Evil Dead: The Game leverages its film and TV roots to great success

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The Evil Dead started life as a Sam Raimi horror movie classic, a feature film that gave sometimes gruesome, often hilarious life to first a trilogy of films, and then remakes, comic books, one groovy television series, and finally a collection of video games.

The desire to drop the franchise’s one-handed, chainsaw-toting Ash into a video game dates all the way back to 1984, just three years after the first movie hit screens. But that early PC game couldn’t seem to capture the look and feel of the over-the-top hit flick. Nor could the eight games that followed. Fortunately, Saber Interactive came along this year to deliver a visual spectacle in its survival horror take on The Evil Dead.

Evil Dead: The Game drops players into a cooperative and player-versus-player experience where one person controls the franchise’s infamous Deadites, while the others try to survive the ordeal. It’s packed with references to the full breadth of source material and the clear signs of a design team with an eye for nuance.

We spoke with Jules Faivre, creative 3D art director at Saber Madrid, about how the team plucked not just the major beats of the franchise and its characters from Evil Dead, but even worked in subtle elements like the colors, gradients, and visual tones of the source material to deliver an experience that extends beyond breathing life into asymmetric multiplayer to unleashing a game packed with visual variety.

To read the rest of this story, which first ran on June 27, 2022, visit Unreal Engine.