Whatever we couldn’t film or write, we asked for permission from other creators to use their work and incorporate it in the game, like the creepy videos and some of the filler texts. We decided to focus more on creating game mechanics while we sought the help of a writing team to flesh out the narrative and film the in-game videos. A non-linear story of exploring a phone excited us, but having no writing experiences, we settled on a linear one instead. We used an obscure Japanese urban legend called the Red Room as a base for the story and built the rest from there, where the titular character Sara gets caught up in a technology-based supernatural event. We knew we wanted to make a horror game so that YouTubers would pick it up, but we didn’t know what would be the best way to do it. The story was particularly challenging, as none of us is a trained writer. Only messages and IRIS were interactive, the rest of the apps are just for aesthetics. Just enough to make a game out of it and prove the concept. We added filler features like a gallery, emails and music player to give the characters more personality. A chat app for players to make narrative decisions and learn about the characters, and a phone assistant (like Siri or Google Assistant) to guide the players along the way. So we went just for the core features and shelved the rest. We were strapped for resources at that time and couldn’t bear the risk of making these features and failing. We want to fully simulate a phone, with chats, galleries, call features along with popular apps like Tinder, Uber, a web browser and a music player. We had no point of reference and pretty much had to come up with everything from scratch.

While “phone simulator” games are starting to become a genre of its own as of the time of writing, we didn’t have much to start with during the early months of development.

Best mobile game Indie Prize Singapore 2017. A few days of brainstorming - and we settled on the idea of a found phone horror game called S.I.M - Sara Is Missing and started working on the demo. However, after some discussions, we were serious about the possibility of it happening. I said “jokingly” because the logistics of filming with live actors and designing a game where you replicate an entire phone in form and functions feels like a huge undertaking for us at that time. A game set in a phone, like Replica, combined with the mystery theme and realism of Her Story. Thirsty for a new project, I jokingly pitched a game concept that was as far away from casual as possible.

When I met my partners, we were all burnt out of making casual games mostly for other people.

Sara is missing gamejolt