'MADiSON', the “most terrifying video game of all time” is from Argentina

Alexis Di Stefano was prohibited from consuming horror content.

Everything bloody was banned.

Remember that his parents kept him and his siblings in a “glass box”.

His first contact with video games was through a neighbor who invited them to play with his PlayStation.

He was about eight or 10 years old, as he recalls, when he experienced the

survival horror title

"From that moment my head exploded," he says and said to himself "I want to know more about this."

He was able to experience for the first time what it was like to be scared on purpose, feel the adrenaline rush, anxiety, nervousness, and get goosebumps from pleasure because of this type of entertainment.

From then on, it was a road of no return.

He started playing every PlayStation horror video game “ever and ever.”

His head fed on classic sagas of the genre such as

,

,

,

, to name a few, which later led him to generate a love for the genre in different formats.

Since he was a boy, he began to think about what it would be like to design a horror video game, without knowing what processes were required to materialize that dream.

17 years later, at 27, Di Stefano not only realized that boy's dreams, he exceeded them.

A moment of the 'gameplay' of the videogame.Blodious Games

Di Stefano, from Buenos Aires, is the owner of Bloodius Games, the studio in charge of the development of

, a video game that was chosen by different specialized portals as the best survival horror title of 2022 and cataloged as the "most terrifying of all time". ”, according to a study carried out by the British project Science of Scare.

“I remember studying at university and saying 'well, my dream right now would be to create a table or a chair or a weapon that could be used in some

that's coming out.

Life showed me that this was not my limit, and that a couple of years later the same actors from the

adaptation were going to be presenting

at an event in Germany, it's crazy," he told EL PAÍS .

Science of Scare has been dedicated, since 2020, to classifying and measuring different horror content through an established methodology.

For the classification of horror video games, they took into account a sample of 200 people, who underwent playing a list of 45 selected titles from the last 30 years available on consoles of different generations of PlayStation, Xbox and on computers.

In each case the users were subjected to heart rate monitoring.

In that monitoring, the average impact was measured at rest, 65 beats per minute, compared to the highest peak.

Ranking of video games that were among the most terrifying, made by Science of Scare.Broadband Choices

MADiSON

kept the players at a heart rate of 97 beats per minute, or the equivalent of sustaining a steady moderate jog.

At their highest peak, during a severe scare, people reached 131 beats per minute.

The game takes place in a big house, where the user takes control of Luca, a 16-year-old boy who receives an instant camera for his birthday.

Said object belonged to a serial murderer 30 years before, and through her the protagonist will be contacted to put an end to a macabre ritual.

Di Stefano studied game design and programming, enrolling in 2014. His undergraduate thesis was a prototype for what would become

.

It was not until 2018 that together with David Lovera, his friend at the university and game programmer, they got down to work on the final version that saw the light of day in 2022.

“

I grew up collecting horror video games and today there are people who collect my video game.

During these five years or so of development he was like this fear of saying well, is all this work worth it?

Will I be able to live off this in an economy like Argentina's?

Honestly, I never imagined that the game could come to PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo Switch.

”, says Di Stefano incredulous.

Di Stefano raised the story of

as a film script, inspired - apart from the video games of his childhood - by films like

or

(both by director James Wan), heavily narrative-driven to make it feel like a horror movie, as realistic and cinematic as possible.

“I wanted to scare and point to a type of terror that generated many feelings in me when I was little, such as being afraid in an environment that makes us feel protected, like inside our houses, but which is also the scene of their worst nightmares. ”, says the director of Bloodious Games.

The funds for the development of

came from Di Stefano's savings when he worked on different projects related to the video game industry, from his work as a radio technician and from people who believed in the project, through patronage campaigns. .

Word of mouth was one of the best marketing tools for the title, including the interest of famous

and

who experienced the game, including AuronPlay, El Rubius and Ibai Llanos, to name a few.

Even within the gaming community, comparisons were not needed, calling

the spiritual successor to

a playable video game preview directed and created by the mind of renowned designer Hideo Kojima and acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro —distributed by the Japanese giant Konami—, which terrified users eight years ago and became a cult object.

“The comparison is very crazy and rewarding.

Putting Konami, with a big budget, Kojima and Del Toro, in front of two guys who, when we started rowing it from Argentina, were 21 or 22 years old, which means that we are not far from the top of the range of large companies ”, says DiStefano.

Despite having experienced the best commercial year and being on everyone's lips full of praise,

and Bloodious Games' work is not over yet.

It was recently announced, through the US

specialized video game medium , that Di Stefano's creation will venture into virtual reality through the PlayStation platform.

Though in the form of a survival horror nightmare, that fear-loving kid's dream is still flying high.

Subscribe here