Q: The premise of staging a home as the core gameplay loop is really unique—what inspired you to turn such a mundane profession into a psychological horror experience?

After spending about four years working on my 2D Metroidvania in Unity Engine, I really wanted to start a new project with a smaller scope that I could actually finish and release as my first Steam game. I followed some advice from Chris Zukowski and decided to make a smaller scale game in a popular genre, horror. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try and learn Unreal Engine. Before starting Staged: Open House, I was experimenting with building environments using a modular house kit which eventually became the Ward residence. As a gamer, I’ve always enjoyed horror games that involve cleaning or simulation mechanics. I figured it would be achievable for a beginner, and I wanted to try and think of something small scale and simple that I would be able to complete and release.

Q: Frank Doyle isn’t your typical horror protagonist. How did you approach building his character and perspective within a first-person narrative?
I wanted Frank Doyle to feel like a normal, no-nonsense, everyday guy trying to do his job. In the beginning he is just focused on getting his job done and isn’t really rattled by what's going on. As the player progresses through the demo and the supernatural events escalate, he starts to break down in his character. By the end of the demo, he has shifted and realises he needs to leave. I feel like the first person perspective makes the house feel a lot more atmospheric and claustrophobic. Walking around the Ward residence in first person forces the player to see each dark corner exactly as Frank does.

Q: The Ward family’s disappearance is central to the story—how did you balance environmental storytelling with player-driven discovery?
I wanted to make the player have to seek out and actively uncover the story rather than throw it at them. A big part of how I will do that in the full game is through the use of notes and drawings from the family members scattered throughout the house. You can see a couple of these notes in the demo but I plan on making a lot more from other members of the family for the full game. These notes are real, custom made, hand written notes that I created on tea stained paper to give them an authentic, aged feel. I wanted them to feel real and believable and thought it would be a nice artistic touch. Not all of them will be thrown in your face, the player will need to find them to piece together the story. If the player was to rush through the game, they might miss the narrative entirely.

Q: Many horror games rely on combat or chase mechanics, but this focuses on tasks like cleaning and organizing. How did you ensure those mechanics stay engaging and tense?
The tension comes from the player trying to complete their task and the ghost playing with them the whole time. When you’re taking out the trash or tidying up toys, the ghost can turn lights on and off, interact with doors or turn the TV on and off. The player is trying to do their job while the ghost is harassing them. I’d like to add in more tasks for the player to complete in the full game. I’m also planning on implementing some chase mechanics but there will be no combat, Frank is just a normal, everyday guy.

Q: As players complete staging tasks, supernatural events escalate—what systems are in place to control that pacing and tension curve?
After completing tasks and objectives I use a lot of invisible overlap triggers to start up new events as the player walks through them. I also have some triggers that fire off when the player looks at their general direction which fires off other events. This ensures that when a scare happens, the player sees it and it doesn’t happen behind their back where it might be missed. I also have chain reactions where executing a series of events can trigger new events which only become possible once previous triggers have been fired. This allows me to start off slow with small events like turning lights off and sliding furniture, gradually progressing into more direct confrontations. It’s all about checking to see how far the player is into the demo and ramping it up as they progress.

Q: Sound design plays a huge role in psychological horror. Can you talk about how audio cues and silence are used to manipulate player emotions?
I used 3D sound to create a sense of unease and also to lure the player towards objectives. There is a subtle, constant haunting background ambience as you walk around the house under the buzzing lights contrasted by some loud unexpected jump scare noises. I spent a while going over physical materials to alter the footstep sounds when the player walks over carpet, concrete, creaky floorboards or stairs. This detail helps make the Ward residence feel like a real, physical space.

Q: The game uses Unreal Engine 5—what specific features of the engine helped you achieve the “uncanny perfect home” atmosphere?
Coming from a 2D background, I was very impressed with how quickly you can build out a 3D environment in Unreal Engine 5. Early on, tools like Lumen and volumetric fog were essential for creating that dark and haunted feeling. The way Unreal handles lighting and the way light shines through fog plays a huge role in the creepy factor. For the demo, I eventually decided to move away from Lumen to try to reach the best performance I could, although things may change for the full game.

I wanted to do something I hadn’t really seen before in an indie horror game and that was to make a big cinematic intro cutscene which I couldn’t have done without Unreal Engine’s sequencer and cinematic camera tools. I spent a huge amount of time positioning the sun/moon for each shot so the lighting bounces off the car, making smoke with Niagra, animating character faces with Metahuman Animator, making the vehicle travel along the road, and building the landscape environment with the help of Unreal Engine’s procedural foliage generation and also some manual placement for certain shots. All rendered out with Unreal Engine’s MRQ (Movie Render Queue). There are more tools like live link I’m wanting to experiment with for the full game.

One very useful feature was level streaming. From the very beginning, when I was building the house, I designed it in such a way that it had lots of turns and corners to block the player's vision as they walked around the house. Not only does this add to the tension, it also allows me to optimize the house by loading and unloading sections depending on where the player is. As you walk around the corner, the next room loads and the previous room completely unloads. Only a small portion of the house is loaded at any given time, freeing up system resources to improve performance. There is also distance culling which is very useful too, hiding and showing objects as the camera moves towards and away from them. Unreal has tools available to automatically generate LOD’s (Level of Detail) on meshes which made it easier for me to place more objects in a room without sacrificing frame rate.

Q: Environmental changes seem to be a key part of the horror—how dynamic is the house itself, and can players miss certain events or story elements?
Since the house interior is completely custom built, I have complete control over how the environment shifts. While the demo only has subtle changes like blood decals appearing where they weren’t before, the full game could feature a house that shifts as the story progresses. I could change rooms completely, grant access to different rooms and re-arrange furniture.

I’ve intentionally made a few of the scares in the demo missable. Depending on how observant the player is, they might not see some scares that others do. Although most people are curious enough to see most of them. I want to lean into this a bit more for the full game so each player has a slightly different experience. I’m also planning on implementing multiple endings that are triggered by the player’s actions throughout the game.

Q: There’s a strong focus on subtle horror rather than constant jump scares. How do you define “relentless psychological tension” in your design philosophy?
I think the tension comes from the anticipation of what’s coming next. In the demo, the scares start pretty early. I try to keep the player moving and completing objectives in between those bigger jump scare moments. I know some players love jump scares while others prefer a slower burn. I’m trying to find a balance between the two. Because the demo is a shorter experience, the scares are more condensed, but for the full game, having more tasks to complete and a larger environment will allow me to spread those moments out a bit more. This will make the bigger scares have more of an impact.

Q: You disclosed limited use of AI-generated content—how did you decide where AI tools made sense without compromising the artistic vision?
In the early days of the demo, as a solo dev I tried to keep the budget as close as possible to $0. Creating a custom original track is quite expensive depending on the quality you’re after. I’ve also never made music before. From the beginning, I wanted to make sure I had professional voice actors so that’s where I wanted most of the budget to go. I only used generative tools to get through and keep the project moving forward. For example, the textures for the highway sign and Frank’s license plate. These are small details that would have taken away valuable time from making the game.

Inside the house, there is a photo frame displaying a photo of the Ward family. This current image is only a placeholder as I don’t have the family models confirmed yet. It will be replaced. My plan for the full game is to use my character models and capture screenshots of them in various poses for all the photos. This is similar to how I created my Steam capsule art.

As I was starting the cinematic intro, I spent many hours searching for royalty free, streamer safe tracks that weren’t registered with content id. This gave me very limited options. Most of what I found just didn’t fit the game. When I found the song “Empty House”, the lyrics fit the game so well and I knew I had to use it. It’s like it was made for my game. So I built the intro around the song. I actually didn’t realise it was from an AI artist until after I had finished the intro, I could never have guessed it. For a free, first Steam demo, this is perfect, but I have been thinking about commissioning an original, custom track for the full release if the game continues to see the support it has had so far.

Q: The idea of “scrubbing away the past” is both literal and symbolic—was that theme intentional from the start, or did it evolve during development?
It’s something that came about later on. Your job is just to clean, but when you’re doing that in a house where the family mysteriously vanished, it starts to feel a bit heavier. You’re trying to make the house presentable for sale, but in doing so, you’re erasing the last traces of the Ward family.

Q: What were the biggest challenges in making everyday actions—like wiping surfaces or arranging objects—feel unsettling instead of repetitive?
During testing, I play through the tasks over and over again to see when they start to feel like a chore. As an example, after playing through the toy box task so many times, I cut the number of toys in half because it felt too tedious and I got sick of testing it. My goal is to keep the tasks short and try not to repeat them too many times. Some of the tasks include only three bags of trash or four stains to wipe so the player stays engaged without getting frustrated. When the player is taking out the trash, subtle events take place to keep the player on edge. When you wipe down stains, your back is turned to the room. While tidying up toys the ghost plays with the lights and door. I try to keep the player paranoid while completing the tasks.

Q: For players who love uncovering lore, how deep does the Ward family’s story go, and can we expect multiple interpretations or a definitive explanation?
I’m still working on the full story but it’ll go much deeper than what you see in the demo. I want to try to provide enough clues through the hand written notes and environment so that the player can piece together a picture of what happened. For the full game, having multiple endings based on how much the player discovers is something I’d like to implement.