The late nineties and early noughties were an exciting time for technology, though they also brought fears and anxieties, as seen in the Y2K problem and the dot-com crash. It's this period, specifically the year 2002, that solo developer Frostwood Interactive's Armaan Sandhu explores in Shutter Story, an upcoming psychological horror game where you use technology to investigate the paranormal.
The best indie games often draw from pop culture, and inspirations for this game actually came from a more recent film, 2023's Late Night With The Devil, as Sandhu said he and a friend kept spotting unusual things hiding in the background, and that pausing and rewinding to find these anomalies already felt like playing a game. But what really solidified the idea was watching the 2001 Japanese film Pulse, a techno-horror in which ghosts move through devices and the Internet.
