Midway into development of the newly released horror game Still Wakes The Deep, developer The Chinese Room gambled and decided to switch from developing using Unreal Engine 4 and moved to Unreal Engine 5 . It's a move that paid off. You can read my Still Wakes The Deep review to discover just how well this roll of the dice turned out (hint: it's fantastic) but getting there was a creative journey worth exploring.
Ahead of the game's release I sat down with associate art director Laura Dodds and principal environment artist Dominique Buttiens to dig into what went into bringing this gory, grotesque but beautiful and exotic horror game to life. The blend of 1970s period detail with an isolating oil rig setting, cosmic body horror and the detail Unreal Engine 5.3 (specifically) delivers is like nothing else.
