Supermassive Games, the mastermind behind the indie horror survival games Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, released their newest installment, House of Ashes, which stars Ashley Tisdale.
Tisdale plays CIA officer Rachel King, who is trapped underground and must escape a hoard of bloodthirsty vampire-like creatures. Rachel’s survival is dependent on the decisions players make during gameplay.
Tisdale, who is not a “huge horror film person,” tells ABC Audio what interested her in starring in a game meant to scare people.
“It looks like a cinematic movie. It’s beautiful,” she raved, adding she wanted to give it a shot because it was “something different and fun. And it was wild!”
Part of Supermassive’s charm is modeling the characters and their mannerisms off the voice actors, but Ashley explained she didn’t put on the motion capture suit or physically act out a scene in order to bring Rachel to life.
“It’s weirdly like a voiceover,” the High School Musical star described, saying it reminded her of working in animation. “If you were acting in a movie, you would be in the scene. You would see those things [you need to interact with,] but you don’t see those things. You are reacting in a studio… You have this camera on your face and you have to pretend everything is around you.”
Now that Tisdale has cut her teeth on her first scary project, it begs to question if she will consider starring in future thrillers.
“I love scary movies around Halloween, but I’ve never had this feeling of like, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to act in a scary movie!’ So probably not,” she laughed. “I don’t know if I’ll keep going in that area.”
House of Ashes is available to play on Windows, PlayStation and Xbox devices.
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
