Witchboard Maze Run is a Roblox game where you can run around in a maze and ask questions of a Witchboard, which is kind of a predecessor of the Ouija Board.
The horror game debuts today to help stoke demand among young folks for the Witchboard movie releasing in theaters on August 15.
The game is a collaboration of JP Isham of Alchemist Fund and movie director Chuck Russell, who remade the old Witchboard movie from 1986. Russell loves to have humor in his horror films, which you would know if you ever saw Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (1987), a Freddy Kreuger movie that he still gets interviewed about. In fact, I remembered watching that movie growing up and liking it, even as a so-so horror fan.
Isham and Russell met through one of the strangest bubbles in modern history, and then they figured out how to ride the next bubble. It turns out that Roblox, which has 97.8 million daily active users, has a lot of older players now and there are 17 million to 20 million 17-plus age fans who like horror.
The movie is 17+, or R-rated, where as the game is targeted at people 13 and up, Isham said. It doesn’t get into the kind of nudity, cursing or other things that are normal in R-rated movies, Isham said.
Unlike traditional media, Roblox offers an interactive, community-driven environment where horror experiences can thrive, fostering deep engagement and brand loyalty, Isham said. Popular horror games like Deepwoken (60% of fans aged 17+) and The Mimic emerged on Roblox in the horror genre for older players.
Origins
It started in 2019 when Eric Schiermeyer, cofounder of Zynga, started a blockchain game company called Gala Games. It was a decentralized gaming system where players could own their in-game assets. As the Web3 craze took off, Gala Games raised hundreds of millions of dollars through sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the 2021-2022 era.
Schiermeyer’s team, including Isham, signed up dozens of games to make. But Web3 games never really took off with the mainstream.
Isham joined the company to do business development deals, where Gala Games funded a lot of games and then branched into movies and music. He met Russell during that process and helped fund the movie with something like a $12 million to $20 million range, depending on how you count Hollywood money.
“In this case we didn’t want to wait for the studio process. I wanted to experiment with a completely independent film again. JP was our conduit to Gala. They were looking to start a film division. Right away it was a big love affair. This was the kind of thing they were looking for. I wanted to go back to the horror genre. I began in horror.”
Eventually, Gala Games saw its token prices drop like other NFT game companies, and it had to scale back on its investments. Isham left the company, but he stayed close to Russell and wanted to do something to help the movie. Russell saw himself as a reinventor of classic films. He did it with the Elm Street movie and with The Blob.
Russell was receptive. Working for Gala, Isham became the executive producer on the film.
“The Blob and Witchboard are both wonderful pieces of horror real estate, pieces of pop culture. I thought they could be improved upon. I went back to Witchboard because I’m not done with horror. This is everything else I wanted to do with horror,” he said.
Russell wanted to do a remake of the 1986 Witchboard movie only with a modern cast and a cool setting in the New Orleans Natural History Museum. He made it on a low budget, using his signature humor to infuse the movie with fun. It was built around a central question. If you could ask the Witchboard about the future, what would your question be?
“I never did straight-up slasher and I never will. My Elm Street film is about the magic of
dreams. Witchboard is deeply into the magic of dreams. It’s the possibility of the afterlife, the possibility of time travel,” Russell said. “There’s fun in this movie. Anything that’s horror, the results have to be high stakes for your characters. It’s high suspense and there are big scary moments, but ultimately there’s fun and positivity in the film as well.”
During the time, Gala Games hit some bumps, and Isham left the company in mid-2024.
Just a matter of months ago, Isham hit upon an idea. How about a Roblox game? I knew Isham as a regular contributor to the Game Industry Cocktail Hour on Clubhouse. He met people who knew the games business through the club and tapped them to build a team.
Russell’s Roblox education
When Isham said to Russell that they could make a game in a few months, Russell knew that sounded crazy. He had learned that it could take years to make a game, and many adaptations were losers.
But Russell, who created The Mask with Jim Carrey, did some homework with a 10-year-old family friend for a few hours.
“Then I realized,” he said. “You have Beetlejuice. You have the new Karate Kid. You can go into a theater and see Witchboard, and then you can play it in Roblox. ‘Let’s go!’ I thought. This could be the Lego game of my movie.”
Just like that, Russell got very excited about the game. Compared to the cost of the movie, the cost of the Roblox game was peanuts.
“I was thrilled with JP,” he said. “It’ll be edgy, I think, compared to a lot of other Roblox games, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not a Roblox expert. JP has introduced me to the Roblox world.”
It took about three years to make the movie. The game? A few months. The budget? Peanuts. Isham’s team included himself (Cyb3rAlch3mist), RasDev, RXGnar, Eleyes, Iamvortellex, Respirevida, Leeloosdada2023 and Aeiouada.
“It took me two weeks before I understood. It’s this kind of Lego-ish world where you can do a game in this amount of time. They re-created the sets, which blows my mind. Those are all real locations. Some of them are 300-year-old buildings from the original shoot in French Montreal. To see that before the release of the film is mind-blowing,” Russell said.
In the game
Isham saw that the board in Witchboard was the glue between the film and the game. It was meant to be played.
The board itself seems like the glue between the film and the game.
“I’ve been fascinated with pendulum boards. I don’t want to bore you, but I can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about pendulum boards. They go back to ancient Egypt. They predate Ouija boards. We’re quite true to the spirit of the original, but there’s no point in remaking it if you don’t explode it. We did that,” Russell said.
“I went back to the pendulum board and did what I did in The Mask. I’m fascinated with
a mystical object. Maybe that even comes from my gaming. I thought it was perfect for a game. I thought we’d eventually do a game. But I never dreamed we’d do a game this quickly, or in the Roblox style, which is so much fun,” Russell added.
And the thought about it some more.
“But the Witchboard itself is a kind of game within the film,” he said. “The pendulum boards are a gateway into wicca, into supernaturalism. I say that it’s a cautionary
statement. I designed the board very carefully so there are positive symbols on it as well,
symbols that could be interpreted either way.”
Players are encouraged to ask the Witchboard questions as much as they like, just be careful as the spirits usually answer for a price. They can head over to the Creole Kings Cafe, a site in the movie, or head to the museum.
Every item in the cafe can be purchased. Players have to make their way through a maze in the game, much like happens in the movie. Each area of the maze has its own style associated with the symbols on the Witchboard. Everyone who races unlocks the prize. But the winner of each race gets to unlock something special.
“I tried to think about gaming, fun and mechanics and loops that made sense for this history around the Witchboard,” Isham said. “It’s about summoning spirits. You can ask it a question and it will answer any question you ask it. And then the experience is about learning about the Witchboard, and the symbols and the different kind of path lanes where those answers come from. It has a maze experience. So it’s really about escaping from the center of the eye, making it spooky, making it fun.”
Did we mention the Witchboard requires a sacrifice? When players load into the eye of the board starting area, the center of the room (eye of the board) is a bottomless pit. You must push a player into the hole to start the race.
This is a experience where our players will engage with the Witchboard story by interacting with the board and asking it questions. As a precursor to the Ouija board, this summoning of spirits to answers your questions — think magic eight ball —
Players will also hunt during races to find the exit, unlock UGC and irl rewards from contributing artists.
“We’re all about the fans. We want to give the fans a great, high-quality experience. There’s always a touch of adventure in my films. There’s definitely a touch of adventure in this game,” Russell said.
“I hope that people do see that this is an elevated experience. I’m even showing some of our triple-A friends what we are and aren’t capable of in this system, and they’re fascinated by it,” Isham said.