How uncanny PS1 visuals inspired a horror game set in a Highland chippy
by https://www.creativebloq.com/author/alan-wen · Creative Bloq
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James Muirhead's first console may have been a beat-up PlayStation he got as a hand-me-down from a cousin, but he would admit this wasn't why he's now making Grease Trap '99, a retro-inspired first-person horror game that mimics those same visuals.
"I was too young to really enjoy anything on it," he tells me. "It's all these fuzzy memories of being a five-year-old and having this console in the house and the visuals of it."
Far from just an exercise in nostalgia, the early 3D era of low-poly models and the warped effect caused by the original PlayStation's unique hardware limitations is unique enough to stand on its own as an aesthetic, appealing to audiences who may not have grown up with a '90s PlayStation, or indeed being reintroduced to it many years later.
The appeal of retro PlayStation
As a game designer and developer, Muirhead has been working with modern tech, including Warped Kart Racers, a Family Guy-themed Apple Arcade kart racer built in Unity, and Mafia: The Old Country, a high-fidelity cinematic game built in Unreal Engine 5. But when he decided to venture into solo development, the PS1-style aesthetic suddenly became more appealing.
"I love all the games that are using it as a style, and at university I actually wrote a huge dissertation about uncanniness and nostalgia, and how nostalgia as an emotion can very easily slip into uncanniness because they're both about familiarity and misremembering familiar, homely, comfy things," he explains. "I've always thought that's really interesting because PlayStation-style graphics are nostalgic to a lot of people, and I think that nostalgia blends very well with horror."
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This PS1-style is used for Grease Trap '99, a story-driven mystery-horror that's also a comedic takeaway simulator set inside a Scottish chippy, made all the more authentic by Muirhead's experience working in one, and it's also voiced in Scottish Gaelic.
"I feel like there's a lot of horror games set in jobs in the service industry right now, so it is a bit of a trend that I'm hopping on," he admits. "It's slightly autobiographical. I can throw in lots of references and jokes that I know from working there, and I just know all the little jobs that you have to do that I can turn into a minigame."
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Having your job in a chippy also has its benefits because of it being in a relatively confined space, putting a defined limit on the assets needed, but also making sure all the little details are correct in low-poly form, be it the deep fryers, the menu board - which will include deep-fried pizza but not the "touristy" deep-fried Mars bar - or a CRT TV mounted up on the corner that will be playing an episode of Deadliest Catch on loop. "It's a nice controlled environment. And that's very good for horror. It's easier to flip things and change things to make it creepy."
There's of course also a practical appeal to the low-poly aesthetic, especially when you're a solo developer. "I love the art style, but also you can make models and textures quicker," says Muirhead. "There's still an art to making good PS1 textures, as a lot of people fall into the trap with just taking a pixelated image and slapping on things as a texture. But it is easier to do as a solo developer. I can make assets a little quicker, and it's easier to run acceptably."
The game is being made in Unity, an engine Muirhead has been experienced with since studying game design at university, his preferred engine compared to the "unwieldy" tools in Unreal that can overwhelm a smaller project by a single person.
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"Unity's always been like my safe go-to engine, so I'm very comfortable in it," he says. "I thought about using Godot for this project, but I've been working in Unity so long, I've made my own tools, I've made my own systems that I like using, and my plan is to make more horror games in a similar vein to this, so I can reuse the shaders I've made for doing the PS1 effect. There are so many little things that I use quite a lot in Unity that I don't want to give up."
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With Highland Trip, another low-poly project on the horizon (incidentally, one that he had actually come up with before Grease Trap '99), it seems solo dev is where Muirhead is comfortable staying. But is there anything he misses from the triple-A space, or even with just working in a team?
"It's a lot harder to talk to people," he concludes. "When you're working on big projects with 200 people, you are constantly talking to people, you're constantly asking questions. If I'm stuck, I fire something in the global chat, someone fixes it in five minutes. Working on your own, things move more slowly; there are fewer people to ask questions of. There's been quite a few times when I've just designed a system, in my head I'm like, I can pass this over to the artist, and then I realise I'm the artist, I've now got to do it."
Grease Trap '99 is coming soon to Steam, but you'll have a chance to play it first at Glasgow Indie Games Fest, 11-12 July.