We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hayes Geldmacher a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hayes, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Hayes Geldmacher, and I am hopelessly in love with making horror games. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by that dark pit in your gut, the one that only forms when the lights are off and the corners of your bedroom loom large in the dark. I first began making games as a clueless high schooler, watching coding tutorials and drawing level maps in my history textbook in a clumsy attempt to create experiences that captured the way It felt to be truly scared.

Now I’m 21, a college student soon to graduate with a dual bachelor’s in both English and Game Design from the University of Utah. I have spent the last 5 years in wholehearted dedication to my creative pursuits, becoming comfortable with the various tools and skills needed to re-create the nightmares of my youth. I am a published games critic at unwinnable.com, an independent developer at itch.io, and the head engineering officer for the Gamecraft Club at the University of Utah. I passionately work to marry these unique disciplines as a technical game designer in the pursuit of creating experiences that terrify and invigorate others the way so many horror games have terrified and invigorated me. I am particularly interested in creating narrative horror experiences that function as tools for empathy and reflection, allowing players to consider their relationships to bodies and spaces more closely.

I am currently hard at work creating a first-person photography horror game titled Ritual Static, which tasks players with using a digital camera to explore their childhood home the night before a big move. Players must take pictures to cement their memories during the dreaming day and waking night as they wander through labyrinths of hostile domesticity. The game is inspired by classics of surrealist horror, such as House of Leaves and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, as well as philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s 1968 essay “Structures of Interior Design”. Ritual Static is slated to release on Steam later this year, and has a free 20-minute demo available on my itch.io page.

Alongside my independent development, I work as a freelance techincal game designer for clients creating games in the Unity engine. With years of experience designing dynamic levels, writing gameplay code in C#, and rigging complex 3D models in Blender and Maya, I am always eager to assist with your game development needs!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I would describe my creative mission as a sincere desire to translate my personal dreams, fears, and worldview into systems, rules, and experiences that meaningfully speak to other people. Games are most interesting when they function as empathy machines, allowing a creator to share their heart’s contents with a player whom they might otherwise have never met.

I first recognized the unique communicative power of games when I was 12 years old, playing the infamous short horror title P.T. Throughout the whole time playing this domestic nightmare, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was getting a glimpse at my own home. I remember walking its damned hallways and noting how similar they hewed to the hallway just outside my bedroom. I remember the dread I felt first laying eyes on a figure standing slackjawed in a parlor that I had walked through countless times, the pure shot of fear in my veins when it noticed me, how small and powerless I had become in a place I assumed to be safe. Most of all, I remember the strange sense of catharsis that washed over me upon finishing the game. It felt like someone was allowing me to view my own life from a never-before-seen angle, one simultaneously terrifying and thrilling.

By traversing those hallways in a simulation, it somehow made it easier to walk through them in real life, to not be so damn afraid of the dark. It was as though I had talked with the developers of the game, like they were holding my hand and walking me through my house, and in the process making it feel less alien. I want to create games that do the same thing for others – to take them by the hand and give them the particular reassurance that nightmares are a shared activity.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I often hear a sentiment along the lines of “I sure wish I could create art like that, but I’m just not a creative person”, and with each utterance I can’t help but physiclly recoil in disappointment. Many people assume that the creation of art needs to be a grand and sacred process in which an artists gives form to a work of pure inspirative genius, but this could not be further from the truth. Art is communication, it’s iterative and collaborative and can come from anywhere. My recommendation to those folks who don’t believe they have an important message to share or theme to explore is that they just pick some aspect of their existence and attempt to represent it through a physical medium. Write about your day, sketch a picture of the weird dream you had, take photographs of interesting buildings you see on the street. Share your works with the people around you, expose yourself to new ideas and ways of seeing the world through through books and movies and the natural world. The creation of art is not a privileged activity – it’s the most natural thing in the world, nourishing the soul just as water nourishes the body.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hayesgeldmacher.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayes-geldmacher-2837b21b9/
• Twitter: https://x.com/HayesGeldmacher
• Other: Store page for Ritual Static: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3000370/Ritual_Static/?curator_clanid=45444111