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How Beatrix Potter and a fear of open water inspired the surreal, Limbo-like horror puzzler SiltA deep dive into the making of Spiral Circus' debut game
A deep dive into the making of Spiral Circus' debut game
“The main influence to any of my work is good old Beatrix Potter, believe it or not,” Mead continues. “I blame my mum entirely because she made me and my sister watch this horrible ballet when I was a kid, and I still haven’t watched it since then. Over the years, though, I realised that this was one of my main things that fuelledmy characters, and the fox man character, I started drawing him and he became my main character for years.”
Silt - Announcement Trailer | ESRBWatch on YouTube
Silt - Announcement Trailer | ESRB
Indeed, you may recognise Mead’s fox character from the last time he dipped his toes into game development with hisshort point and click project Foramina. Visually, this monochrome horrorscape has a lot in common with Silt, although Mead says he’s since learned how to adapt his detailed and time-consuming art style to something that’s a bit friendlier for making games in order to “basically not kill the project with my vast amounts of cross-hatching!”
As fate would have it, the drawing that caught Clarke’s eye the most was called “Silt”, and after that “we started working pretty quickly on it,” Mead continues. At this point, the pair also started discussing their game inspirations as well, and “unsurprisingly, one game that had a massive influence on both of us was Limbo,” he says.
“For me, seeing an art style used to that atmospheric effect was really inspiring, and made me realise that my work was applicable to that kind of arena as well, which was good. From there, I started playingLittle NightmaresandSamorost. Samorost is a bit lighter, but the drawn style of it was a huge inspiration.”
As you climb out of one beast, however, you can quickly find yourself in the belly of another if you’re not careful. In the next and final section of the demo, Mead and Clarke’s love of Limbo really comes to the fore, as your diver suddenly finds themselves drawn to a bright, shining light on the end of a wriggling tube. You follow it through a winding tunnel filled with other ravenous creatures that pursue you in their droves, only to suddenly break off as the tunnel opens up. I carried on following the light until it disappeared into a wall, but I saw the eager teeth emerging in its place too late. Down came another pair of enormous jaws, gobbling me whole and sending me back to the last checkpoint. I got my own back later on, but it’s clear that Silt isn’t going to be pulling any punches when it comes to unveiling the rest of its otherworldly nasties lurking in its depths.
Indeed, Mead says that aside from Limbo, many of his other gaming influences all have similarly punishing retro sensibilities. “I played games heavily until I was about 16, and then I seemed to make the choice not to play as many games and focus on my art a bit more. Because of that I ended up with a kind of 20 year gap until I played games like Limbo. So my kind of reference points were all very old-school and retro. I used to love [1999’s]Shadow Man, it was one of the darkest games that I’ve played, really, and another huge influence on Silt as a project was Ecco The Dolphin, which I thought was a really creepy and strange game, which obviously I love.”
