For the third year since its inception in 2013, Asylum Jam seeks to challenge game developers to produce a horror game within a small time-frame and without relying on boring, old tropes. The stage is ready, so who will participate this year?
Asylum Jam originally started as a 48-hour Game Jam that sought to steer gaming away from using mental health issues as a shorthand for scary scenarios. Asylums, psychopaths, mad doctors, all of them elements we’ve probably encountered before in numerous games and it paints a pretty bad picture of what having mental problems is like. We too have done some interesting articles on the subject, in fact I actually defended the practice in my recent review of Fran Bow while Kyle did an insightful piece against it, so even among us opinions on the subject differ.
The event will kick off on November 6th and, while I am not 100% against using mental issues in horror games, I am 100% in favor of more variety in the industry.
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