About this template
Build a game where players arrive in a remote community that seems eccentric and gradually reveals itself as something far older and more dangerous. Folk horror is about the horror of belonging, of community, of traditions whose purpose is obscured until too late. The danger is the people, not a monster.
Summer Engine helps you build that slow revelation through conversation. Describe the community, the outsider protagonist, the ritual or belief system at the center. The AI helps construct NPC relationships, dialogue that hints without revealing, and a world that becomes more wrong the longer the player spends in it.
Folk horror games work when the player starts to understand the logic of the community before understanding the full horror of it. The moment of comprehension and the moment of dread arrive together. Building toward that convergence is the narrative design problem at the heart of this genre.
Who it's for
- Writers inspired by The Wicker Man, Midsommar, or Ari Aster's work who want to build in that tradition.
- Designers interested in NPC community simulation as horror rather than life simulation.
- Teams building horror rooted in specific cultural traditions or folk mythology.
- Developers who want threat to come from human belief systems rather than supernatural monsters.
Highlights
Isolated Community Mystery
Build a mystery game where the player investigates a remote community and uncovers the ritual at its center, with NPCs who hide the truth through deflection and misdirection.
Festival Horror
Design a game centered around a specific ritual event that the player arrives before or during, with the full horror of the ritual's purpose revealed through participation and observation.
