How Aussie devs turned renting into a horror game

A Sydney-based developer has talked about a new game that takes the rental experience and turns it into a comedy horror game - and your story could be in it.

Sydney-based game developer Fuzzy Ghost has shared more information about a new game that turns the rental experience into a comedy horror, and they want your rental horror stories.

Janet DeMornay is a Slumlord (and a witch) (JDM) is a comedy horror game that pulls on the developer’s real experiences renting in Sydney’s inner west. The game has players solving puzzles in their apartment while their landlord, the supernatural witch Janet DeMornay, becomes increasingly hostile and menacing.

Fuzzy Ghost was formed during the Covid lockdowns, when Pete Foley and Scott Ford, who between them have 15 years of experience in the animation industry, decided they wanted to do something new. The overwhelmingly positive response to the duo’s early games “stunned” the developers, and JDM has already excited many who’ve seen it.

Scott Ford and Pete Foley of game development duo Fuzzy Ghost started making games during Covid lockdowns.

In a somewhat unique twist for game development, Fuzzy Ghost is soliciting rental horror stories from the public to flesh out the game’s experience. Using the hashtag #renterhorror and a submission form on the game’s website, people who submit stories that get included as case files in the game will receive a free copy of the game upon release.

Fuzzy Ghost’s Pete Foley and Scott Ford sat down with GLHF to talk about the game for news.com.au, and told us that it was an easy decision to tell a story about renters’ plights.

“We’re really about galvanising people like us who are going through the same things as us or have in the past, it’s a very shared common experience,” Foley said, “Making people recognise that it doesn’t have to be like this and it hasn’t always been like this”.

“We’re bringing this up because it’s something that needs to be discussed constantly, and renters deserve to know that they don’t need to be second class citizens to the homeowners”.

Janet DeMornay is a Slumlord is a comedy horror about renting. Picture: Fuzzy Ghost

Soliciting stories from the public was Ford’s idea, and came from sharing the pitch of the game with friends who would often share their own stories of terrible renting experiences and landlords.

“When we were describing the games, people would just start sharing their own horror stories,” Ford says, “It was so much fun and horror, all those good things, and I really wanted to include them”.

While the game is inspired by the rental experiences of Australians, Fuzzy Ghost says that the housing crisis is not a uniquely Australian problem. That said, they described the Australian housing market as “particularly deranged”, particularly when it comes to the prevalence of share housing.

Janet DeMornay is a Slumlord will have players solving environmental puzzles while an increasingly hostile landlord tries to interfere. Picture: Fuzzy Ghost

Another aspect that was important to Fuzzy Ghost was telling the story from a queer perspective. Like their previous game, the award-winning Queer Man Peering Into a Rock Pool.jpg, JDM is very much inspired by the developers’ own queer experiences.

“I think it comes into renting as well. Often a politician will come out and say ‘Well if it’s too expensive in the city, move to the country’,” Foley says, “You can try as a queer person, but I wouldn’t be comfortable doing it. Queer people can be particularly vulnerable when it comes to housing”.

GLHF would like to thank Fuzzy Ghost for taking the time to talk to us. Janet DeMornay is a Slumlord (and a witch) is due to launch later this year, and players can submit their own stories today.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.