and Castro as their title was revealed as the first game on Blumhouse’s six-title slate.
Prior to that, the pair considered this their big chance to try and make something for themselves, while simultaneously trying to temper their expectations. However, after the game appeared in front of millions of viewers around the world, they realized that “there are people who are going to enjoy this as much as we do,” pushing them one step closer to their dream.
With Fear the Spotlight getting major mainstream attention, Singh and Castro now believe that they’ll “get another stab at trying something again after this,” but as has been the case throughout our conversation, they remain incredibly humble. “We know that we have a lot of space to grow and a lot to learn,” Singh says before excitedly adding, “We’re so excited to explore more indie games and get more creative and try more. And we’re excited to grow into that space as well.”
