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Faceless developer breaks off to run horror-only studio, Fiddlehead
Justin Ross ran into a few problems while developing Faceless, a Half-Life 2 mod that embraced the Slender Man mythos, but in the end that's not why he left development in the hands of teammate Adam Sklar. He wanted to tackle a fresh IP with a monster from his own mind – a bat-like demonoid that stars in his first original project as Fiddlehead Games, Alas Mortis. Alas Mortis is a multiplayer horror game, featuring one team of nine citizens, and another team of just one person who plays as the demon. The everyday people have no weapons and must hide from the demon, who has a variety of abilities and dangerous items. "Think of it as a horrific, gruesome, terrifying game of hide and seek," Ross' description reads. Alas Mortis will be free and should launch on Steam Early Access once the gameplay is ready for public consumption. "I'm drawn to the horror genre because I like being scared mainly, and I love the adrenaline that rushes through you while playing something like Amnesia or Outlast," Ross tells Joystiq. "I want to replicate that feeling in Alas Mortis, and it's why Fiddlehead is solely horror. Horror games are my favorite genre and something I enjoy more than any other game. I enjoy writing scary narratives and making people feel uncomfortable, and filling them with a sense of dread." You can keep an eye on the development of Alas Mortis on IndieDB – if only to make sure it doesn't surprise you (with a chainsaw) later.
Faceless: Slender Man stalks, blocks Greenlight's top game from Steam
Faceless has been the No. 1 game on Steam Greenlight since fans voted for the first batch in September, and it was the top game during the second round, which Greenlit 21 games in October. Faceless still holds the spot today, but when Valve announces the next group of Greenlight games, chances are it will be skipped over once again. Faceless is haunted by the rusty chains of the legal system. It's a horror game that tells the tale of Slender Man, the elongated, suited phantom notorious for stalking gullible children and teenagers (though mostly just those who own handheld cameras). Victor Surge initiated The Slender Man mythos on the Something Awful forums in 2006, and it migrated to YouTube in 2009 in a series of "lost footage" videos from Marble Hornets. The footage chronicles Slender Man as he haunts a film student, Alex, slowly driving him to paranoia before he is lost to the ether and insanity. The first episode has 2.4 million views and the channel now hosts 64 full entries, last updated in October 2012. Slender Man is a horrific viral hit. In a sense, Slender Man stalks Faceless developer Justin Ross just as he does Alex – the Slender Man legend is the reason Faceless can't yet be approved on Greenlight. "We've been the No. 1 game since the service launched and have yet to be Greenlit due to copyright issues with Slender Man, which is a free-to-use entity, and we've even gotten permission from the creator Victor Surge," Faceless developer Justin Ross tells Joystiq. "It's starting to feel like Greenlight games aren't chosen by the community like Valve has stated, and it's instead their choice, not the community's."
