Go Home Annie—Devlog 1
Hi! I’m Mladen, the creative director at Misfit Village. For our first devlog, I’ll explain how the idea for Go Home Annie came about.
The origins of Go Home Annie can be traced back to a few ideas and prototypes we’ve researched throughout the years at Misfit Village. More than ten years ago, while Misfit Village was still a one-man show, I started work on a survival horror game called Tainted Fate. In the original prototype, a girl investigated paranormal activities for her YouTube channel. Through her handheld camera screen, she could see horrific entities that were not otherwise visible.
Screenshots from the 2012 version of Tainted Fate
As Tainted Fate morphed into a slasher horror VR project with a completely different feel, the camera gameplay idea was shelved. After that, a few years ago, I had the idea of setting a horror story in a traditional Yugoslavian house instead of the usual trope of an American-looking house or cabin.
Comparison of an in-game screenshot of the house from Go Home Annie and the real-life house upon which it is based
Then, in 2018, after watching Fredrik Kundsen’s Down The Rabbit Hole video on the SCP Foundation, I fell in love with everything SCP. The Yugoslav setting with an SCP backdrop for the whole thing felt like an exciting foundation to build a game upon. Our supernatural camera idea already felt like an SCP object. We decided there would be no enemies in the traditional video game sense. Instead, the handheld camera that can see objects in a different reality would be used for puzzles instead of combat. The Yugoslavian house would be the first thing you see and explore in the game. Our protagonist, Annie, would be a D-class employee of the SCP Replication Division, testing replicas of original SCPs. Creating the Replication Division helped us adapt the original SCP descriptions to our gameplay and story needs.
While most of the game is, as you’ve just read, multiple ideas and prototypes that coalesced into an exciting horror adventure, the name for the game really did just pop into my head. I thought: “Go Home Annie—that’s what it’s going to be called.” From then on, the protagonist’s name was Annie.
What Go Home Annie looked like in 2020 versus what it looks like now
Thank you for reading the first of many devlogs we’ll be posting here, in which we’ll be taking a peek behind the curtains at some aspects of the game’s development.
Mladen Bošnjak
Creative Director at Misfit Village
The origins of Go Home Annie can be traced back to a few ideas and prototypes we’ve researched throughout the years at Misfit Village. More than ten years ago, while Misfit Village was still a one-man show, I started work on a survival horror game called Tainted Fate. In the original prototype, a girl investigated paranormal activities for her YouTube channel. Through her handheld camera screen, she could see horrific entities that were not otherwise visible.
Screenshots from the 2012 version of Tainted Fate As Tainted Fate morphed into a slasher horror VR project with a completely different feel, the camera gameplay idea was shelved. After that, a few years ago, I had the idea of setting a horror story in a traditional Yugoslavian house instead of the usual trope of an American-looking house or cabin.
Comparison of an in-game screenshot of the house from Go Home Annie and the real-life house upon which it is based Then, in 2018, after watching Fredrik Kundsen’s Down The Rabbit Hole video on the SCP Foundation, I fell in love with everything SCP. The Yugoslav setting with an SCP backdrop for the whole thing felt like an exciting foundation to build a game upon. Our supernatural camera idea already felt like an SCP object. We decided there would be no enemies in the traditional video game sense. Instead, the handheld camera that can see objects in a different reality would be used for puzzles instead of combat. The Yugoslavian house would be the first thing you see and explore in the game. Our protagonist, Annie, would be a D-class employee of the SCP Replication Division, testing replicas of original SCPs. Creating the Replication Division helped us adapt the original SCP descriptions to our gameplay and story needs.
While most of the game is, as you’ve just read, multiple ideas and prototypes that coalesced into an exciting horror adventure, the name for the game really did just pop into my head. I thought: “Go Home Annie—that’s what it’s going to be called.” From then on, the protagonist’s name was Annie.
What Go Home Annie looked like in 2020 versus what it looks like now Thank you for reading the first of many devlogs we’ll be posting here, in which we’ll be taking a peek behind the curtains at some aspects of the game’s development.
Mladen Bošnjak
Creative Director at Misfit Village
