How ILL is Merging 90s Body Horror With Modern Horror Atmosphere

Horror has been one of the most popular and enduring genres in fiction since its inception back in the 18th century. Like any genre that’s been around for centuries, horror has spawned a wealth of subgenres, ranging from psychological to gothic to paranormal horror and a plethora in between. Team Clout’s ILL is drawing inspiration from a variety of these tried and tested subgenres.

Revealed in its very early concept stages back in September 2021, ILL has now officially entered full production, and its developers are finally able to shed more light on what they’re hoping the final product will look like. Game Rant recently spoke with Team Clout co-founder Maxim Verehin about the team’s biggest inspirations and how ILL is merging the body horror of the 1990s with the more modern psychological horror atmosphere of recent video games.

How ILL Embraces Its 1990s Horror Inspirations

Though they were early concept trailers and not designed to be fully representative of the final product, ILL’s first few teasers established a strong basis for the game’s identity all those years ago. However, since those initial trailers, ILL has refined its sense of self. According to Maxim Verehin:

“ILL is an action-packed survival horror inspired by horror movies of the early 1990s, the brutal ones.”

Though Verehin himself didn’t name any specific 90s horror movies that Team Clout is using as inspiration, it seems very likely that body horror movies like Body Snatchers and the Hellraiser series are at the top of the team’s list of influences, given the brutal nature of their horror content. That said, it isn’t just ’90s body horror movies that Team Clout is using as reference material:

“We love all kinds of horror, not just body horror. We’re trying to implement different genres of horror into ILL. But we’re putting a lot of effort into making the body horror in ILL really striking. Inspirations for that come from old horror movies where they relied on showing the exact threat, what the monsters do to the people and how horrible it can be.”

ILL’s ‘Visceral Dismemberment’ System Puts Body Horror Front and Center

Having these inspirations is all well and good, but it’s how a developer uses them that matters. Thankfully, Team Clout is using its body horror inspirations to form the basis of its novel “Visceral Dismemberment” system, which Verehin describes as:

“You shoot a limb. This limb flies away. There’s a lot of blood and a lot of detail. We’re trying to push the details in the dismemberment system. I don’t know if you remember some of the older games where, as a kid, you would kill an enemy and try to test how the enemy could be dismembered. You’d try to knife it or hit it with an axe. In ILL, we want to push that same feeling you had as a kid when you were interested in whether the developer put thought and effort into that.”

While gory and complex dismemberment systems have been done before in franchises like Dead Space, it sounds like ILL’s Visceral Dismemberment system is taking center stage in its gameplay. This system should go hand-in-hand with its dynamic enemy behavior, which will apparently see monsters reacting to the player’s actions in a realistic manner. For instance, shooting an enemy’s limb off will cause it to scream out in pain, firmly cementing the game’s deeply realistic tone and enhancing its body horror elements.

How ILL is Exploring Its More Modern Inspirations

On top of 1990s horror movies, Team Clout has taken inspiration from some much more recent pieces of horror media:

“We are big fans of the Resident Evil series, especially Resident Evil 7 for its atmosphere and how scary it was. In terms of more terrifying experiences, we’re inspired by the early games in the Silent Hill series and Hideo Kojima’s P.T., of course.”

While ILL’s enemy design and gameplay mechanics might lean more into the over-the-top body horror of the ’90s, its moment-to-moment atmosphere will channel the likes of P.T., Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. This means that fans can probably expect a gradual build of tension during ILL’s opening hour, followed by some truly disturbing scares designed to shake the player’s psyche to its very core.

ILL is currently in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.