Engadget Indie Pitch: 'VILE: Exhumed' physical edition

There are so many rad and important games coming out from smaller studios all the time, and the Engadget Indie Pitch is here to highlight some that you simply must see.

We've been around long enough to remember the days when Steam was curated by hand, with 20 or so titles added to the storefront in any given month. Today, roughly 2,000 games go live every month on Steam, and that's not counting all of the console, mobile and VR titles we have to consider. A vast majority of these games come from smaller teams, solo creators, artist collectives and independent studios who don't have immediate access to shiny showcases or marketing teams — which brings us to the Indie Pitch. We can't cover every excellent new game here, but we can offer a curated slice of indie pie every now and then.

The Engadget Indie Pitch features a Q&A with the developer of an in-production or recently released game that's caught our eye. Today, it's a chat with Cara Cadaver of Final Girl Games about the physical edition of VILE: Exhumed, which was just announced and looks super sick.

VILE is an immersive mystery set on the desktop of an abandoned '90s era PC, where you investigate the disappearance of adult film actress Candy Corpse by sifting through locked folders, old forums, cryptic messages and pixelated media. What emerges is a found-footage horror story of parasocial intrigue and violent entitlement, and the game's authenticity gives it a genuinely terrifying edge.

You may remember VILE as the game that was unjustly swept up in Steam's chaotic censorship campaign last summer. One year after that mess, the physical edition is an opportunity for Cara to refocus attention on VILE itself and pay due respect to its brutal, poignant truths.

Here's to your backlog.

What's your game called and what's it about?

My game is called VILE: Exhumed, and it is about exploring an old computer and going down the disturbing rabbit hole of entitlement.

How big is the development team?

The development team is 167cm tall (it's just me!).

How long have you been working on it?

It's hard to measure when you work on something part-time, but somewhere between six months and a year!

What's the origin story of VILE: Exhumed? Share what inspired you.

I made VILE because I was frustrated. I was yearning for control and agency of my own body, and so taking photos covered in blood, as grotesque as it sounds, was powerful. I was wading through difficult feelings and trauma, but it was on my terms and that was awesome. It made me feel strong.

I guess I was "inspired" by the things that had happened to me as well, and the people who were involved in those things. I had to pull from some of the darkest periods of my life, and package it up in VILE.

Talk about the power of discomfort and disgust, and how VILE uses these emotions to authentically examine the insidious nature of misogyny.

I think pulling from my real-life experience made the game feel grounded in reality — which is why some people found it so effective and related to it so heavily. It is a feeling that unfortunately too many people, mostly women, know all too well.

Final Girl Games

What does the game's physical edition represent to you, and what's your favorite aspect of it?

Getting to make a physical edition of the game felt like getting a second chance at a release for VILE: Exhumed. Sort of like the feelings behind making the game in the first place, and behind releasing it how we did — I felt like I was getting control back.

I also loved getting to step back into Candy and Molly's world again, and give them a little more identity with the packaging. Getting to create a callback to Molly that wasn't about what happened to her was a lot more emotional than I expected. I think Molly's story in the game is quietly a lot more grounded in reality, so letting her have her moment without it being about her trauma felt really special. It felt like I was doing something nice for Molly, and for myself.

VILE became the face of financial censorship on Steam last summer — what do you feel was lost in the popular conversation?

This is a really hard question to answer — I hesitate because I don't want to sound unappreciative for all the support last year after it was banned from Steam. I couldn't be more grateful for the time anyone spent talking about VILE last year, and standing up for what happened to it, and what happened to me.

Pre-ban, I was really excited to hear reactions to the visual design choices I had made. I played every single female character in VILE that was shown on screen myself, all the gore special effects that were shown in game were created practically by me, and photographed myself. I think that is really cool!

I also had a lot of firsts that I think I didn't get to fully celebrate. It was my first published game and my first game on Steam (or, well...you know). I also was really proud of the writing in the game.

Final Girl Games

Why are video games your chosen form of expression?

I think I like being able to get so specific in communicating a feeling. I can control what the player was exposed to, and when, and use that to make the experience as close to what I imagined it to be as possible.

I love the immersion of found footage films, to me they are the scariest because they place the viewer directly into the madness. I think that VILE: Exhumed takes that one step further by making players participate.

Another reason is that stories told through video games have always impacted me very profoundly, even when I was a kid, so it's such a pleasure to create that experience for someone else.

What's the biggest roadblock you've faced as a smaller developer?

Like every developer ever, time and money is something there is never enough of, but as a developer of smaller games, I think the real challenge is other people's time. There are so many games coming out all of the time that it is harder to grab players' attention.

What can larger companies and publishers do to better support developers like yourself?

I think I would like to use this question as a reason to highlight something I really appreciate about DreadXP — the publisher of VILE: Exhumed — in that they aren't afraid of games with difficult subject matter, and believe firmly that there are many kinds of horror that deserve to be shared.

I think more people in general should remove the boxes placed around the genre.

Let's bring it back home. Sell your game in one sentence:

Play an interactive video nasty.

Final Girl Games

VILE: Exhumed is available to download and play for free, with the option to pay whatever you'd like, and that money is split equally between Final Girl Games and Red Door Family Shelter, a Canadian non-profit that provides emergency housing and support. The physical edition (which, again, looks super sick) costs $9.99 and includes an eight-page booklet, classic jewel case, hand-written labels, and an archival quality CD-ROM featuring the entire game — no DRM in sight, just like the old days. Half of all proceeds still benefit Red Door.

The VILE physical edition is a limited release and the first 100 will be individually numbered. You can sign up to be notified when it goes live for purchase on the game's website.