Allogloom is an upcoming New Zealand-made game from studio Galactic Ghosty that seems perfect for the ‘weird’ girls – the ones who love the strange, gothic and macabre, the vibes and aesthetic of gothic horror fiction, or the whimsy of dark fairytales.
The point-and-click adventure game will be heading to release shortly and is set for a major announcement during the next Frosty Games Fest later this month. But as developer Kate tells ScreenHub, Allogloom‘s journey started with a love for all things creepy.
‘I love illustrated storybooks, so I wanted to make a game that looked like an illustrated storybook,’ she says. ‘But I also love creepy things. Absolutely love them. I wanted to do a mix of the creepy and cute vibes.’
Allogloom developer interview – quick links
The art and creation of Allogloom
Allogloom was also heavily inspired by a childhood playing point-and-click adventure games, most notably, the Humongous Games catalogue.
‘I love point and click adventure games. Games I played as a child, like Pajama Sam. I liked that style of gameplay, and just that it looks like you’re playing through an animated storybook.’
Fellow gothic game adventures Fran Bow and Sally Face were also core inspirations. Playing these games in her 20s inspired Kate to branch out from her core discipline of traditional art, which included some digital art and animation, to explore game development as a medium for storytelling.
‘I decided I really wanted to make a video game [around 2019] and so I just figured out how I could do that and starting making it [between jobs],’ she says.
YouTube was a key tool for learning new skills in animation and coding. Heavy research into the minutiae via Google and Subreddits set her on the right path, and allowed the ideas of Allogloom to take a more tangible form.
‘When I first started doing the game, I wasn’t good at digital drawing,’ she says. ‘So, I had to learn how to draw digitally, and I chose to focus on more illustration. My influence in particular was a lot of art nouveau styles – architecture and illustration.’
You can see this style throughout Allogloom, whether on the wallpaper of its many puzzle-filled rooms, or in the architecture of houses in Gruesome Grove, or even in the character designs. It gives the adventure a timeless feel and a sense that it could be happening anywhere, in any time.
Weaving a web of puzzles
What also stands out about Alloogloom, beyond its unique and lushly-detailed art style, is its mix of point-and-click puzzles. There’s a clear logic flow, with protagonist Nora being a clever and resourceful adventurer, whose curiosity pushes the plot forward.
The hardest part of developing the game was actually refining these puzzles to establish a solid mix of challenges, without any of the puzzles becoming too obscure.
‘It’s a lot of playtesting – heaps of playtesting – because I’m doing more casual puzzles, and I don’t want it to be really, really hard. I want you, the player, to be able to figure it out from within the game, and not have to go look for anything on the internet.’
‘I designed the puzzles around the narrative of the game. I want it to feel more like the story is flowing with the puzzles, than the puzzles driving the story.’
As Kate tells ScreenHub, going through the playtesting has been a fascinating process because it’s allowed her to see how others approach the puzzles, and to see where there might be gaps in obvious next steps.
‘There’ll be some people who instantly click with the puzzle. They’ll immediately know what to do,’ she says. ‘Then with other people, it would be the same puzzle, and they just can’t figure it out … Finding that balance in between, making both of those players not feel discouraged or like it’s too easy, that’s been the hardest thing.’
An additional challenge is that Allogloom is being developed solo. While there’s support from friends and family, for Kate, it’s meant needing to be sharp and precise while working, and also corralling strong creative choices led by her own direction and determination.
‘When you’re solo, you have to do everything. The hardest thing is learning what to prioritise [and] where to prioritise your skills.’
She adds, ‘At the beginning, I went over everything that I thought I needed to make a game … I picked a point-and-click adventure, because I was like, “OK, that looks like something that I could make on my own.” Then it was, “So what would make it good?” So I picked illustration as a skill to invest in.’
She also focused on developing her skills in puzzle creation and narrative, with coding and animation as other, equally important skills to learn.
‘Learning how to balance your skills and prioritise your skills is definitely tricky, because you don’t always get it right, and sometimes you spend too much time on one thing, when you should’ve spent more time on another thing.’
‘You only learn that afterwards.’
Striking the right balance of cuteness and horror
As a solo developer, Kate is guided by her own instincts and preferences. With Allogloom, a game aiming to be both cute and horrifying, that’s meant a need to lean on the expertise and opinions of playtesters and those closest to her.
‘I definitely do have to balance it,’ she says. ‘I usually ask my playtesters about whether or not it feels like an appropriate level of gore or horror.’
‘I would say my style leans into dread – you’re plunked into this grove, and everything is normal for the people in it, but the player is very aware that it’s very weird.’
She adds that the horror is just part of the daily lives of the characters but it’s also a bit cartoonish.
‘I didn’t want it to be too graphic.’
The demo for Allogloom, now available via Steam, displays this wonderful sense of balance. As you’d expect of a game like this, there are elements of horror and gore in the early puzzles available in the demo, but the game’s bright, illustrative art style means the horror is abstracted and made to feel more approachable.
The game is not specifically about horrifying audiences. Rather, it tells a dark, macabre story with horror as an artful and creative inspiration point. At its core, it remains a story about a young girl finding her way in a strange and sprawling world.
With Allogloom heading to release imminently, it’s this sense of adventure and exploration that the Galactic Ghosty developer hopes will resonate the most with audiences – but at the end of the road, she’s also just happy and proud that she’s seen the game through, and that players will soon be able to get hands-on.
‘The project has already achieved so much more than I could’ve hoped,’ she says. ‘I didn’t expect the amount of wishlists or the awards it’s gotten, for my first game!’
‘I just really want people to enjoy this one-off story experience … It’ll be a little creepy, but [hopefully] it’ll also make them laugh. I just want to make something that really engrosses people, and they just have a really good experience playing through a little story. I just want people to have fun.’
Allogloom will next appear during Frosty Games Fest 2026, with a major announcement.
