A Brazilian solo dev is trying something different for his next horror game: making it funny

Fernando Tittz was working as a personal trainer. Now he's making games about interactive body horror.

The Lacerator. Screenshot: Gams from the Abyss

When many people think about horror games, they may think of something creepy that gets their heart racing. But horror can be more than just an experience that leaves you scared or uneasy.

Sometimes horror can be funny.

The Lacerator, an upcoming survival horror game, shows its comedic side in its trailer as it introduces the main character, Max: The Man Who Loves Sex.

There’s even a joke before that, in the form of an advisory to potential players that lets them know this game is going to contain the best (or is that the worst?) elements of classic horror games such as Resident Evil: “Warning: this game contains scenes of violence and gore… and tank controls.”

Back to Max. After being kidnapped by a murderer, the Man Who Loves Sex has to escape from a dank underground compound. The murderer, dubbed the Lacerator, is ruthless enough to dismember Max (which is not necessarily a game over). In a nod to the movie Evil Dead, the game can replace one of Max’s limbs with a shotgun. The Lacerator’s ending, which is still in the works, may even feature Max giving a motivational one liner, which is meant to fall flat given the subject and circumstances. The player will see it and say “‘I’m not very motivated by that.’ or something kind of cringe”, the game’s developer, Fernando Tittz, said in an interview earlier this year.

Fernando is a full-fledged solo dev who previously worked as a personal trainer. The longtime gamer grew up in Brazil not knowing how games were made, nor if he’d ever get the chance to make his own.

“Since I was a child, I had kind of a dream of making video games,” he said. “But I didn’t think it was possible. I thought it was very hard.

“We usually know how movies were made, and music. We have actors and the camera, musicians in a band, but I never knew how a game was made.”

Yet, Fernando’s dream of becoming a game developer wouldn’t die easily.

Fernando Tittz’ debut game, Taxidermy, used a scratchy VHS visual style. Screenshot: Games from the Abyss

Fernando got his start in game development around 2016, after a minor injury left him with a lot of free time.

“I usually played basketball,” he said. “While I was playing, I broke my finger, my left thumb. Then I couldn’t practice sports [or] anything else. So, in the time that I spent at home, I got to open RPG Maker, and I made my first tiny game there, just having fun. I thought it was pretty cool. Then I was like ‘Whoa, okay I’m getting started on something here… Eventually I started working in my free time on games, and I realized that this is what I always wanted.”

Finally getting the chance to explore his passion, Fernando developed his first game, Taxidermy, in 2019, followed by 2021’s exorcism adventure Devil Inside Us. He released a third, Death Elevator, in 2023.

Most of his games, which he develops under the studio name Games from the Abyss, use retro visual styles. Some have low-poly graphics and VHS-style effects, which take a huge weight off the back of a solo dev like himself.

“It’s a mix of aesthetic choice and development choice, in the sense that it's easier to get the mood and get things right when you do things in lower fidelity,” Fernando said.

"Let’s say, for example, you’re playing a triple-A game and you shoot an enemy, and he clips through the wall. That’s probably unacceptable. But if you’re playing a retro thing, that’s kind of normal. And this is the kind of problem that is boring for me to solve as a game developer, so I prefer to have them clip through the walls and have fun developing the game.”

Fernando’s games are inspired by things he enjoys in everyday media, especially trashy horror movies. They have heavily influenced The Lacerator.

“I believe that we create something related to stuff we like from our lives,” he said, explaining The Lacerator’s roots. “The most evident inspiration is probably Resident Evil 2 & 3,” he said, referring to Capcom’s classic horror series. But the Lacerator is also inspired by grindhouse movies, including 2007’s Planet Terror, which features a go-go dancer with a machine gun for a leg.

“I really enjoy going on YouTube and searching [for] the ‘Worst Movie Ever,’ or the ‘Worst Acting Ever,’ ‘Worst Fight Scene Ever,’ and those are the influences I had for the Lacerator. For example, I love that video of the Worst Death Scene Ever where the guy gets shot and he screams for a minute. These aren’t, like, the specific movies, but the feeling of these kinds of scenes. So, the mix of trashy movies and survival horror, that’s pretty much where the inspiration comes from.”

From starting out as a personal trainer to making horror games that can be scary and amusing, Fernando Tittz is a man of many talents. And he’s hopeful he can keep building his gaming career.

Sales of the game have been decent, he said.

“The games are selling a good amount, but not a good amount so I can live only by them,” he said.

For The Lacerator, he’s gotten a boost from the backing of a publisher, Dread XP.

“I’m really grateful for having the publisher funding The Lacerator, because otherwise I would probably be [making it] in my free time, like I was doing before.

It helps, he said, to be making games in his part of the world.

“As I live in Brazil and the dollar is at a high point now, I think I’m having a good time.”

Ronald Gordon is a New York Videogame Critics Circle member and mentor and one of the circle’s first writers. He’s also a former intern for Rockstar Games.