PS4 horror game Daylight puts Twitch viewers in control of its scares

If you are a master of scares who knows how to shake the souls of mankind with fright, you will soon have a new platform to do your dark deeds.

Developer Zombie Studios revealed today that its upcoming survival-horror title Daylight will feature high levels of social-media integration. This doesn’t just mean sharing videos of the action or broadcasting to livestreaming sites like Twitch. Zombie is going much further by enabling audiences watching online to control the in-game scares.

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Daylight is a thriller that puts players in control of a woman who does not have access to any weapons. She must navigate her way through a maze-like hospital using only her mobile phone, which is also her only source of light. It is due out in April for PS4 and PC.

“With harrowing sound effects, random scares, and even 3D support, Daylight is already damn scary,” Sony social-media specialist Ryan Clements wrote in a blog. “And there’s nothing more horrifying than giving the internet the ability to frighten you, too.”

This is how it supposedly works: Viewers can type commands into a chat window. One example that Zombie cites is that players will hear a cat cry when audience members type “meow” into chat. The developer is setting up the system with timing elements to prevent people who spam “meow” over and over again from ruining the experience.

This concept of giving viewers control over a game is currently a hot topic thanks to the extremely popular livestreaming channel Twitch Plays Pokémon. This broadcast is currently enabling thousands of gamers to play a single instance of the original Pokémon Red role-playing title for Game Boy. It’s like a million monkeys banging away at a single typewriter.

Developers like Zombie are interested in using Twitch and other livestreaming sites like Ustream because of the popularity of those services among gamers. Twitch has over 1 million unique broadcasters and 45 million unique monthly viewers, and tapping into that huge audience can boost a game like Daylight’s profile considerably.