"The Fear of the unknown is real...."

As much as I am a horror fan, it's the repetition of plot devices in horror that have become its main drawback for me. So often with horror movies, the setup kills the fun for me. Whether meeting 8 randy teens on their way to stay at an abandoned cabin, or your elevated horror fare starting off with the traumatic event that the main character will go into isolation to recover from; often my attention span can't survive to get to the point in the film where we experience actual horror.

This is not only a fault of the genre, its the fault of my attention span which has been damaged by social media.

Sometimes short-form horror content can avoid some of these problems, sometimes I watch horror short films or playthroughs of horror games. These also have their share of conventions, but its the conventions of horror games that we should focus on here.

Kaye Ross of the “Watch out for Fireballs” podcast, classified a cliché form of indie horror games as “flashlight house”. This was unkind but unfortunately accurate as this phrase sums up many of the indie horror games you’ll find on Steam which follow a repetitive template.

The setup is often as simple as your character wandering through your apartment as commands appear on the screen such as “I need to take a shower before bed”. And in the midst of your routine, the lights go out.

In classic horror fashion, you’re forced to go into the basement with your flashlight in hand, the basement being the abyss of the suburban home. You’re simply looking to flip a breaker, once there; it’s time for a few jump scares before the game ends.

It’s easy to make fun of this kind of thing but to regard it in simply a mocking light would be an oversight. You would be ignoring the many indie creators who are doing interesting work at the edges of an overstuffed genre.

What’s wonderful about the indie horror space is with almost no budget, creators can make complex disturbing narratives that can often be terrifying and thoughtful.

In fact, when you're expecting another “Flashlight House” game and you instead stumble on something genuinely scary and offbeat like “Suite 776” or “Visage”, then it can be as revelatory as expecting a rote slasher and watching “The Slayer” or “The Dorm that Dripped Blood”.

The creator of “Suite 776”, Turnvex games is a single-person Canadian developer named Stanislaw Truchowski. Truchowski has been creating Indie horror games for almost a decade, gradually refining his skills and gaining some popularity. Beginning with several free games available on Steam, he began to make commercial games with the supernatural story “A Girls Fabric Face”.

I first became aware of Turnvex with the game “Suite 776” which I first watched on Youtuber Markiplier’s channel before purchasing it. Even though “Suite 776” superficially resembles a typical indie horror game, it immediately stands out for its unusual story and strong character writing. Your character is Joseph Shippen, a young man trying to discover the reasons for his mother’s disappearance into the title apartment. It turns out that Marcy Shippen, your mother, was a brilliant architect and through the power of her architectural genius has converted the condo into an anomaly in space and time.

You explore her weirdly banal condo, ringing a small bell on a table twice which starts off the mother’s pursuit of you and distorts the liminal space of the condo. You discover that the bell was a tool she used to focus her rage. The rejection of her work by architecture critics created a dangerous spiral, she started to have an unhealthy obsession of reading her negative reviews. These reviews began to symbolize her many failures. These failures drove her to a pitch of mania so she would read reviews of her work and ring it when she found something to disagree with. She would end up ringing the bell continuously for hours, a note says in the game.

There's been quite a few interesting psychological explorations in this genre, but this is a particularly interesting study of psychotic obsession. This grounds the game, adding to an unnerving atmosphere. The sound design helps; you hear Marcy's deranged mutterings in the background as you explore, putting you on edge as to when she will attack you next. This menace is added to by Truchowski’s masterful staging of jump scares.

There's in particular a moment when you walk up to a door that's open a crack, only to have Marcy thrust her head in the doorway and pull a distorted grimace that is one of the better jump scares I've experienced in a horror game,

Jump scares can be underrated as well as disliked as more and more fans try to tone-police horror media. These fans will point out that jump scares are forgettable without a chilly atmosphere and a strong story. That's exactly why the jump scares in “Suite 776” stick around in my memory as they are not only executed perfectly, they are part of a memorable atmosphere and story.

I’ve sporadically played several other Turnvex games over the years, but the one that stood out to me is “SNAFU” from 2023. Quite different than the kind of cinematic thrill rides that characterized “Inside Depth 6” and “Within Skerry”, “SNAFU” has a bit more gameplay and a satirical edge. Your character is playing a medieval “grow-your-business” simulation game been abandoned by its developer. The desolate digital world is gradually been taken over by a malignant virus named SNAFU which is not only murdering the NPCS but is corrupting the very architecture.

There’s a lot of funny touches in the game, at one point you’re allowed to purchase your own home within the digital environment. After spending your digital currency, the home you buy is an unusable jumble of assets and designed like a clusterfuck. And the virus SNAFU even tries to discourage you from spending time in the digital world by pointing out the logical fallacies of the game in red lettered graffiti around the world.

But this is not just a funny game, pretty much anytime SNAFU shows up in the game, it’s back to the terror of Turnvex’s other outings, SNAFU is a kind of a oddly rendered drawing that has a childish anger about it. It not only stands out in the clean digital surroundings but becomes more frightening as it emerges unexpectedly from a well or just floats towards you in the darkness.

And the game has some amusing stabs at different genres such as a collectathon platformer as well as the animal delight in passively watching your numbers go up. The level your character is at unlocks different parts of the world. This makes the game seem more passive but there's actually a spikiness to the design.Eventually you can't level high enough to explore everything, you end up needing to break the game by platforming out of bounds to unlock its various secrets.

After getting the bad ending, I thought to email Truchowksi and suggest doing a brief interview about his work and his processes. He very kindly agreed and we traded some questions over a google doc. I’m not really great at interviewing people but I thought he had some interesting things to say in response to my often leading questions. Here’s the interview:

What are your influences in terms of horror ? ( ie: outside of gaming)

I don't really have any that I can think of. I always enjoyed the “Saw” franchise when I was a kid, so maybe that is what spiraled me into enjoying the genre!

Are there other indie horror creators who have made a big impact on you?

The only horror games that have made any real influence on me are the Silent Hill games and some Resident Evil games. In terms of creators, I don’t believe I know any. I don’t really keep up with what is out there if I am being completely honest. The only “Resident Evil” games I played are 7 and 8 (Yet to get into 9!) and “Silent Hill 2”, “Silent Hill: Homecoming”, “Silent Hill: Downpour”, 2 remake. I think it is the environment/atmosphere that “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill” games instill that I really enjoyed. That and the puzzles that they throw at you are quite fun. Quite something about the music and ambiance that many “Silent Hill” games have that really make you feel a bit uneasy.

Your first game “Minds Eyes” definitely has some “PT” influences, was that part of what got you into making horror games ? (“PT” being the “Silent Hills” demo that was discarded by Konami after firing Hideo Kojima. The lost demo has been very influential in a lot of indie horror circles)

I don’t believe “Minds Eyes” was influenced by “PT” (or at least tried not to be). The problem is that (at that time with so many “PT” clones in indie horror) any element of “PT” that was found in a game would deem a game a PT clone. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an element or two of “PT” in “Minds Eyes”. PT definitely did influence many of my games, though, such as “Continuous” and “Continuously”, to name a couple. I would say it did spark a stronger interest in building horror games for me when it first released. “PT” was (is) a fantastic game 🙂

A majority of your games are of the type that need to be beaten in one sitting, except for your two most recent games, was there a reason for that initial format or the change to allow some saving and reloading?

The reason my earlier titles did not have a save feature was two fold:

1.They were short enough that they did not require a safe function. A single uninterrupted sitting of 30-40 min is all you really need to experience the full game.

2.I did not have the skill set or knowledge to implement safe functionality.A lot of my newer games are longer and more complex, so having to learn the art of saving games became a requirement.

It feels like “A Girl's Fabric Face” is a bit of a dry run for “Suite 776”? It’s interesting because “Suite 776” has similar liminal space and communicating with a spirit but is an overall more novel spin on the genre (in my opinion)

“A Girl’s Fabric Face” (AGFF) was my first “for money” release on Steam, so that is where you see a large jump in quality and complexity when compared to “Minds Eyes”. Putting together AGFF was a fun time because it explored so many new things that I have never done, which ultimately paved the way for Suite 776. You could say that AGFF was a dry run for Suite 776 because a lot of the good parts of the game were implemented into Suite 776 whereas a lot of the bad parts were excluded or reworked.

“Suite 776” was the first game of yours I saw, initially watching Markiplier play it before trying it myself, I find this game first made you stand out among indie horror developers as it had both the uncanny space of the apt as well as the psychological dimension of the unhinged angry mother lurking behind that space….where did the idea for this come from initially? 

When I develop the game, I don’t necessarily come up with the story before I develop. The story and the ideas come during development. I don’t really know where the idea came from; after putting together the map and taking a look at what I have to work with, to make some of the pieces fit, the story had to be what it became (if that makes sense)

There’s a theme of anger and failure in suite 776, there’s a bell set up that you ring to remind her of all her disappointments, it feels like the game gives the experience of a child dealing with a angry or unstable parent.

No angry and unstable parents. I am full of sunflowers and sunshine 🙂

How did the design for the spirit of the angry mother come about? Your designs of monsters are very unique

Apart from SNAFU, I never design my own enemies / characters. These are purchased, as my skillset for designing and developing characters is VERY limited.

Where did the central mechanic of ringing the bell come from? It’s so effective

I wanted to take a chapter out of PT with the whole “Map Reset” element, but did not want to do an endless loop, so I thought to myself “How can I reset the map without walking through a door?” and with that, the idea of a bell came into play.

Since you are quite good at using assets in a novel way, do you have any tips for others to do so? 

I think a good tip is to know HOW to make assets, too, and not just build a game entirely out of purchased assets. You want to be able to make at least 50-60% of your game from scratch to make it match your image as much as possible, and then fill in the blanks with some acquired assets that you may struggle with making, or just lack the time to do so. With the acquired assets, you want them to fit as closely to what you imagined, as possible - and in some cases, if that cannot be done, you just have to try and build it yourself.

You’re pretty ingenious at designing jump scares which I think is a skill that can be underrated, is there any particular trick to it you’ve found ?

The fear of the unknown is real. Furthermore, a scare when it is least expected is very effective. Develop an atmosphere where the player anticipates a scare, but receives none, whilst not expecting a scare and receiving one. Additionally, sound design and implementation is absolutely key. Without good sound, your game will suffer. You can have a crappy scare, and still have a terrifying game so long as your audio is up to snuff.

I love the pattern of the childish phone calls in “is Simon there?” Like there’s something so mean spirited about calling a father whose son has died and asking for the son but the voice seems to have no malice. Where did this idea come from? This is a psychological component of the game, whereby you, as the mother, refuse to come to terms with Simon being dead, so you tend to imagine his friends calling and asking for him.

It feels like your games particularly “Inside Depth 6” are intended as cinematic experiences, do you see them in that way?

I could see that, yes.

It feels like this game and “Within Skerry” are trying to tell more complex narratives than the more intimate horror of “Suite 776”. “Inside Depth 6” definitely has a bit of a Lovecraft feel to it, is that an influence at all?

As I grow as a developer, I try to implement more complex storylines. They aren’t always understood as there is more symbolism than explicit explanations. “Inside Depth 6” definitely does have some elements of Lovecraft, I would say. In terms of influence? I wouldn’t think so, as “Inside Depth 6” came from the inspiration of making a cave game (Inspiration from watching tragic caving stories / documentaries) and then forming a story around said cave.

It feels like “SNAFU” is a big step forward in terms of gameplay as well as having the more meta conceit of the failed “grow your business” simulator being taken over by a bug, what made you want to go in this direction?

I decided to take a large step away from what I was comfortable with and decided to make a scary grow your business simulator. I always love working with level systems, experience systems, and kind of a MMORPG style gameplay, so I decided to create “SNAFU”. I would say “SNAFU” is my best game, without question. Problem is, it did not receive the attention fast enough to make it stand out.

So I was looking on your Gamejolt page and saw you had done a grow your business game in the past. Is this part of the inspiration for “SNAFU”?

Yes, “Grow your Business 1”, ”Grow your Business 2” and “Money Maker” are inspirations and “Practice runs” for “SNAFU”.

The antagonist SNAFU has a memorably creepy design, where did its design come from?

This is my second (I believe?) take at building my own character (AGFF being the first). I wanted something creepy, tall and skinny that would lurk in the shadows watching your every move. The design somewhat came from a character called Momo and tall backrooms entities.

Are there any exciting new horror games you are working on?

I am currently working on a new game (Expected release: mid 2026) which has a very strong emphasis on puzzles. Previous games were minimal with puzzles, allowing players to delve deeper in the game to unlock true endings and even the easter egg by solving more complex puzzles as you go on. With this new game, each puzzle is more thought out and intrinsic to the game, You will find that there is a significant improvement in gameplay with this new title, alongside replayability, as you will be able to choose between “Normal” and “Hard” puzzles which will provide you with a different experience. There will be a larger focus on storyline, symbolism and events that complement the story. I want the story to involve less guessing and assumptions and rather have a more defined story. A lot of the time, for my games, you really had to dig deep to understand what I am trying to say (I.e., the large man in “Is Simon There” representing your inner demon that refuses to let you free from the loss of your child).Now, I want to make sure that very important points are clearly defined and there are fewer areas where the player has to guess and assume.

Perhaps a crass question, given that you’ve had games featured on Markiplier, has that resulted in greater sales or exposure? Is Turnvex able to support you as an artist?

Yes, having exposure from Mark and other famous gamers definitely helps sales and exposure, alike. Depending on when the game releases and how long it can stay near the top of the Steam pages makes a significant difference, too. If I publish 2 games a year, I believe TurnVex is able to support me. However, at this time, as the last time I published a game was NEARLY 2 years ago, TurnVex would not be able to support me full time.

It feels like many indie horror games since “PT” have been more psychological and dealt with people experiencing psychosis and depression for instance “Visage”, is there something besides the influence of pt that makes this fertile ground to explore? I’m curious myself as a horror fan like where is the limitation to what themes horror can and can’t explore?

I feel like psychological horror is the most fun, because by involving a sick brain into the mix lets you explore almost any avenue imaginable and classify it as “realistic”, because you never know what some people can see behind their eyes… However, I agree, I also feel like psychological horror is becoming a bit oversaturated, which is one of the main reasons I took the “SNAFU” route to perhaps publish one of the first (if not the first) horror grow your business simulator. A very different and unique take at horror, but I believe it worked (despite having a small audience due to limited exposure). Unfortunately, I find that many people want a simple horror experience, where one can sit back and enjoy a few scares. Once something unconventional pops up, it perhaps “scares” people off. Who knows!

“Night at the office” made me think; at first I was surprised at you being a “Saw” fan but there’s something of that kind of morality play in this and other games, like similar to “Tales from the Crypt” and EC comics, is this just a device to link together scary events or do you have a belief in a morality that makes people ultimately pay for their actions?

Good question - and to be quite fair, this is something I never thought about. I would say that this morality play is used as more of a device to link a story together than an actual belief.

How do you design the Easter eggs in your games?

This is a difficult one to answer - they seem to just appear. I always try to come up with something silly and way out of touch with the base idea of the game (primarily with titles post Inside Depth 6). It's a little fun jab at the player when they come across it. I think my favorite easter egg is in “Is Simon There”.

Why is it important for each game to have multiple endings ?

I think all horror games that focus on puzzles and story should have multiple endings. To me, the whole premise of a horror game is to tell a tale; that tale, of which, can be interpreted in many angles - it is through multiple endings that you can hone in on the “ true” ending. This is an area I am very weak at, still, and will try to continue to learn and improve on. But also, it adds replayability, and that replayability is something I am really trying hard to improve in my upcoming game.