Red Meat Games, a video game development studio, has expanded its offices into Halifax to develop its new horror-puzzle game, Bring to Light.

“The expansion into Halifax made a lot of sense in terms of financing and talent perspectives,” said Keith Maske, the CEO of Red Meat Games, a video game development company.

Maske, who has more than 15 years of experience in the gaming industry, started Red Meat Games in 2013 in St. John’s, where he worked out of the Genesis Centre. The company, which develops games for mobile devices, consoles, personal computers and virtual reality, then relocated to Kitchener, Ont., in 2015. 

The new Halifax office employs over 10 programmers and artists, who will help create Red Meat Games’ newest project, Bring to Light, a first-person horror game. The project started in September and is funded in part by the Canadian Media Fund.

Bring to Light, which draws its inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, begins in a subway station after a terrible accident that leaves the player as the sole survivor, trapped and searching for a way out. The player has to navigate through the game and solve different puzzles to escape.

“The puzzles that we’re using makes you use light or shadow in different ways, and a lot of the storytelling were doing as well uses light and shadow,” said Maske.

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Because of its focus on light and realistic light movement, Maske said one of the biggest challenges in developing the game is designing an environment that is both immersive and scary for the player.

“We have all these parts of the game that go underground and are magical,” said Maske. “Trying to build that world as a scary environment that will put people on edge is a challenge.”

The challenge lies in the amount of work it takes for the small team of artists to design this mystical world. Maske said Red Meat Games, which has received support from Nova Scotia Business Inc., plans to hire another artist to lessen the load and help the company reach its goal of a 2018 release.

Bring to Light will be available for the PC and some consoles. Maske said he is looking into outfitting the game for VR but the company still has technical issues to iron out.

Maske said the expansion into Halifax has gone smoothly and his team is making a lot of progress with the new game.

“We have a team that is really capable and they get along great,” he said. “We already feel a sense of community and we’ve only been in Halifax for a couple of months. It’s awesome.”