GHOSTS

Behind the scenes of Ghosts, an FMV-based game that can only be played once per day

ACTIVE DUTY 

While you will sit in the chair as Ghosts’ producer, your role is set to be more than that of a passive observer. Each of the five presenters wears a heart-rate monitor that will warn you of impending danger, giving you the chance to call them to the safety of a Big Brother-style diary room – or, to look at it another way, it can alert you to a potential money shot. Audience figures provide a fail state almost as grave as letting your presenters die, and the challenge will lie in balancing the two. “You’ve got to keep them alive.  Look out for the Long Lady. Keep the show afloat,” Shepherd says. And then there’s the matter of the strange noises in the van around you…

H ideo Kojima’s Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand and Ghostwatch, the cult ‘90s BBC faux documentary, are two things not often mentioned in the same breath. But they’re among the reference points raised during our conversation with Jed Shepherd, the filmmaker taking his first step into videogames with Ghosts. And if these inspirations seem an unlikely crossover, then the Venn diagram required to fully encompass Ghosts’ conceit –a “realtime live-action horror videogame” involving the makers of both Siren Head and Big Bird – is outright inconceivable.