Surgent Studios founder Abubakar Salim has detailed more on the studio’s next game, Dead Take, and its exploration of Hollywood, which stars Neil Newbon and Ben Starr as its two leads.
Newbon is perhaps best known as Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, among other roles, while Ben Starr starred as Clive in Final Fantasy 16 and, most recently, as Verso in the well-received Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Salim, himself an actor known for playing Bayek in Assassin’s Creed Origins, described Dead Take to Eurogamer as “a reverse escape room” set in a Hollywood mansion. It’s a psychological horror game that blurs the boundaries between film and game as it explores the theme of success.
“How far will you go for success?” asked Salim. “What are you willing to give for that? Can you separate the art from the artist?”
The fresh teaser trailer, above, hints at what we can expect from both gameplay and the actors’ performances.
Salim explained players will be exploring the mansion to solve puzzles by finding live-action clips containing solutions that can be spliced together. It all sounds very Alan Wake meets Her Story to me, with Salim admitting both were influences.
Indeed, the use of live-action footage will reflect the game’s themes and the focus on the acting profession. “You’re going to be watching Ben and Neil do their work on screen as actors,” said Salim. “And the reason why is because I didn’t want them to hide behind animated characters, or 3D characters. I wanted to show you them
As such, the game’s blurring of boundaries is a reflection of Salim’s own career, balancing game development with working as an actor himself, most recently in Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon.
The studio’s previous game Tales of Kenzera: Zau was a personal project for Salim, influenced by his own experience of grief after the passing of his father. Dead Take, initially at least, is a highly contrasting follow-up, but it’s no less personal.
“Within Hollywood and acting, I’ve experienced and seen and heard a lot of stories of people who would do and give anything for stardom and are quite openly very comfortable with that,” he said. “It’s quite frightening.”
Salim explained how the game will explore abuse of power and the toxicity of fame, which he, Starr, and Newbon have all witnessed in their careers. “I grew up with these guys,” said Salim, who’s worked together with both actors in the past. “Now we’re in the games industry together, and yet the stories are always the same. That is essentially what I really wanted to depict and play with here, pulling from very raw and honest, truthful spaces.”
He added: “The reason why it’s with friends is because it deals with such raw and honest topics that are based on reality, and the only people you can really do that with, or explore that with, are people that you trust and rely on and are incredibly professional. It’s very revealing.”
Still, the horror tone of Dead Take is in stark contrast to Tales of Kenzera. “People have an idea in regards to ‘oh, this is the kind of game that you’ll always make as a studio’,” said Salim. “With Dead Take, this is us saying ‘we’re storytellers first and foremost’ and that’s really what’s key for this.
“People would have obviously expected a similar element or ilk of Zau with it, but actually what we want to show is that we are diverse in regards to the stories that we can tell and the genres and the spaces and the places we can play in.”
He continued: “It’s coming from a place of what’s the story we want to tell, what’s the best medium for it, and what’s also the best genre or take on it? And what better way of exploring how far you will go than putting you in a first-person psychological horror game where you’re playing an actor who literally is always living on the edge of ‘I don’t know when my next paycheck is coming through’? How do I secure a legacy? How do I secure that my sense of self is important and valid? That is the journey of an actor, constantly.”
Essentially, Dead Take will peel back the layers on Salim’s own work as an actor. “The more you succeed, or the deeper down you go, the darker it gets, the weirder it gets, the more behind the curtains you see,” he said of the game. “It’s very different playing a day part of a film than playing the lead role in something. The lead role, you’re so much more involved, you see more of how the cogs are working. That’s the journey I want to take you on here.”
The personal experience of Salim, Newbon, and Starr will only add to the game’s authenticity, again paralleling Tales of Kenzera and its Afrofuturist aesthetic inspired by the Bantu Tales. “In truth,” said Salim,”for us the only thing we can do is speak from that authenticity. And this game made sense for that.”
Dead Take will be published by Palworld maker Pocketpair. “It’s really lovely when you meet someone who’s aligned in regards to the vision of where they want to see the industry go,” said Salim of the collaboration. “It’s like fireworks, it just made sense.”
Dead Take doesn’t yet have a release date, but will launch later this year on PC (Steam). The studio also has another game in development, an Afrofuturist gothic-horror RPG currently known as Project Uso.