Time for another devlog! I needed a brain-break from build 10, so I wanted to pen another one of these for fun. There's also a little musical treat at the end if you can make it that far!

Before starting, know that I'm moving most of my attention over to Bluesky from now on rather than Twitter, so find me there! If you've not joined yet, I highly recommend it for all the copious amounts of furry porn that you'll get on your timeline.

Lastly, before anyone asks, I have no release date for build 10 yet. As soon as I do, I'll post it!

How Do Horror Good?

A silly otter's self-indulgent reflection on horror and Soulcreek

A little while back, I wrote a devlog reflecting on the nature of cosmic horror from my experience and why I’m drawn to the genre, with the focus being mainly on the word ‘cosmic’. With build 9 out, now seems like a good time to take another shot at trying to decipher my own jumbled mess of plots and ideas that somehow formed Soulcreek. This time, I wanted to reflect a little more on the word ‘horror’ instead.

Since I get quite a few folks asking for a little ‘behind the scenes’ as it were, I thought I might as well give into total self-indulgence and do a commentary on my thinking behind one of Soulcreek’s arcs - namely that of the visit to Devil’s Crag on day 7! So spoilers ahead for the main story if you’ve yet to read up to that point, as I’ll be discussing it in detail!

I also wanted to look back on how I got to that point from my obsession with horror movies and how they shaped the story. Who knows! It might even give any budding writers reading this some idea fuel! So expect this essay to be a fully indulgent self-obsession medley. Before we get stuck in though, I need to (badly) clarify something about how my brain works when I’m coming up with stories…

Staying Humble

I’ve often used the catchphrase ‘I have no idea what I’m doing’ to describe myself during this project for two reasons. One, I think it’s important to stay humble. Two, there’s a lot of truth in it. My university education was in theatre and film production (primarily the latter). I’ve never written a book or a visual novel before. Sure, I learned how to tell broad stories from years of running table-top RPGs, but Soulcreek was always going to be something else. I had no idea what would work and what wouldn’t. I’ve got no idea if what I’m doing is good and, most of the time, I’m not able to reflect on whatever creative process got the words onto the page in the first place. It’s pretty frustrating at times. The best analogy I can make is to ask you to imagine that you’ve just built an entire house, but you have no idea how construction works. If someone asked you how you’d built it you’d just say ‘Uhh. I just put the bricks where I thought they’d go, I think?’

What I’m trying to say is, I’m anything but a professional writer. I believe being a storyteller and a writer are different things, and I’m certainly more of the former. In fact, pretty much all of my inspiration for Soulcreek, down to its story, effects and pacing, comes from film rather than literature. 

So, if you’ve made it through my self-obsession devblog so far (well done, give yourself a clap!), what follows is not the advice of an experienced writer dispersing thorough and creative thought processes, grown from tried and tested expertise passed down by creatives through the ages. It’s not even the advice of someone who reads many books.

These are the musings of a silly otter trying to reflect on his own neurodivergent brainwaves and chaotic ideas that jump from point to point too quickly to keep track of. From this point on I’m going to talk as if what I’m saying is fact because it lets me be straight-forward and direct without clarifying ‘that’s only my opinion though!’ in every sentence. So keep in mind that everything is just my subjective view and I’m not claiming to be any sort of horror expert!

But maybe, just maybe, there’s some sense in it!

"What the hell are you?"

I’m not sure if it’s a good sign when an author struggles to define their work into a simple genre, but that’s certainly the case for Soulcreek. I usually laugh awkwardly and avoid answering the question ‘what genre is it?’ because, honestly, I just don’t know. I suppose you could squeeze everything under the ‘science fiction’ umbrella but for me, in terms of information, that’s up there with saying ‘it contains vowels’.

Obviously the label I settled on is cosmic horror, but that in itself usually raises eyebrows because a lot of people aren’t quite sure exactly what that is. But when people ask me ‘is Soulcreek a scary horror?’ I usually hesitate and then make a noise that sounds like an intoxicated duck being lovingly smothered by a pillow. Because, truth be told, I didn’t go in with the aim of making Soulcreek an all-out horror story. Sure, there’s spooky stuff in there, but I still consider it ‘horror-lite’... or ‘budget-horror’... or ‘I can’t believe it’s not horror’...

Those of you who are already scrambling to bap with me newspapers and tell me that ‘obviously Soulcreek is a horror you dumb pleb!’, it’s worth remembering that defining the horror genre is extremely subjective. I’ve met people who say The Exorcist (1973) isn’t a horror, whereas I consider it to be the horror. Part of this is because everyone is afraid of different things. We don’t usually react to fearful stimuli in exactly the same way, which is why I can watch Terrifier (2016) with fascinated intrigue while my poor mother is permanently traumatised and thinks I must need urgent therapy.

Still, my brain seems to default to trying to create art that’s unsettling and dark. If you read my last devblog because I somehow successfully gave you the mistaken idea that I know what the fuck I'm doing, you’ll know my attraction to horror is rooted in a crippling childhood fear of the ocean that still haunts me to this day. The intensity of experiencing fear in a safe, creative environment draws me in a way other genres don’t quite live up to. I once read that horror and pornography share a similarity in that they’re both trying to evoke a hormonal chemical reaction from its audience - fear in the former, arousal in the latter. I’d argue that all art is attempting to do that to some degree, though.

Nothing is Terrifying

To begin our self-indulgence analysis, we start with a quote!

Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the secret. In the first case, we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.

If you know where this masterful advice came from the moment you saw the words ‘bomb’ and ‘table’, congrats! You’re a movie nerd! No attempt to analyse and breakdown a silly otter’s creative attempts at horror would be complete without harking back to the great Alfred Hitchcock. I know what you’re thinking - Hitchcock was the master of suspense, not horror. I’d argue that they’re just two sides of the same coin. Hitchcock understands that uncertainty is horrifying. As humans, we usually like to have a good sense of control, particularly where danger is concerned. If we ‘know’ a jumpscare is probably coming but we have no idea when, we hate it (hence the outbreak of YouTubers loudly and obnoxiously overreacting to Five Nights at Freddy’s). But what tends to rub people up the wrong way is a jumpscare that just comes out of nowhere that we didn’t expect. Sure it makes us jump, however a startled gazelle jumping suddenly through my living room window would have the same effect and I wouldn’t call it an architect of the horror genre. Those of you who spotted Loken’s regular quirk of quoting Edgar Allan Poe will also know the poet as a grandfather of horror. Here’s a line from ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’:

‘I dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there be nothing to see.’

In this poem, the narrator comes to realise he is trapped somewhere damp and dark and refuses to open his eyes. His fear was not that he’d see something terrifying, but that he’d see nothing at all, thereby giving no explanation for where he was, how he got here or how to escape. The darkness of the unknown could herald a greater terror to him than the safe certainty of any danger. This is why the ‘less is more’ mentality applies to a lot of the more terrifying horror, and one reason why the Demon’s in Soulcreek haven’t been visually depicted - because an unfathomable horror becomes ordinary and fascinating when it can be viewed with impunity, robbing it of its ability to unnerve us. That’s also why the monster reveal in any fiction is often at the very end, because the story is about to conclude and we no longer ‘need’ to invoke that same sense of dread. The moment I reveal the appearance of the Demon’s to the audience, their role in the story would immediately shift from a mystifying threat as unnerving as it is perilous to just a mostly physical threat.

Don't show anything (except when you show everything)

‘Okay’, you might say, ‘but what about horror that doesn’t shy away from depicting its threats? The gore and the monsters? They’re just as terrifying!’. And I’d say, yes! They can be! Horror isn’t just fear of the unknown - it’s disgust, revulsion and unease! Take John Carpenter’s seminal classic The Thing (1982), where a lot of the horror comes from the grotesque practical effects. But is it scary? Well, possibly? For me, the body horror isn’t frightening but morbidly fascinating - as is a lot of creative gore and practical effects. And yet, I can’t help but feel that The Thing is a terrifying horror film at the same time, because in conjunction with all the body horror is the mass panic and hysteria the victims of the creature’s duplicating power go through. It’s the idea that someone you know could be a formless, unfathomable abomination and you’d never know. In my opinion, the blood testing scene is an absolutely fantastic example of Hitchcock’s ‘bomb under the table’ theory in the wild.

The Three Stages of Fear

Obviously I’m a huge horror nerd. When it came to Soulcreek, I was suddenly really uncertain how I’d replicate the genre. At first, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (as I’ve stated many times) and just threw words onto the page. Now, looking back, I think I have a better understanding of what I was doing through practice. This is the part of the essay where I pretend to be an expert and give you fake horror-writing advice! Let’s grab a quote from Yahtzee Crowshaw for this:

“You see there are three kinds of horror games. First, there’s the kind where you’re in a dark room and a guy in a spooky mask jumps out going ‘abloogly woogy woo’ (that would be your Doom 3). Then there’s the kind where the guy in the spooky mask isn’t in the cupboard but he’s standing right behind you, and you just know he’s going to go ‘abloogy woogy woo’ at some point but he doesn’t and you’re getting more and more tense, but you don’t want to turn around because he might stick his cock in your eye (that’d be your Silent Hill 2). And then there’s the kind of horror games where the guy in a spooky mask goes ‘abloogy woogy woo’ while standing on the far side of a brightly lit room before walking slowly over to you, plucking a violin and then slapping you in the face with a T-bone steak (that’ll be your Dead Space).” 

Not only does this link back to Hitchcock and Poe, but I think Yahtzee is actually tuning into something that I was taught about at university called the three stages of fear: dread, terror and horror. 

This genre has to show a precise amount of constraint in its pacing to be at its most effective. Too quick, and it loses its edge. Too slow, and it drags. Some of the most effective horror sequences in fiction work because they move through the three stages so well. Here’s my understanding of how it’s supposed to work:

Stage 1 - Dread

This is the sense that something is wrong, but it’s not clear what the threat is yet. It’s planting a narrative seed that conjures unpleasant ideas. It’s coming home and finding your front door unlocked, even though you lock it every day. It’s realising the person walking behind you might be following you. It’s finding blood on the floor and realising your pet is missing. The idea is to instil the idea that something bad is about to happen, but you’re absolutely powerless to stop it because you don’t know what it is. 

Stage 2 - Terror

This is when the sense that something is wrong becomes a certainty. It’s no longer a case of if, but when. It’s barricading yourself in a room when someone breaks into your home, then hearing them banging on the door. It’s seeing something move in the woods and realising you’re being hunted. It’s discovering your trusted friend has been replaced with a doppelganger that you’re trapped in a room with. Terror is often the scariest part of the horror sequence.

Stage 3 - Horror

This is the climax. It’s the payoff that has been building slowly up. Because of this, it’s usually less scary than terror (although, as I’ll ponder later on, I personally believe it’s perfectly possible to make this stage just as terrifying if not moreso). This is when the doppelganger peels back its face to reveal its true, bloody form. It’s turning around and finding yourself face-to-face with a monstrous creature out for your blood.

To make sense of this ‘three stages’ bullshit, I’ll point to my absolute favourite horror franchise and the film I would marry if I could: Alien (1979). Specifically, the scene where Dallas has crawled into the air ducts and is attempting to flush the Xenomorph to the airlock. It’s claustrophobic, dark and the intensity of the cast watching Dallas on the motion tracker and seeing his movements but being powerless to help him is disturbing. And the cherry on top: we still have no idea what this creature is or what it really looks like, only that it’s killed two people so far under horrifying circumstances, one having his skull punctured and the other having his organs forcefully mutated into a chestburster which then eats him from the inside.

First, the dread stage! Dallas is crawling through the ducts. They don’t know where the Xenomorph is. Lambert is talking to him on the radio and watching his movement. Eventually, the motion tracker detects a second blip. Lambert tries to stay calm and in control as she tells Dallas she can see it, and tries to guide him in its direction. We can hear the fear in her voice, even if Dallas still sounds confident and in control. We don’t see or hear the creature: all we have is the blip on the motion tracker.

Next comes terror. The Xenomorphs signal suddenly vanishes. They don’t know where it is now, but it’s got to be close. Dallas stops moving, unsure what to do, and now we can hear him getting nervous too. Lambert is losing her composure slowly as she gets more afraid. That horrible uncertainty we talked about earlier is at its height. Then, all of sudden, the signal re-appears - the Xenomorph is heading straight towards Dallas. Lambert becomes hysterical with fear, but Dallas can’t see a thing. He knows it's coming for him, but can’t see where from. Lambert yells at him to get the hell out. We know he’s a goner - it’s not ‘if’ now, it’s ‘when’ and ‘how’.

Finally, the horror stage. It’s quick, clean and sudden. Dallas crawls down another duct, shines his light in both directions and finds that the Xenomorph is right next to him. The camera jump cuts to its screech as it grabs him, before both signals go completely dead. Dallas is gone, and the Xenomorph is still at large. Lambert was forced to listen as her friend was murdered by an alien horror, and she couldn’t do a damn thing to save him - and now they’re next on the creature’s chopping board. 

So far I’ve probably made it sound like the stage 3 part of this fear escalation, the climax, is best when it’s short and sweet. Indeed, this is the part where the threat is revealed and the dread that comes from the mystique evaporates. However, there’s plenty of examples where writers and filmmakers can make these climaxes both really drawn out and terrifying at the same time! Usually I see this done by the climax having its own sequence of insufferable horrors as the situation gets worse and worse. It’s when the stage three climax goes beyond just ‘the monster grabs you’ to ‘the monster grabs you and then we see what it does next’. 

Going back to Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), the scene that I think does this brilliantly is the blood test. We get the dread stage of not knowing who can be trusted as the team resorts to literally tying each other to a bench. Then we get the terror of seeing the results of each person tested one by one. Then, the stage 3 horror kicks off with a jumpscare as Palmer’s blood reacts to the heat and he reveals himself as a Thing.

From here, things brilliantly go from bad to worse in terrifying ways. First, you realise Palmer is transforming into a grotesque abomination and several people are literally tied to him, helpless as they scream and try to escape. Then, the flamethrower doesn’t work so they can’t kill it. Then, Window’s tries to help only for Palmer-thing’s head to split open into a jaw and trap Window’s head into its teeth, infecting him. Finally, the flamethrower works and Palmer-thing gets incinerated - but then Window is becoming a thing too. We’re not sure if he’s still sentient and suffering as he’s put out of his misery. The whole sequence is utterly gripping and, by the end, we feel exhausted.

I’ve noticed these climatic horror sequences sometimes have a little full stop to tell the audience that it’s over (for now). It’s often a small comedic moment. In The Thing, the blood test ends after the last person is tested and delivers his ‘I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch’ line. It’s a sign that it’s safe to lower our guard a little after such an intense scene, swinging the tone of the story back into its status-quo and allowing us to worry about whatever’s next without feeling overwhelmed.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen that movie go watch it right now.

Thinking about Soulcreek

I’ve probably rambled enough about what I think makes good horror so far, so now’s the time to get self-indulgence and think about how all this might apply to Soulcreek! I’ll admit that, at the time of writing, I don’t normally consider this stuff while I’m putting the words down. It normally comes from some creative corner of my brain that I don’t seem connected with, and have to write self-obsessed reflective essays like this to figure out what the hell I was thinking!

So, spoiler alert ahead if you’re not up to date on Soulcreek’s story!

Before looking at one of its narrative sequences, I’ll say that the main draw of Soulcreek’s story for me is the horror of the human’s fall to darkness. Since we’re up to build 9 now, I’ve no qualms admitting that the story is, and always was, a supervillain origin story at its core. The protagonist’s trauma, his arrogance, his rage and his fear ultimately dictate his downfall and rebirth into an entirely different person, the latter of which we’ve started to see in the latest build. There’s no right or wrong answer as to whether his malice is justified or not, but there’s no doubt that he’s spiralling out of control and devolving (or evolving) into something cruel. Something beautiful.

Now that we’ve seen him absolutely broken and at his worst in the latest incident, he’s now on the path to rebuild himself. But there’s no guarantee the person he constructs himself into is any less dangerous than he was during his decline. If anything, he could be far more deadly.

The 'Devil's Crag' sequence

Alright, time to go into self-critic mode and analyse a narrative sequence in the story. For this, I’m gonna’ start at the moment Alex, Nitro and Loken arrive at Devil’s Crag. By this point, we recognise that Alex is becoming unstable but the ignorance of his past prevents us from knowing why. We’re probably still hoping that finding the answers to his past will be the solution to healing him.

The actual walk through Devil’s Crag has a pretty chilled out vibe. There’s a sombre start where Alex sees and reflects on the destruction of his world, but he doesn’t remember living in it. He’s taking that shock and fuelling his growing anger - right now, that anger is being directed into hope that this journey will lead to answers. It’s giving him the strength to keep going.

It’s quite a while before there’s any sign of the three horror stages. Alex finds his ‘time capsule’, which just poses more answers than questions. It starts to break him, but knowing there’s still hope in the algorithm providing enlightenment (plus Loken’s presence) prevents him from breaking down.

Then, the moment we find everything we can from this place, a little motivation to keep the characters moving is needed - we get the first injection of the dread stage when the Blackzones ‘open their eyes’. There’s a tense scene where the three of them race through the streets to get to shelter. It’s kind of ambiguous to us if there’s any actual danger here or not. Sure, all three seem pretty certain there is imminent danger, but we’re not shown anything. We hear some unsettling sounds and get constant reminders from Alex’s perspective of the growing dread, but nothing happens. Maybe it’s because these three are Blackrunners and can sense something we can’t, but by this point we trust their instincts.

That little sequence mainly exists to keep the Blackzones threatening and throw us into the next sequence - the tunnels of the Boneyard. It never really goes past stage 1. There’s another pause in the tension. It’s safer in these tunnels, despite being darker and more claustrophobic. Then that safety gets whipped away quickly with the Informed encounter.

This sequence is probably the cleanest ‘three stages’ moment of the whole day. The dread happens when Alex sees someone ahead and we know something isn’t right. The terror kicks in when the Informed spot the Blackrunners and arrive in greater numbers - we all know they’re going to attack. Then horror as they give chase.

In truth, the purpose of this scene wasn’t to be scary. Sure, it starts with a nice stage 1 and 2, but the moment stage 3 hits it devolves into a straight-up action sequence. That’s because the reason this scene exists is to show that Alex and Byte are very powerful - they hold back the entire horde of Informed alone, impressing two very seasoned Blackrunners. The human isn’t one to be messed with, and I’m trying to instil a certain confidence in his abilities - whatever the threat, Alex and Byte can overcome it.

The moment is somewhat punctured by the discovery of the graveyard. No matter how confident Alex might feel in his prowess, he’s still utterly helpless to his declining sanity. We’re reminded that, even if Alex is strong, he’s still weak in his soul. It’s me trying to remind the reader that it’ll be his mind that breaks first, not his body.

This moves onto a fade-out/fade-in (quick tip, a crossfade tells your audience some time has passed, while a fade-out/fade-in tells them significant time has passed, particularly if you’re transitioning to the exact same scene!). When Alex finds the algorithm is a dead end, he finally breaks. We all knew it was coming. It’s meant to start quite slow, with a lot of denial before the total loss of logic and reason. All hope is gone, and Loken nor Byte can’t snap him out of his mental breakdown. It’s the payoff to all the foreshadowing we’ve had. Its purpose is to really begin separating the reader from Alex - until now, we’ve probably been quite happy living in his head. Now, we’re starting to step away and look at him differently.

So, the very moment Alex is isolated from Byte, from Loken, from logic and reason and even from the reader, the Infant-Glitch attacks. I wanted it to be really quick. Nitro senses the danger present and it's so urgent that it snaps Alex back to reality. From there, it slides from 0 to 100 quite fast. We go from the horror of Alex’s breakdown to a sudden stop, then stage 1 and 2 very quickly. 

The Infant-Glitch’s attack is meant to be a pretty hard turn in the story’s tone. We’ve had a semi-close encounter with Demons before, but this is the first time Alex is on the receiving end of their hostility. This isn’t like a horde of Informed. This is an adversary that cannot be matched. There’s overwhelming sound, lots of blurred visual effects and everything descends into chaos. Alex, whom we just recently learned is an extremely capable fighter, is injured and thrown around like a ragdoll in seconds. I wanted the shock value of how quickly this thing absolutely eviscerates them to really highlight that the Infants are on another level of power entirely. Everything Alex thinks he’s learned so far is worthless. He can’t beat the Blackzones. In mere moments, he’s lost everything - he’s separated from Loken and Nitro, he’s badly injured and Byte can’t reach him. Whatever we thought of him before, now he’s a powerless prey that’s forced to run and hide.

With the part where Alex hides from Infant-Glitch in the control room, I felt like we needed a moment where the pace slows after the adrenaline hit of the first attack. Alex needs a second to reflect on what just happened, move the story on but then realise how persistent this threat is. It’s not going away. He ultimately escapes, but the scene prevents the tension from becoming exhausting.

It continues to chase him to the point where I think continuing the hunt would become tiresome. That’s when Alex resolves to fight back before finding Loken. I mentioned before that I wanted people to start feeling divorced from Alex at this point, so it felt safe for him to make a very questionable decision - to attack Infant-Glitch and take the algorithm from him. Most of us are probably screaming at him that it’s a stupid idea, and he even physically rejects Loken by throwing him off to follow through. This is when Alex’s declining mental state is finally going to come back and bite him in the ass. We all know this decision is going to have absolutely horrible consequences, and we’re left to wonder how things are going to play out with a sense of dread. That anxiety kicks off pretty much straight away with the appearance of the complete algorithm. It has an unsettling shape and some pretty freaky sound effects. It tells us ‘we’re not out of the woods yet’.

Then, of course, we have that sequence. Glitch’s possession of Alex. 

I won’t describe this whole thing in detail, but it’s a pretty drawn out stage 3 that just gets worse and worse. As a reader, I’m hoping people are already exhausted and at their wits end from Infant-Glitch’s attack, only to find things get so much worse for Alex.

A lot of horror tropes hit during this. The idea of being trapped in your own body, being forced to hurt yourself, being burned alive, being helpless and compromised while everyone you know is watching, seeing Loken’s fear of losing us grow but being unable to console him. I wanted it to be a battle of attrition, both for Alex and the reader. Glitch is trying to break us down, and he just refuses to relent. It’s mental and physical torture that’s worse than the Infant-Glitch or the Informed chase - it’s an attack on Alex’s very soul.

The final nail in the coffin for any hope of Alex thinking he can fight back is the false hope he grants Alex by pretending to be Byte for a moment. It’s insufferably cruel, and it tells Alex that he really can’t win. He’s nothing. Powerless.

Then, Alex breaks free. The circumstances of his salvation are really important. He doesn’t have the will to break the algorithm and free Byte from captivity. Throughout the torture, Glitch has been trying to get Alex to embrace the rage and malice that’s been stirring within him. The thirst for blood and vengeance that even the total erasure of his memories couldn’t destroy. He believes that an Alex dominated by wrath will be both easier to manipulate and far more powerful as a host.

Then comes the twist - Glitch entirely underestimates just how powerful Alex’s bloodrage really is. So far we’ve established that Glitch is unbeatable, but then suddenly comes a new power: Alex’s fury. He realises how strong it is the moment it shines through on Kaius. It’s more powerful than anything, even Glitch. Even the algorithm. Glitch could never have possibly anticipated the true depths of human emotion. He made a critical mistake in taunting Alex’s rage, as the human turned it on him and ultimately destroyed him with it. 

It’s a moment of relief when we realise Glitch is finally defeated, but it has a subtle sting to it. Glitch doesn’t seem ‘upset’ that he’s lost. He realises his mistake (I underestimated… so much), and then accepts it happily (Then, this is goodbye). And why is he happy? Perhaps because Alex’s rage has the potential to break the human down and grow him into something more powerful than Glitch could possibly imagine. Even if it’s a power he can’t control, a power that’ll destroy him, he’s in awe (You’re going to be beautiful). Glitch sees Alex’s destiny in that moment, and he bows in reverence. 

It’s probably the most important moment in the story. A seed is planted in Alex’s soul at this point. His rage made him powerful when all seemed lost. It’s the start of a path that tempts him into leaning into that rage, even if he’s wary of it at first. Then, barely a day later, he discovers his magic. Now, that rage doesn’t just make him feel mentally powerful, but physically powerful too. Vengeance and fury is his salvation, and he leans more and more into it until he loses his ability to self-reflect. It’s only after he’s committed a mass murder that he sees how off-the-rails he’s gone. Now, his only hope is to rebuild himself.

But, again, whoever he emerges as could be far more dangerous than before - the true ‘beauty’ Glitch saw a glimpse at, perhaps.

Oh, and as a final observation, we know we’re finally out of the darkness and safe from Glitch when the whole sequence ends with one of those comedic full-stops I mentioned - Loken telling his classic joke. We’re safe. Now time to deal with the fallout.

I'll shut up now

I think that’s enough patting myself on the back for now! Hopefully that rambling essays gives an idea as to what goes into writing Soulcreek and how my brain somehow navigates the story! If it inspires anyone to write their own stuff then all the better, but if anything it helps me organise my dumb thoughts and grow as a storyteller. I'd be interested to hear what horror mediums you might've been inspired by, or what your thoughts on how horror in visual novels works best!

With that, my brain-break from writing build 10 is over! Back to it I go…

Be kind to each other!

-Ryuo

PS, as a final treat, I’m releasing two more tracks from the Soulcreek OST! You can hear these two tracks alongside The Last Human and Gaia on this playlist here!

First there’s Ashes, which will eventually be used quite a few times in previous days and is the track that plays when Alex discovers the message from you-know-who. 

The second is An Old Friend, which is Kaius’ antagonist theme that plays on the last day.