Anthology Of The Killer: interview with Stephen Gillmurphy

Stephen Gillmurphy discusses the interesting ‘mixture of cheerfulness and faint queasiness’ in comedy horror Anthology Of The Killer

Anthology Of The Killer is a surrealist comedy horror series which received a lot of positive feedback when it launched on Steam, with many reviews commenting on the game's unique style of horror that feels utterly surreal. Personally, I connected with the dark yet somehow jovial style of humour that is unlike any game I have experienced before. 

The game is a collection of self-contained scenes set inside a surrealist world. Each world is filled with bizarre characters in an abstract art style, which feels like taking your most unhinged nightmares and seeing them replicated on Microsoft Paint. Each chapter of Anthology Of The Killer has you walk through different, yet equally disturbing, worlds, such as discovering a murderous cult or partaking in some immersive theatre that’s perhaps a little too immersive.

When playing through, I felt a sense of unease that was then amplified by the comedic beats. These made this sinister world feel even more unsettling, as the jokes and cartoonish art style jarred with the tone in an intentionally unnerving way. After finding success on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, I was curious to learn more about the inspiration behind the game and the development process, and was fortunate enough to chat with Stephen Gillmurphy, the creator of the series and delve deeper into his process.

To start off, what does it mean to you on a personal level to see Anthology Of The Killer released on consoles?

I'm glad it can be played by the class of gamers I most relate to: people who only want to play videogames lying down. The console/non-console distinction seems hazier these days since on Switch you can now get the latest Mario games and Hentai Star Busters 2 from the same store. I'm proud to contribute to the confusion, since I think my own games exist in the midpoint of those two artistic poles.

Anthology Of The Killer is an abstract experience that embraces the stylised and surreal. On Steam, the reviews are currently coming in at ‘very positive’. Were you ever concerned that people wouldn't connect with it, and how did it feel seeing that so many people did, and in such a positive way?

Yes, for the first two games in the series I didn't even release them publicly for a while. I didn't know what to do with them, or what anyone else would get out of them. They somehow felt like they "worked" to me but I couldn't identify why. I think it was only with the third game that I felt more confident that there was something there. It was a really nice feeling to put them out sequentially on Gamejolt and find people willing to give them a shot - I got a bit obsessed with the games myself as I was making them, so it was very satisfying to feel like other people shared the feeling.

I can imagine how great it must’ve felt to see people get as immersed in the world as you were whilst developing it. For those who have not played through the game, it is split into a series of self-contained sections, each with its own specific look and feel. What different forms of media inspired the unique style of storytelling?

Mostly comic books and webcomics - I like how serial media often feels like it gets complicated and strange over time, just through the requirement of constantly adding to the same story. I wanted to see if the same thing would happen to me. I also got into a lot of genre films over the course of making the games, which are interesting because they can often just assume conventions then don't have to be explained - like, taking "mad scientist" "strangler" "wolf woman" etc as stock figures, where the goal is just to put them together in a different way each time. I liked the idea of each game trying to take a new approach to a stock set of characters, assets, ideas, etcetera.

As a result of this, the game tackles dark and twisted subject matter. What kind of mindset does writing a game like this require, and did you face any challenges?

It was actually a lot of fun. If anything, there was a little disconnect in the feeling that I personally was having, such a grand old time while writing about mass death in a period of mass death. I feel like that mixture of cheerfulness and faint queasiness made it into the game somehow. In terms of difficulties, I tried to structure the games to never have to do any of the kind of writing I didn't really feel comfortable in (relationship drama, big emotional scenes, and so on). Maybe this helps give them kind of a mysterious quality, like the sense of circling around things that have to remain unsaid.

From my own interpretation, the comedy was not meant to provide comic relief but rather served as a tool for parodying society, contributing to the unnerving experience. How would you describe the game's dynamic between comedy and horror?

There's an Elias Canetti line that the only animal besides man that laughs is the hyena, and that hyenas laugh when they're shown food and then have it taken away again. So he says that if we laugh when we see someone fall down it's because for just a second we're thinking about eating them, and then have the food "taken away" by the knowledge that we should not. It is a crazy argument that's wrong in basically every assertion, there are plenty of animals that laugh. But I think about it a lot. It does feel like there's a sense of uncertainty, having something pulled away beneath you, that can tip over into either horror or comedy - the horror films I find most scary are actually the funny ones, because I find the constant switching of tones to be so unsettling in itself. Being chased by zombies is one thing, being chased by the Return Of The Living Dead zombies as they vocally complain how you should move slower so they can eat your brains is much scarier to me.

I suppose it is often said that the principles of both horror and comedy are the same - after all they’re both about tension and surprise, so it makes sense that they can complement each other. Playing through the game feels like walking through an abstract art gallery. The environments and character designs are striking, and there are always so many bizarrely interesting things to look at in every area. What inspired the art style behind the game, and are there any particular artists that influenced you?

One of the main reasons I made the game was actually just to have a chance to play around with the Doodle Studio 95 plugin, a tool for doing quick sketchy animations directly in Unity that was responsible for a lot of the look of the game - that handdrawn, MS Paint style. The 2D in 3D look also made me think of Thomas & Nardo, a series of animated shorts adapting Mark Beyer's comics for the old MTV Liquid Television showcase. I really liked the style of those, how flexible it seemed and how playful it was in taking this fun pop-up-book style and using it for such a dreadful world.

I was also inspired by other horror artists, Richard Sala's various masked maniacs and strange locations, and Dario Argento's eye for odd settings and wallpaper so colourful it almost drowns out whatever's meant to be happening. The lesson I got from them was that even in horror, you should always have something interesting to look at - you should trust that these things can add to the work and make it more mysterious rather than just being a distraction.

I find the Dario Argento approach really interesting. I completely agree that the bright colours and bold patterns you chose definitely add to the mystery of the world and make you want to inspect everything. I am so excited to see Anthology Of The Killer on the Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store. However, I can imagine that there is a lot of hard work involved in translating it to consoles behind the scenes.  What were some of the challenges that came with doing that, and how did you overcome them?

I actually wasn't involved in this much, it was Joe at Hairy Heart who did all the technical porting work! That said I'm not a professional game developer so I'm sure the build I provided wasn't in the best shape to port. Part of the console certification thing requires updating to more recent versions of Unity and exporting from those - updating engine builds mid project is something I always try to avoid unless I really have to, so I'm sure having to leapfrog several years worth of new versions wasn't fun!