Story time! I remember back in the early 2000s watching my brothers play Siren on the PS2 for the first time and being so scared yet captivated by it. The realistic faces, the dark eerie atmosphere, the ability to tap into the enemy's vision and see what they saw. The fact you had to strategize how to navigate the map by looking through the eyes of your enemies, solving puzzles and somehow beating the stupidest most difficult levels that required us to print a cheat sheet from the web. It was such a fun time.

Resident Evil 4, that one Eye Toy zombie game, I think I watched them play a demo of Fatal Frame as well? All these games I was so scared of, but was so captivated by the thrills and scares. Admittedly I was way too young at the time to be watching them play such games, LOL

Then came 40 Winks. I'd visit my grandparents on the weekends and play on their PS1. I was introduced to a lot of classics, but one random niche game stuck out to me that I'd replay every time I visited. 40 Winks. We had a 100% save file, but I'd always start a new game to play through the first world in the game. The Nightmare World.

This was exactly what I was looking for for so long. I was scared (cause I was like 10, LOL) but it wasn't scary scary. It was like, OoOoOo spooky thunderstorms, witchy woods, ghouls and frightful things. It was this moment that inspired me then and now that I wanted to make horror games but not anything truly scary like what I watched my siblings play. I wanted to make something that still scared me but I felt at ease with. Spooky but comforting in a weird way.

I made a lot of games with cardboard, paper, pens and a dream for some odd years until I discovered Gamemaker in 2012. This was how I first started to make games. Very shoddy barebones games, but over the years I kept honing my skills. Eventually in 2016 I got my hands on my first desktop PC that actually had decent hardware on it. I was so used to shoddy laptops that this thing blew my mind when using it. Around 2017 I decided to finally give Unreal Engine a shot and installed it.

For awhile I experimented in it with two small test projects. The first being about these little duck enemies that chased you around a small outdoor map and after that I made a small horror game called the Old Hag's Mansion. Didn't get very far in development with both of these, but it helped me get a feel for the way the engine operated.

After that, I sat down and completed my first Unreal Engine project, Shopping Nightmare. It was my first 3D horror game inspired by some old dreams of mine and a bit of imagination. After that point, I went on to make a whole bunch of horror games that you may all know and love to this day!

If you made it this far, thank you for reading and revisiting my childhood with me. I will never forget all those years of my game development journey. It was truly a fun time.