This is gameplay preview of Buried Apparition, a first-person psychological folk horror game.
I’m a filmmaker with 10 years of experience as cinematographer, writer and director. I switched to indie game development and taught myself coding to build this project.
My goal is to bring cinematic language — shot framing, tension pacing, subtle environmental storytelling — into an interactive horror experience. You play as a paranormal vlogger; your camera captures things invisible to your naked eye.
For the last 10 years I’ve worked in film as a cinematographer, writer and director. My whole career has been about crafting dread with framing, pacing, sound and silence — controlling exactly what the audience sees, when they see it, and how long they have to sit with the quiet before something breaks.
Last year I stepped away from film to go solo as an indie game dev. Taught myself coding, spent months wrapping my head around engine work, and started building Buried Apparition — a first-person psychological horror game set in an abandoned mountain inn in rural China.
My core goal from day one wasn’t just to make a “scary game”. It was to translate the cinematic horror language I’d spent a decade working with, into an interactive medium. Not just cutscenes — the whole experience.
I’ve been approaching it from three directions:
1. Pacing as tension, not just jump scares In film you control every second of the audience’s attention. You hold a quiet shot just long enough that the audience starts leaning forward, then you either release it or pull the rug out. In a game, the player controls how fast they walk, where they look, how long they linger in a hallway. So I’ve been building pacing into the level design itself — long empty corridors that force slow progression, moments of complete silence where even the ambient sound drops out, and small environmental cues that pull the player forward at the right speed. Jump scares aren’t the point. They’re just punctuation — a rare, earned release after long stretches of building pressure. I use them sparingly, and only when they serve the rhythm of the scene, not just to startle.
2. Framing that guides without forcing In cinematography you use doorways, hallways, light and shadow to naturally draw the eye where you want it. You don’t yell “LOOK HERE”. You compose the shot so the audience looks there on their own. I’ve carried that into level and environment design. Framing shots through door frames, using shadow to obscure half the room, using light to pull the player toward a key detail — all without breaking the first-person perspective or shoving a cutscene in their face. Even the core vlogging mechanic, where you raise a camera to film, is built around letting the player compose their own shots — while the environment itself is laid out to reward cinematic framing.
3. Visual storytelling over exposition In film you never have a character say what you can show them with a prop, a shadow, or a reaction shot. I’ve carried that rule straight into the game. Most of the backstory and lore isn’t told through dialogue or notes. It’s in how a room is left, what’s missing from a frame, what appears in your recorded footage that wasn’t there when you filmed it. The player puts the story together themselves, and that makes the dread feel personal.
The biggest challenge so far? In film you have total control. In a game you give half that control to the player. Finding that balance — guiding the experience without making the player feel railroaded — is what I’ve spent the most time iterating on.
The free demo is live on Steam right now, and it’s basically a full test of all these ideas. If anyone has time to check it out, I’d genuinely love to hear what lands and what doesn’t.
🎮 Play the free demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4991870/_/
I also wanted to open this up for discussion: What horror game do you think actually nails “cinematic” design without feeling like a walking movie? What’s a moment in a horror game that felt like perfectly directed filmmaking, but still felt like you were in control?
As a solo dev still learning this medium, every takeaway is gold. Thanks everyone.
This was supposed to be a 3 month project. Somehow, it's been 18 months.
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