What challenges did you face in creating an art style that captured a sense of horror, but was also kind of cute in a macabre way? In balancing between something endearing and something unsettling? Happy Game is sort of like an amalgamation of things that I’ve “absorbed” during my life, either consciously or unconsciously. I was trying to absorb the feeling and atmosphere of these works, and Lovecraft’s works, watched Twin Peaks, and enjoyed all sorts of things that might be a little over-the-top – things that utilize fear in atypical or even absurd ways. So, the impulse to make a game like Happy Game came from a toxic amount of humor combined with a little bit of hopelessness.ĭuring that time, I had a phase during which I exposed myself to all sorts of creepy, weird things, and spent a lot of time drawing things in the style of Happy Game. Life is not just cheerful things, after all. After two years of working on my previous game, CHUCHEL, which is like a very cheerful, funny interactive cartoon, I needed to take a break from that and work on something different. It was my reaction to an overabundance of humor. Plachý: The main motivation to make a horror game didn’t come from, for example, feeling the fear of being alone in the dark or having dreams about evil demons. What interested you in looking at disturbing things with this style?

Game Developer: Happy Game explores horrifying nightmares through a cute (ish?) lens. Game Developer spoke with Jaromír Plachý (the game’s writer) and Jan Kratochvíl (of Freakfolk band DVA) about the developer's monster drawings and how they would fuel the design of the game, how Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge scenes would inspire its sound design, and what interested them in choosing a name so far from the content of the game.

Games like happy game