DGC Ep 406: Fatal Frame (part three)

Dev Game Club

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on 2001's Fatal Frame. We talk about retreading, camera upgrade strategies, how ghosts move and how that impacts level design, and various other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: A few more hours

Issues covered: the strangling places, replaying the beginning of the game, knowing where to go or not, variety of uses for talismans, blocked off paths, pieces and doors and showing locks before you can find the keys, intentional design with controls, creating tension with controller choices, series evolutions, having less fun, feeling frustrating, not unifying movement around one stick, zombies vs ghosts, building levels around your enemies, the outdoor areas and fear, forests and atavistic fears, things not being fully representational and adding layers of fear, the Abyss, lots of lenses to view the same events, the meta of visiting this haunted place to make a game, ammo and bonus functions, upgrading the camera strategies, feeling skittish about the bonus functions, how many nights, the use of stone mirrors, looking forward to the future, pressing your luck, how many shots do you have left, wanting to take pictures with a camera, worrying about film amounts, dragon and mime hunting.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Resident Evil (series), Halo, GameCube, Nathan Martz, Dead Rising, Keiji Inafune, Dark Souls, Pharaijin, Dagur Danielsson, Final Fantasy VI, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: Finish the game?

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