If you have regularly browsed gaming videos on YouTube for a while now, then you have undoubtedly heard of the “Game Grumps.” This comedy duo, which consists of former animator Arin Hanson and charismatic musician Dan Avidan, has spent nearly a decade playing video games and making all sorts of jokes for viewers’ entertainment. The team at Game Grumps released its own game titled Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator back in 2017. And it turned out surprisingly well, as critics praised its humor as well as its LGBT representation. Now, it looks like the Game Grumps team has more gaming projects up its sleeve, as it’s collaborating with publisher Rogue Games to produce Homebody, a psychological horror title.
According to a press release, Homebody focuses heavily on its narrative, which sees protagonist Emily discovering details about her past. To do this, she must solve the usual puzzles as well as make impactful dialogue choices, all while fleeing from a killer who harkens back to 1980s slasher movies.
From comedy to horror
Although Homebody represents quite the departure from Dream Daddy on a surface level, Game Director Jory Griffis referred to it as “a natural shift.” Since Dream Daddy also featured a storytelling focus and branching dialogue options, translating those into a completely different style of game apparently proved more than feasible for the Game Grumps team.
“We’re obsessed with horror games, so when coming off of Dream Daddy, it was a natural shift to explore the horror genre,” Griffis said via press release. “We were excited to retain the narrative and storytelling values we learned making Dream Daddy and put them to use in a game with a totally different tone and ambitious new mechanics.”
Even so, if someone told me years ago that the Game Grumps would go on to develop a psychological horror game like Homebody, I likely would have hesitated to believe them. But since the developers at Game Grumps have already proven themselves with Dream Daddy, there is no real reason to say that they shouldn’t tackle a project like this. Hopefully, the developers will be able to surpass expectations yet again.
