Occupation Video game director Employer Climax Studios Role Video game director | Name Sam Barlow Years active 1999–present | |
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Awards The Game Award for Best Narrative Nominations The Game Award for Best Independent Game, The Game Award for Games For Change Video games Her Story, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Aisle, Silent Hill: Origins, Ghost Rider | ||
Sam Barlow is a British video game designer, best known as the writer and designer of Her Story and the two British Silent Hill games, Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. He previously worked as a game director at Climax Studios, before leaving in 2014 to become an indie game developer. He published his first independent game, Her Story, in June 2015.
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Interactive fiction
Barlow was active in the interactive fiction scene of the late 1990s, most notably releasing the game Aisle in 1999. It won the XYZZY Award for Best Use of Medium. Like his later Silent Hill games, Aisle features a psychologically damaged viewpoint character, a contemporary setting and a positive meaning at its heart.
Influences
Barlow frequently cites novelists and film directors as having influenced his work. He claims that Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel and J.G. Ballard influenced his work on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Both Silent Hill titles reference Shakespeare (Silent Hill: Origins features a performance of The Tempest, whilst Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has multiple references to Twelfth Night). He has also been inspired by David Lynch, Mark Z. Danielewski, Paul Auster, Shirely Jackson, The Exorcist and Gene Wolfe. Consistently his most frequently cited influence is Hitchcock, for example: "I bored everyone with Hitchcock and talking about his techniques and his ideas of suspense" and "Hitchcock said that all horror goes back to childhood, that's why it's a universal thing -- it's a fundamental". Barlow cites Cronenberg’s The Fly and Paul Schrader’s Cat People as showing how best to reboot an existing story.
Video games
Barlow has worked on at least nine titles since he joined the video game industry in 2002, seven of which have been released.