Despite being a leaky E3 this year, we still had a pretty good amount of surprises. One of those was a surprise new game based on the Blair Witch franchise that came out of nowhere. It’s being developed by Bloober Team and hopes to capture the uneasy feeling the original film and recent followup did. And Bloober Team is hoping to create something different out of it.
In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Barbara Kciuck and Maciej Glomb from the team spoke extensively about the game. One thing they revealed was something some people caught on with the teaser, and that there will be time loops in the game. It’s something that was hinted at in the original film and then brought to the forefront in the 2016 sequel. Much like those films, the time loops aren’t a good thing for the main character, Kciuck said.
“As the reveal trailer suggested, Bloober Team’s Blair Witch will also feature time loops,” said Glomb. “However, without spoiling anything, let me just say that they are not the Groundhog Day-style loops. They are not there to help you make your situation better in the end. Blair Witch uses them for much more sinister reasons.”
Another interesting thing for the developer is that Blair Witch will be the first game to include combat. Their previous titles have been more of an experience based, roller coaster style approach. While Glomb didn’t go into detail on what that entails, he did say that you would have a chance to fight back against whatever you’ll be up against, even if you shouldn’t expect to feel too strong doing so.
“So it changes the experience for sure but I wouldn’t say it’s a drastic change,” he said. “We are convinced that to create a truly horrifying horror experience in a video game you have to make the players feel vulnerable. When introducing new encounter mechanics we don’t really want to change that. What we want to do is to diversify gameplay mechanics. We already experimented with chase and stealth sequences and with Blair Witch we want to try yet another type of combat in which you will be finally able to defend yourself. Having said that we try to design it in such a way that it still feels as you’re a pray not a hunter.”
Blair Witch will release for Xbox One and PC on August 30th.