Halloween feels like an especially appropriate time for Playable Archive’s arrival. It’s a genuinely spooky found-footage affair for one – a cleverly orchestrated 30-or-so minutes of scares from the developer of horror hit The Mortuary Assistant, released this week as a Halloween freebie. But more than that, the unusual tale of its creation is also one of death and resurrection. As its slightly cheeky title implies, Playable Archive (a riff on the legendary Playable Teaser created for Hideo Kojima‘s cancelled Silent Hill game) is a small slice of developer Brian Clarke’s much larger cancelled Paranormal Activity game, making it a fascinating window into ‘what could have been’. When I heard the news of its release, my curiosity was piqued, so I spoke with Clarke about this unexpected turn of events, of laying his project to rest, and how its legacy might live on – perhaps even as a new Mortuary Assistant game.
Playable Archive’s story begins sometime after the launch of The Mortuary Assistant in 2022, when Clarke was approached by publisher DreadXP to gauge his interest in developing a game set in the universe of the Paranormal Activity movies. “I was like, sure, I’d be down to do that,” Clarke tells me over video call, “because I love Paranormal Activity. It’s one of my favourite horror films.” One thing led to another and Clarke found himself submitting a design and pitch deck to Paramount. And the company clearly liked it; amid a major management shakeup at DreadXP, the “slow process of contracts” began, and the game would eventually be announced as Paranormal Activity: Threshold in November last year.
For Clarke, Paranormal Activity was a good fit for his preferred story-first approach to horror: one less about cinematic scares that seize control of the camera, and more about “passive” chills; moments where something happens which might not be obvious, and which many players might even miss, giving them slightly different experiences they’ll have fun sharing. “I think the flavour I like to do,” he explains, “is something that feels like you’re driving the experience as opposed to me just putting you on rails and showing you.”
And the project felt like an opportunity to add depth to a series that so far hasn’t delved much further than spooky houses and demonic possession, in a way Clarke particularly enjoys. “I love lore – demonic lore was a big thing in The Mortuary Assistant – [and so] I built a whole demonology for Paranormal Activity, and built out this whole new concept that still tied in with everything from the films,” he recalls. “I was really excited to do this deeper thing … that maybe could be used for other things in the future, other games, films, you know.”
The vestiges of Clarke’s original pitch and his broader ambitions can still be seen in Playable Archive. His take on Paranormal Activity would follow a couple as they moved into a new home – presented using the movie series’ familiar found-footage style – with events gradually taking a supernatural turn. Except, at a key point, the perspective would shift, and we’d learn we’re watching this old camcorder footage through the eyes of a detective, investigating the house following the couple’s unexplained demise. In the planned full-length version of the game, the action would jump between the two timelines as more tapes are found, and information learned in one time period would help players progress in the other. However, a third perspective would reveal “something has been set in motion outside of these two”.
Clarke, who works as a solo developer under his DarkStone Digital label, had already spent around two years developing the Paranormal Activity project before it made its PAX East debut earlier this year. And the feedback to his PAX demo – more or less the exact same slice that’s now been tidied up for public release as Playable Archive – was extremely positive. But things were about to take a turn. With Paramount’s deadline approaching, it was clear there was still work to do, and Clarke requested a “small extension”. Not just to finish the game, but to complete QA, localisation, and porting to get Paranormal Activity ready for a simultaneous release. But Paramount, perhaps eager for a Halloween release this year
“It was really a stressful time because I had put a lot of pressure on myself for the project and I was pouring a lot of myself into it,” Clarke recalls, noting that, for him, quality is everything – “I feel it shows when people play any of my projects”. With the likes of additional mo-cap, voice acting, and editing work still to be done in order to complement Paranormal Activity’s completed mechanics, he was concerned rushing to meet Paramount’s inflexible deadline would leave the second half lacking after investing so much time in the earlier part of the game. “That sort of thing … feels much more damaging to an individual [developer’s reputation] than a big old company,” he says, and so the idea of putting “something out faster, and very much compromising what the game is going to be” wasn’t something Clarke wanted to entertain: “I talked to Dread … and we all kind of agreed that, yeah, if we can’t [get Paramount to] budge then we’ll just have to kind of end it.
“To Paramount’s credit, when … we floated [the idea of ending things] they were okay with that.” But notably, Clarke was permitted to keep everything he’d created for the project, which is why it’s been possible to trim out the Paranormal Activity branding and release Playable Archive this Halloween. It was current DreadXP director Hunter Bond who first suggested giving the project a public send-off of sorts, according to Clarke, so it could “sort of get its flowers [and] be laid to rest”. For Clarke, who was in triple-A games development for 13 years before going independent, game cancellations were far from unfamiliar. And while “it’s harder when it’s just my work” he felt he’d “accepted that, okay, this one’s not done.” But it wasn’t just him: “It seemed like [the project’s cancellation] was probably sitting with various people at Dread” and so the decision was made to let it live on in some small way. “And now that it’s out there,” says Clarke, “it feels really good to let people actually play it.”
Playable Archive packs a surprising amount of tension and some killer scares into its scant 30-45 minutes of playtime, but there wasn’t really ever any thought of charging for it. “Just knowing it’s not the full game [it was intended to be], “explains Clarke, “I can’t bring myself to be like, ‘Hey, give me money for that.’ It’s been four years since The Mortuary Assistant came out [and] I would love to put something out that could bring a little something in, but it’s just not the piece for it. And Dread felt the same way.”
Playable Archive isn’t quite the same experience PAX East attendees had with the Paranormal Activity demo earlier this year, though. As well as scrubbing the branding, Clarke took the opportunity to make a number of adjustments, even adding some new lore. At one point, he considered expanding it still further, incorporating found-footage segments from the larger game. In the end, though, he decided there was “no elegant way” to do it.
“I’d want to be like, no, you need to access this to use the demonic connection, and to open this,” he elaborates. “And then if you access this, well, this room’s art isn’t finished so I’d have to finish that. So it turned into a big old can of worms. Like, if I wanted to do more – which I would have loved to have done – it just would have been a bigger time investment, at which point I might as well be trying to finish the game … So ultimately [we decided] let’s just polish up and make this demo the experience so people can at least see where I was going with it and get something out of it. It’s better than letting it collect dust in the dark.”
But there’s that elephant in the room: why not finish what he started and release the full game? The answer, Clark suggests, is a little complicated. There are the technical practicalities for one – “What I created was very much meant to tie into Paranormal Activity and so to go back and adjust all of that would be a tonne of work,” Clarke explains – but there’s the personal aspect too; of resurrecting a game he’d already put to rest after two years of development, and of potentially being drawn back into rhythm – “inviting an unnatural process to my normal process” – he’d already struggled with the first time around. “There’re a lot of factors,” says Clarke, “beyond just ‘Brian doesn’t want to do it because he’s sad’, right?”
And in the end, Clarke found himself asking a simple question: “Is it better to take the concepts that I really like, that are mine and that I got to keep, and make new stuff with it?” That, ultimately, is what felt “more valuable” to him, and since reaching that decision, he’s “come up with like five different game ideas, so I’d much rather chase those.”
Clarke admits, though, that he’s kept a curious eye on Playable Archive’s reception, and says the hugely positive response has been “beautiful” to see. “When this much time passes,” he says, “I think it’s really common for artists and creatives to have impostor syndrome and so it’s nice to be like, ‘Okay, I still know what I’m doing to some degree, right?'” But with the positive feedback comes the inevitable calls to finish the game. “And I’ve got to fight that urge,” says Clarke, “[but] I see people play through the whole thing again and I go, ‘Man, that was a good story.’ Like, I know where I was going with it. I know what I wanted to do with it, and people were kind of starting to understand what I was doing.”
But despite that lingering temptation, Clarke seems eager to move on, and is already juggling a number of ideas that draw on both The Mortuary Assistant and Paranormal Activity. “I’ve realised I’ve got so much here,” he says. “What could I build with these? I don’t want to build Playable Archive again because that exists … but can I take elements from this?” According to Clarke, there are “two games in particular” he wants to do, that he thinks will strike a chord with players, and that feature concepts recognisable from Playable Archive. “I’m going to execute them again, but with more focus on those things,” he explains, pointing to Playable Archive’s Ouija board and different timelines. “Those things will live on. So this whole thing, at this point, makes me feel like it was not all done in vain.”
For Clarke, the positive response to Playable Archive is “bittersweet”, but it’s also “really been motivating. It’s really made me be like, alright, it’s time to roll up and do this again. After everything happened … I’m out on the other side and I want to make something.” As for what that something might be, Clarke says he’s “already started” work on a new Mortuary Assistant game, and is also tinkering around with a “little prototype” incorporating some of Playable Archive’s mechanics. Both, he says, are proving exciting. “This is the problem with the early part of game development: everything is fun. Everything’s grey-box. Nothing’s anything. It’s just ideas. It’s really cool … So I think what I need is to get a few ideas out [and decide] do I want to pursue this or do I want to pursue this other idea? You know, whether it’s Mortuary Assistant, or this other prototype, or this other [thing].”
Clarke is, though, acuately aware it’s been four years since he last put out a full game. “I desperately want to make something full, get it out there, and have people playing it,” he says. “So, I’m certainly motivated to have something out soon.”