Fear Sphere turns the scary flashlight levels of horror games into reality

Fear Sphere takes one of those flashlight levels in a horror game and brings it to life. It’s a co-op game: One person crawls inside an inflatable dome and prepares to find their way out of a virtual maze, and the other is outside with a map to guide them. Hnry is a three-person studio from New York that created this experience. It was one of the IndieCade Festival 2017’s nominees, and it won the Alt.Ctrl.GDC award earlier this year, which recognizes alternative controllers.

When I ducked inside Fear Sphere at IndieCade, the only equipment I got was a pair of headphones and a flashlight. The flashlight was a heavy-duty affair, and it doubled as a projector to beam the virtual world onto the inside of the dome. It was standard horror game fare:a building that looks like an abandoned school-turned-labyrinth, with desks and furniture stacked in my way as I wandered the halls.