BOO! A sudden scare gets your heart pounding against your chest. Jump scares are the backbone of horror video games and Red Meat Games wants to up the scare factor by monitoring players' heartbeats and incorporating the sound in the game.

“We’re trying to find the opportune times when a player is scared but then also find out when they might be too scared,” said Keith Maske, the CEO of Red Meat Games, an indie game development company based out of Kitchener Ont. and Halifax.

“And we can do other things, not just scare the player, we set them on edge.”

Red Meat Games will monitor players' heartbeats for its upcoming horror puzzle game, Bring to Light.  The company plans to release the game for PC and console in July on a rather fitting day--Friday the 13th.

Bring to Light stems from a project Maske started over four years ago in Newfoundland.

After receiving $50,000 in funding from the National Research Council, Maske started an AI project to modify games through user input in real time.

“Now we’ve taken it one step further. So, rather than the game learning from you, the game learns about you,” said Maske. “So it says ‘hey this person's heart rate is pretty low right now, let's scare him’ or it thinks ‘this guy's heart rate is really high right now and we don’t want him to have a heart attack.’”

Maske, who has more than 15 years of experience in the gaming industry, started Red Meat Games in St. John's, out of the Genesis Centre. In 2015, he relocated to Kitchener and in 2017, opened the Halifax offices to develop Bring to Light. 

Red Meat Games Expands to Halifax

Maske stresses that players do not need to buy a heart monitor in order to play Bring to Light. However, he said every player will benefit from the heart rate monitoring.

“We’re collecting the heart rate data, which is all anonymous, and we’re creating what we’re calling scare maps,” said Maske.  

“The way they work is with enough data, we can actually determine where people are more likely to be scared by things like audio triggers or jump scares.”

The company has identified two devices on the market that can record real time data from a heart rate monitor. One is a chest strap and the other is a wrist attachment, and they’re looking into partnerships with the companies to sell these products alongside Bring to Light.

The game is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, a 1926 fantasy short story. It begins in a subway station after a horrific accident that leaves the player the lone survivor, searching for a way out using only light. It's a puzzle-based game with creepy shadows and underground monsters. 

The heart rate data doesn’t drastically alter the storyline. It simply harnesses the power of user data to generate a statistically scarier experience.

Said Maske: “Hearing your heartbeat in a horror game is a scary thing.”