EXCLUSIVE - Weforge Studio on Macabre’s systemic balance, horror inspirations, and Kickstarter success
Soiling ones knicks.
By Jonathan Garrett
16/09/25
Interview with Jay Tipping (Co-founder, Weforge Studio)
Macabre is every bit the blended extraction horror shooter of your wildest indie dreams. A game unafraid to prioritise sustained systemic tension over a curated set piece. A title anchored by its core mechanics of co-operative panic and last ditch attempts to succeed. As a Kickstarted effort, it remains a runaway success after smashing its initial funding goal and pushing ahead with numerous additions.
Deeper A.I. behaviour, additional creature and location designs, and even roaming wildlife (blissfully unaware of the horrors lurking in the snow) are among the many tweaks that Weforge have been afforded the opportunity to pursue. As we round the corner to an official Early Access launch on 29th September 2025 , we spoke with co-founder Jay Tipping who generously shared his perspective on everything from managing development scope, to playtesting surprises and creatives influences.
Achieving balance in a game so fundamentally built on systemic and reactive mechanics must be tricky. How do you ensure that you find the fun without being too punishing to players?
That’s a tough one. I think our egos lead us to believe we could take on a hyper intelligent being that adapts and learns. The reality is you have to dumb it down a fair bit before it actually becomes fun. With an adaptive, emergent monster like Macabre, the only way to dial this in is through lots and lots of testing. From there we gather feedback, conduct interviews with players, and distil what is and isn’t working so we can iterate by tweaking behaviours or adding new ones.
This was a huge focus for our recent Steam Next Fest demo, where more than 45,000 people played. The volume of data and feedback we collected allowed us to refine the experience significantly. It is something we will continue all the way through Early Access until we strike the sweet spot: the ultimate, but still fun, killing machine.
Is there a specific sub genre of horror or thriller that you're drawing from that inspired Macabre's design?
We draw heavily from stealth horror and survival thrillers. Films like Alien and games like Hunt: Showdown and Alien: Isolation shaped our thinking, especially in how they build dread through unpredictability and atmosphere.
Our biggest inspiration is the idea of being hunted by something you cannot fully understand, and how that pressure changes the way players cooperate (or betray each other).
We also take cues from dark comedy. Films like Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz show how humour and horror can play off one another to create a natural ebb and flow. A funny or absurd moment gives players a layer of levity, which in turn makes the scary moments land with much greater intensity. That rhythm of relief and dread is something we try to capture in Macabre.
This guy brought a plunger to a monster fight.
Has there been an aspect from any internal playtesting where players did something that genuinely surprised you?
Constantly. Players always find ways to push or break systems. One example is how players began luring the Crawler onto their friends. At first, it was hilarious chaos, but it gave them a little too much control over the monster. We had to build systems that redirected its attention back onto the betrayer so it still felt dangerous and alive.
Those kinds of nuances are what make the monster feel truly emergent. By watching and listening to our players, we keep shaping Macabre into something smarter and more unpredictable.
One of the challenges facing developers using Kickstarter is the risk that projects can balloon in scope beyond their intended size. What approach do you take as a developer to ensure your games don't become too ambitious to deliver?
It is easy to get caught up in “what if we also added X.” The odd feature creep idea does sneak in, but we are disciplined about checking everything against our core gameplay pillars. If it does not serve tension, survival, or extraction, it does not make the cut. If it does, we decide whether it fits within scope, or whether something else needs to be simplified or replaced.
Kickstarter gave us the resources to go full time, but it also came with responsibility. We set stretch goals that added depth rather than bloating scope, and we would always rather ship something polished and replayable than chase endless features.
Is Macabre really just an angry, mutated Gorn from Star Trek: The Original Series?
If you squint hard enough, maybe. In truth, Macabre is something much larger. While it currently takes the form of the Crawler, Macabre is not just one creature. It is an enigma that embodies evil, death and dread. It can take many forms, some of which we are excited to reveal in future Early Access updates.
A huge thank you to Jay Tipping and the team at Weforge Studio.
Macabre launches into Early Access on 29th September 2025. You can wishlist on Steam right here.
I will rapidly betray my team mates in order to escape with my life.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
