Bloober Team says it’s done making psychological horror games

Bloober 3.0 will move towards mass-market horror games

Bloober Team has worked on a few different psychological horror titles, like Layers of Fear, The Medium, and the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake. But now the studio has announced they’re moving in a somewhat different direction.

In a new Endgadget interview, Bloober’s co-founder Piotr Babieno stated that 2023 is the end of Bloober’s foray into psychological horror.

“This year is like closing the era of making psychological horror games,” Babieno said. “Right now we are going into Bloober Team 3.0, making mass-market horror.”

According to Engadget’s piece, Bloober will rely on “action” and “player input”, which Bloober hopes will expand its audience.

“We focused on the story, we focused on the mood, we focused on the quality of graphics and music, but we didn’t put a lot of attention on the gameplay mechanics,” Babieno said. “It wasn’t our target. But we decided that there was a ceiling that we couldn’t break if we did not deliver something fresh, something new.”

Return to Silent Hill

Babieno says that Silent Hill 2 remake will lead the charge of Bloober 3.0. Which seems like a questionable decision, considering that’s the quintessential psychological horror game. If your team still doesn’t have much experience in action, and has some issues with horror storytelling, why not just do a faithful remake of Silent Hill 2? All the groundwork is already laid out in front of you!

I get that it’s a big change, but there are some things we need to accept. The combat in the original Silent Hill 2 could feel a bit dated by now. The implementation of dodging mechanics might actually do it some favors. Now we just sit and hope Bloober manages to find the balance between adding dodging and James Sunderland RKO’ing Pyramid Head.

The newest game in the Layers of Fear series, the one that marks the ending of Bloober 2.0, came out just a few days ago. You can see our thoughts on it here. The Silent Hill 2 remake is a timed PS5 exclusive, but it still doesn’t have an official release date.