The titles that developer Supermassive Games has put out recently are campy horror games that blend slasher tropes with supernatural motifs. Until Dawn, The Quarry, and The Dark Pictures Anthology’s installments all express such a tone and atmosphere, making them highly digestible and entertaining to a wide variety of horror fans.
Supermassive continues developing installments in its anthology franchise, which features new characters in new circumstances each game. Its latest, House of Ashes, will now be followed by The Devil in Me, starring Jessie Buckley from A24’s Men. But while excitement for these games persists, one fan has devised a crossover concept for a game they would like to see from Supermassive that would take on a popular children’s cartoon and perhaps reimagine it to be much more horrifying as an interactive drama.
UI Artist Simon Brewer has recently shared an unofficial and entertaining crossover concept that actually pairs fairly well in terms of common themes and motifs between them. Brewer imagines a Scooby-Doo game developed by Supermassive Games, which is known for its highly cinematic storytelling, as well as gameplay that revolves entirely around QTEs and branching dialogue options. Supermassive’s most recent titles have all been oriented one way or another around some sort of supernatural occurrence with related mysteries to unfold, which is precisely Scooby-Doo’s premise.
Brewer’s concept features what would be the main menu screen of the game, which they title Scooby-Doo Last Bites: Death in the Parish. The menu is sparse with the Great Dane’s head looking solemnly upward, and an ominous-looking shack with a cross atop it sitting idly in the woods. Options in the menu allow the player to select from Episodes, a New Story, Status and Collectibles, Bonus Content, and Settings, with the player’s cursor aptly designed as a dog’s paw print.
This menu selection screen looks realistic and well-suited to Supermassive’s own design formula for horror games, and the skill in this design is likely due to Brewer’s role as a UI Artist. Brewer is currently an Expert UI Artist at Unbroken Studios, which is known to be developing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League alongside Rocksteady Studios. Brewer had also previously been a Lead UI Artist at Rocksteady on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League as well as Batman: Arkham Knight.
If the Scooby-Doo IP was to be made into a modern title today with the same graphical fidelity that fans expect from current-gen releases, Supermassive would likely be the perfect candidate to take it on. Even if it abandoned Supermassive's grisly tendencies for more of a campy atmosphere, Supermassive would surely create a fun iteration of Mystery Incorporated.