You will soon be able to play as Austin Abrams in this fan-made, retro-style video game adapting Zach Cregger’s take on the Resident Evil universe, complete with fixed camera angles and all.
An indie game developer who goes by the name “chicanogoth” on Instagram is going viral after sharing their progress for their video game adaptation… of a movie adaptation… of a game. It’s a Matryoshka doll-style line of thinking that the developer referenced in their viral video, jokingly calling it Resident Evil: The Movie: The Game.
Warning: Light spoilers for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie to follow.
Their footage shows the player character, Bryan Hodukavich, running from an infected Doberman Pinscher in a fairly close recreation of a scene from the film. The dev even included a crashed police cruiser, whose blue and red lights flash on the white snow underfoot as Abrams’ video game counterpart flees from the dog.
What’s endearing players to this project is how it manages to recreate the feel of the original Resident Evil titles; it’s got fixed camera angles and a slightly polygonal art style, giving it that nostalgic look and gameplay that made the first few games so special.
Some commenters are begging the developer to somehow include Bryan’s horrible aim into the combat (which would be super cute), while others are already asking if they need any voiceover talent.
Chicanogoth shared another update on October 19, where he showed off a few death and injury animations for poor Bryan, most of which were pulled from various animation libraries. They also revealed that they took inspiration from the Cerberus model in Resident Evil 2 for their infected dog, and later teased a cinematic opening sequence that seemingly includes the aftermath of the police car crash.
“This has been a fun project to work on and I’m adding things little by little! This is the first game I’ve actually spent time on developing, and it’s been a learning process. Thank you all for your interest and encouragement to work on this project I primarily wanted for myself haha. More to come!” they wrote.
This is the latest Resident Evil fan project to go viral after Chandler Riggs, best known for playing Carl Grimes on The Walking Dead, debuted his own short film adapting Resident Evil 7: Biohazard earlier this month. The project even earned recognition from Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi, who shared it on social media with the caption, “WOW.”
While the possibility of a sequel for Cregger’s RE movie is still up in the air, there’s no questioning its success at the box office; it surpassed $360 million worldwide and now stands as the 10th most successful video game movie ever made, out-earning Cregger’s previous films, Weapons and Barbarian, combined.