Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Night School Studio’s new horror game Unhinged, now available on Netflix.
David Fincher, “Weapons” filmmaker Zack Creger, and Night School Studios founder and studio director Sean Crankel want you to die while playing Netflix’s new horror video game “Unhinged.”
“At least once,” Krankel said.
In “Unhinged,” players take on the role of Eva (voiced by Zoe Kravitz), a woman who wakes up in a violent storm without her powers. The game, which can be played on Netflix through subscribers’ TVs and computers, uses an actual mobile phone as a controller. It acts as a flashlight, a way to call and email his best friends Claire (Sadie Sink) and building super Ben (Troy Baker), and a way to get around and make choices. And those choices become all the more important when you discover that a killer is on the way and coming for you and the rest of the building’s residents.
Developed by Netflix-owned Night School Studios in secret collaboration with Fincher and Kregger (both directors gave a “special thanks” in the game’s credits at the time of its release on Tuesday, but Netflix only acknowledged creative involvement to Variety and did not comment on its involvement in the process), Unhinged is a survival game in which players can die “approximately 10 times” over the course of the story, which will last approximately 30 minutes or more.
Krankel said that in the first point presented, the team made a countdown timer to take action to protect itself “intentionally a little short” in hopes of killing players and giving them a taste of the game they were playing. And this is done without the user losing all progress. Because the user first hears the cops discussing a gruesome murder at the hands of the killer, and then starts again at the same location.
“Every time you die, the police comment on the details of that crime scene,” Krankel told Variety. “When you die in Noah’s scene, he’ll talk about things that both you and them figure out. So there’s actually a lot of little storytelling that happens between each stupid cop joke.”
Krankel and the team at Night School Studios (best known for Oxenfree and Oxenfree II) spent a lot of time figuring out how much agency players should have in the game. The game began development after Netflix acquired the game studio in 2021.
“When you start a project like this, sometimes you get in your head that you want five different endings, 10 different endings,” Krankel says. “Or, ‘This studio specifically has So there was a lot of discussion early on about how much branching we should have, especially with the dialogue parts. And when we started with dialogue and realized that every time we made dialogue choices in a story like this, it just didn’t work, and it felt like a hassle, and it didn’t feel right at all. And it felt like a magic trick between the two of them, whether to call or not, or whether to hang up on someone, that was the choice that I felt was more interesting. I mean, there’s a lot of branching going on internally, but it’s not so much a branching point for the story, but a branching point in how you interact with Ben and Claire and get through it.”
For example, Krankel notes, “I’ve noticed that a lot of people who play with Claire and are very frustrated and don’t trust her to begin with, when she gets to the door, they’re like, ‘Don’t open that damn door! She’s going to kill you!'” I love that. ”
Aside from the different ways (and timing) to die, your choices ultimately lead to one “happy” ending, and Eva survives the night. The next day, the player receives a final message from Ben, now a superhuman killer, letting the player know that he is still alive.
“The decision behind that was to make sure it was a really singular piece of work that people could talk about, like a great movie with a great twist. And when you want to play it again, it’s not because you see different outcomes. It’s because you’re like, ‘I want my friends to see this crazy game,'” Krankel says.
This ending wasn’t necessarily intended to set up another game (though Krankel said he’s not opposed to Unhinged 2), but it was a particularly terrible choice made by Krankel, Fincher, Kreger, and the Unhinged team.
“(The call) did happen after you loaded him with nails. Before the police arrived, he ran away. And he’s still in the wild and we don’t really know where he is,” Krankel says. “We didn’t do it specifically for the sequel, because it’s hard to explain today what value that sequel would have on those characters. Rather, it felt very creepy and we just really leaned into it.”
But even in those final moments, this game lets you decide how you want to experience that horror. “If you can’t answer, it just ends and the credits roll,” Krankel says.
Fincher and Kreger aren’t the only actors Krankel and Night School have collaborated on for this title, which also stars Kravitz, Sink, and prolific video game voice actor Baker (The Last of Us, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle). Krankel said he was able to tap into the high caliber of talent at Netflix because “the casting team for this game is the same team that does film, TV, and everything else.”
“This helped us make something really weird and not just a game, because we treated it like an actual playable interactive thriller,” Krankel says. “And I don’t like vague terms like, ‘This is transmedia,’ ‘This is transmedia,’ but we decided to follow this concept. It’s a playable vehicle, and it essentially has a story. I truly believe that this wouldn’t work if it didn’t have a great story inside. Otherwise, it would just be a tech demo with some brutal beats. So we prioritized the story first, and even though it happened quickly, the relationship between Eva and Claire and their relationship in this Rear Window, where she’s seen and sometimes she’s a lifeline, was the primary basis, and it wasn’t about watching someone’s guts pulled out, it was about how these two best friends, who are equally capable, are going to get through this crazy situation.”
Whatever you want to call it, “Unhinged” is a playable medium, so while we still approached Night School as a game, we had to think hard about what that essentially meant when the game mechanics didn’t involve a traditional controller.
“At first, this seemed like a tremendous challenge because we were wondering how to recreate the type of inputs we’re used to in other games,” Krankel says. “And we had to pick our heads apart, and it took a long time for members of the team, including myself, to stop thinking, ‘If you don’t do X, it’s not a game.’ Like, ‘Literally, if you can’t choose exactly where to go, it’s not a game.’ The flip side of that is that if I’m playing a first-person game and I’m running into walls or seeing shoes or plants while a guy is trying to kill me, it’s not a good game. Or you don’t have to circle and strafe or snipe him while trying to look around. So I love that our team comes from a place of player fantasy, and that player fantasy can sometimes be expressed through passive moments. Sometimes, a player’s fantasy can be expressed through a simple toy that feels good in a short amount of time. Now, for the narrative team, this is my whole area of focus, but I think it has the advantage of being successful. The player’s fantasy embodies the character, which could be played out in cut scenes or even bespoke nail gun sequences. But that doesn’t mean you have to make a great nail gun game that you can improve and upgrade. ”
Krankel says that for him, what’s important is “how you use your phone in a way that brings you the best version of yourself. And I know you can’t always use it, but do it. This couldn’t have been better with anything else.”
“And I believe that’s where we arrived at this piece,” he says. “You could probably use a controller with a speaker to perform some actions, but you can’t look at your phone, swipe away those irritating texts, or turn your flashlight on and off. That means there’s a lot of bespoke new stuff for every match, but I also think that’s what’s most exciting.”
Before players enter the world of Unhinged, they are presented with an 18+ content rating that warns them of upcoming gore. But just how bloody did Fincher, Cregger, and Night School want to make the film, and how much did they ultimately leave to the imagination?
“There are some very grotesque moments, but we didn’t want it to be on the Saw level, front to back,” Krankel says. “But we wanted everyone to feel really uncomfortable at times.”
At the horror game’s climax, Eva pulls her nailed hand off the table and uses the nail to reload her nail gun, injuring her murderous landlord Ben (nearly) fatally. Krankel says, “We wouldn’t have done that unless she ended up reusing and stuffing the nails. But the fact that the gruesomeness was immediately followed by the same gruesomeness just felt right to us.”
“We have to keep reminding ourselves that there’s a lot of great horror storytelling out there,” Krankel says. “Obviously, horror is going through a complete renaissance right now with ‘Backrooms,’ ‘Obsession,’ ‘Weapons,’ and all these titles over the last two years. We didn’t realize all of that, but I should say, other creators are working hard on it, so we’re like, ‘Let’s go hard on this, let’s not hold back.'”
