ID@Xbox Creator Spotlight: Peeling Back the Layers of Fear with Bloober Team
We are Bloober Team, an independent games developer based in Cracow, Poland, and you probably know us from Layers of Fear – the scary, psychedelic horror game about a painter gone mad. Our game spent its infancy in the Xbox Game Preview program, and it has since matured into a fully-fledged horror experience that has scared and entertained thousands of amazing Xbox fans. You might imagine that the people who made such a game are themselves kind of mad, and you’re probably not that far from the truth! More than twenty people made the core of our development team working on Layers of Fear, and twice as many had additional input, not to mention the feedback from fans through Xbox Game Preview who contributed to making the game better.
The journey towards Layers of Fear started eight years ago when one of the first games Bloober Team ever worked on, a horror title for one of the big gaming consoles at the time, was eventually shelved after the team had invested time and focus into the gameplay style and genre. Despite this setback, Bloober Team cofounders CEO Piotr Babieno and Piotr Bielatowicz forged ahead, using that idea and experience as a cornerstone of Bloober Team’s identity. After a dozen work-for-hire games, a few less-than-successful original IPs, a lot of ambition, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, we finally reached Layers of Fear – the first game from our new portfolio and a comeback to our roots.
Beyond our fearless leaders, we owe so much to so many individuals for crafting Layers of Fear into a horror masterpiece. The visual praise for Layers of Fear go to our Art Director Mateusz Lenart – a decent looking, happily married fellow who has been working in the gaming industry for over ten years and now creates uncanny art as our Art Director, and lead level designer Bartosz Kaproń, whose artistic senses helped envision the game’s aesthetics and feeling. They both received a prize from the president of Poland himself for their personal achievements (wow!). Further, our senior graphic programmer Mariusz Szaflik did some uncanny, presumably forbidden, coding dark magic to squeeze out all of the juice that the Unity game engine could handle.
And we haven’t even mentioned some of our more… unhinged contributors! Michał Król – our in-house designer, horror and game addict, with his fun, yet crazy personality was responsible for the plot idea and had his hand in almost every aspect of the design in Layers of Fear. Jacek Zięba – cool and calm on the outside, but a real emotional beast and a pro-handler QA lead – helped put the whole game together; and project lead Szymon Erdmański – an easy going, constantly happy, energetic bomb – managed the production of the whole project.
Finally, we owe much to the Layers of Fear community and fanbase. You’ve made Layers of Fear the success that it is. Thank you for playing and enjoying Layers of Fear. We can’t wait to tell you more about our future plans!