‘Crossy Road’ Creator Turns to Horror with ‘After You’

Jeremy Ray
Games Horror
Games Horror PC Gaming

One half of the Crossy Road team, Andy Sum, has announced his next game: After You.

It’s definitely not in the same cutesy vein as Crossy Road. This is a dark turn towards the psychological horror genre, and you can view the brief teaser below:

My goodness.

Sum says the new direction is partially because he wants to keep doing different things, and partially because he can’t stand horror games himself. He’s making one to confront his own fears, as it were, and better understand what scares people in the process.

He also has just the right amount of cheek to start a brand new studio called Normal Wholesome Games, promising “tasteful clean fun” — and debut with a gruesome horror title.

Speaking to FANDOM, he was able to give a few more details on what the game will involve.

“Exploring themes of trust, and how we all try to make decisions,” he says. “We’re designing an experience that will have players second-guessing themselves in a frightening space. More story elements will be revealed through development.”

Hmm. Could that be a smidgeon of game theory in a horror game? A metric smidgeon? Or is that wishful thinking…

Let There Be Light

Sum explained that while the flashlight is an important element in the game, it won’t be cheating with light like Slender. Nor will it have batteries or any other kind of limiting factor. Although there will be a focus on positional audio, so that combined with the fearsome sights may mean there are rooms you’ll want to traverse with no light at all.

“The game takes place in a realistic environment where light and illumination may make the player feel more safe – or may reveal something you wish you’d never found,” Sum continues.

“There will be some violent and gore-filled scenes, however they won’t be the most disturbing part. It’s been fun to put some of the really confronting scenes together… I’ve definitely given myself nightmares!”

The new project is from a remote global team, and Sum says each new game will have a new, hand-picked remote group to bring its particular flavour to the project.

From Memes to Monsters

Crossy Road is one of the biggest mobile gaming hits of recent times. It allowed creators Matt Hall and Andy Sum to offer $500,000 to support Australian game development. If that’s how much money they’re giving away, I don’t even want to think about how much they’re keeping. I bet it’s a lot.

Before Crossy Road, Sum was known for GAME OF THE YEAR 420 BLAZE IT, the spiciest meme stash of a game you’ll ever see. It’s as if he tried to cram in as many memes as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some sort of meta commentary on the state of modern media.

Either way, every streamer wanted a piece of it, and this was before meme-cramming was a tried and tested formula for both promoting games and Youtube videos. It’s hilarious. Play it.

While we probably won’t see gameplay of After You for a while, it’s good to see Sum’s ridiculous success hasn’t hindered his desire to experiment. Stay weird, Andy.

Jeremy Ray
Decade-long games critic and esports aficionado. Started in competitive Counter-Strike, then moved into broadcast, online, print and interpretative pantomime. You merely adopted the lag. I was born in it.