A one-person indie game development studio focused on the development of 2000s-style horror games, taking inspiration from iconic horror franchises.

Project history and goals:

Awakening Software is a game development studio formed by Darxkl05, which creates horror games based on a retro graphical style heavily influenced by games from the early-mid 2000s. As a small indie studio, all the games are being made using free software, such as Blender, Godot, Gimp and others. Godot, the game engine used to develop the games, is completely free and open source, which makes it a very accessible piece of software just like Blender, which follow the same design philosophy. 

Our goal is to create accessible horror games both from a hardware and software perspective. That is, with average system requirements, good performance and an enjoyable experience for the player.

The graphical style of the games is intended to recreate the one found in games like Silent Hill 2 and 3, Resident Evil 4, Cry of Fear and other similar titles inside the horror genre. This kind of artstyle is not found in that many games nowadays, and so, creating a game with it can feel unique and even nostalgic for some people, as it can be seen with some viewers' reaction to Call From Within's videos (YouTube link on this page), who claim that the graphical style reminds them of older popular video game titles. 

Another important idea inside the studio is the type of horror approached, as the games that are being developed and will be developed stray away from common horror practices found in most horror games nowadays. These recent titles mainly repeat the same formula with little to no success, and that's why the indie market has been so popular in the last year with these types of games, as indie developers like to experiment a lot with their own projects and their execution. With that said, as a studio, one of the main goals is to achieve a unique horror experience with each project developed, providing the player with a distinctive survival/psychological horror experience that is associated with the studio itself.

Lastly, Darxkl05, as a way to promote games while they're in development, releases 3D renders (3D scenarios processed into a flat image) of scenes from the games. Most of these photos directly depict places just as they look in the final interactive experience, and so, they're also used in devlogs. Devlogs are a way to keep the audience up to date with the development of the games, and while all of them are just written posts on the itch.io link you can find on this webpage, some of them also include videos uploaded on Darxkl05's YouTube channel, which show the progress that has been made on the game in a way that keeps the audience engaged.

Team:

• Gabriel Norte (Darxkl05), student on Audiovisuals engineering. Years of experience both in game development and 3D art and skilled in audio editing and music.