Developed by Heart Machine and published by Devolver Digital, Possessor(s) is me-coded (as the kids would say). Vibrantly colored, hauntingly unique, and set to focus on telling a story about relationships, the demo alone immediately made it one of my most anticipated games after Summer Game Fest Play Days. We spoke with the Possessors developers about the game, anime, and all the terrible experiences that inspired the game.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Heart Machine title, Possessors is a side-scrolling action game that matches its beauty with its narrative. Fast-paced at all points, you play as Luca, a girl who survives thanks to the intrusive demon who has asked to share her body.
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An interdimensional disaster ripped her world apart, and Rhem is the only one holding her together, literally. The two are as unhealthy and uncooperative as can be, but together they navigate a quarantined city, and their survival hinges on learning to co-exist. As you platform across a sprawling and damaged mega-city, Possessors uses a mixture of beautiful 3D environments and 2D character art, which have been hand-drawn.
It’s the beauty of the character art that sparked my conversation with Myriame Lachapelle, Producer at Heart Machine, and Tyler Hutchison, Narrative Director. After defining Possessors as a “search action” action game, Lachapelle explained that the beautiful characters (read: hot) were all intentional.
Possessors asks the question, “If evil, why hot?”
“[Possessors is a ] 2.5 D game, so all of our sprite animations are tuned and drawn by our animators, Ace and Ivan, they’re very talented. And our 3D environment artists are also just super super good at your job. The mix of 2D and 3D is just what I’m trying to fit for this platforming game. In terms of the demon, [Rhem], well, the more you play the game, the more you learn about how it’s mainly about relationships and friendship and how to break codependency and sometimes abusive situations. Both Luca and Rhem have a difficult friendship, a difficult romance,” Lachapelle explained.
“It’s like damage from those things, and together they can learn to break those cycles,” she continued, “So at the beginning —you see a little bit in the demo— after you beat the first boss, Luca, immediately says ‘I’m so so sorry. I’m so so sorry,’ and Rhem is just like, ‘No, no, you did good actually.’ Then, she’s surprised, like, oh, you’re giving me a compliment? You’ve been rude the whole time!? The more you play, and the more they cohabitate the same body and the same mind, they learn about each other. And you have to ask if they are going to be a friend at the end, or who knows.”
After mapping out the relationship dynamic, Lachapelle answered the “if evil, why hot” of the question, and it was simple. “Rhem’s hottness and other characters’ [hottness] in the game is like very intentional, as Alex would say, because when hot, they’re for sure not bad. It’s very intentional.” We then discussed the fashion goals of the game’s characters, and ultimately, Lachapelle could only tease about their attractiveness in order not to give away any spoilers. Telling us that we would have to wait until the game releases to see why it was an intentional choice.
Myriame Lachapelle’s teasing of the larger narrative beats of the game was something I latched onto. In Possessors, you choose one of multiple paths in an open-ended world structure as you work to uncover the truth behind the catastrophe. All while meeting new characters and learning their heartbreak, too. Relationships have always been fertile ground for horror stories, for demons. Possessors capture that.
“The more you play [Possessors], the more you learn about how it’s mainly about relationships and friendship, and how to break codependency and sometimes abusive situations.”
From Midsommar to Sister Midnight, The Invisible Man, and Together, and of course others I didn’t mention, relationships, boundaries, and how we let people treat us have captivated our generation. Hear Machine’s codependence story embodies that as well. When I asked about the intimate place horror takes in relation to Possessors, Narrative Director Tyler Hutchison explained, “Often horror is looking at some sort of internal anxiety or trauma and extrapolating that to be an external force, well, like what you know, this is every Res for film.”
He continued, “[Possessors] is all modern heartbreak, a lot of healed stuff as well as all dealing in sort of these internal terrors, and then saying, ‘But what if it was a monster?’ I think it was more just that we love the [horror] and we started trying to think about what are cool things to see and what it would really mean if you were living in a city where [Demons possessed you]? What kind of problems would that cause?”
“I think we had already started writing a story about two teenagers who were friends, but maybe you have that one friend who’s not really nice to you. It just grew into being like, oh, this is a story about codependency, and this is ultimately, what is a bigger representation of that than having a literal demon that you have to rely on to be alive, who also has to rely on you,” Hutchinson ended, pulling Possessor into focus as a horror-inspired story.
But like every good horror story, there is an intimacy and personal touch to it. One of my favorite questions to ask any creative, developer, filmmaker, and the like is what they learned as they worked on a project. Usually, when I ask this question, a small bit of dread sets in, and while that happened here, Hutchinson also had humor.
Possessors is a little bit of anime and a whole lot of internal exploration.
Hutchinson answered with a bit of light sarcasm, “You know, we wrote a story where our characters got to recognize where everything went wrong. I learned all the errors of my ways and became a pure and a perfect human who has no problems,” he laughed before finishing. “No, I mean I don’t know. Ultimately, I think for the most part, it is a form of Catharsis.”
Tyler Hutchison passed the question to Lachapelle, and she picked it up with vulnerability, “I’m sorry, I [think] maybe I’m oversharing right now, but I feel like I can relate a lot with Rhem. I have been on the other side of having friends, taking advantage of me, or ex-partners who were not really nice to me.”
Lachapelle continued, “I don’t want to spoil too much of the game either, but seeing those two characters’ trauma bonding and like learning that the ways that they were seeing a relationship in your friendship or loving relationship were not good, or healthy. [Possessors] also reflects me, seeing in my past. I am on my own journey as [Luca and Rhem] are throughout the game, and I think it’s going to resonate with a lot of people.”
As much as Possessors offers a vibrantly colored world with hot characters, and fast gameplay, Heart Machine is also reaching for something that connects to them and the players. Hutchinson added as soon as Lachepelle finished her answer, “I agree. And I think like we’re trying to tell a story that explores sort of its subtle things people will see in relationships that they maybe aren’t always aware of, and hopefully it can highlight sort of these experiences that I think a lot of people have, and whether they’re aware of it or not.”
“Or not, they might recognize, this person kind of behaves like this other person that I saw in a piece of media, and it turns out in that story, the person was bad. Then maybe they’ll think [this relationship] isn’t good for me,” Hutchison said.
Heart Machines makes the choice to start its characters at their lowest and to have them heal.
Sometimes, though, relationships can consume us, and our connections to the people who hurt us keep us from breaking them off. They’re messy, and Heart Machine knows that. Hutchison continued, “I don’t know if this game will help anyone, but I do think it’s good to have media that starts to explore the subtleties of relationships that are not always 100% obvious. I think it’s very easy to always tell yourself like ‘this is a member of my family’ or ‘this is my friend,’ so no matter what, they always must be looking out for you.”
“And that’s not always true, unfortunately,” Lachapelle added.
“Exactly, and I don’t think there’s a ton of media that is always exploring that angle,” Hutchison responded.
When it comes to Possessors, Heart Machine’s choice to confront bad relationships, both romantically and platonically, isn’t about descending into it, but recovering from it. We asked the developer duo what the inspiration was:
“I mean. I’d love to start a story at the lowest point a person can be,” Hutchison answered. “We had other versions of the story that started with Luca and Kaz, hanging out. We had versions of [Possessors] that started where you were playing through before [you meet Luca here]. It was a disaster, and it just wasn’t working. So, I wanted to start out the story big and with a bang, and the most obvious choice was where [Luca and Rhem] are at the most the worst place they could be.”
He continued, “I think it’s always great to see two people meet when they’re both between a rock and a hard place. At the time, I was reading a lot of horror, watching a lot of classic horror, and also reading a lot of westerns —a lot of a lot of Cormac McCarthy. I will say, [McCarthy has] his own problems, but he’s great with brevity, and boy is he great at starting people in their absolute worst system going lower.”
Lapachelle weighed in, adding context to what the team did together as well, “We played other games when we were in production, and watched anime. We took a lot of inspiration [from] other media too, and then [brought] it down to games. Annihilation, lots of sailing is a big part of inspiration from professors, both artistry, and like the writing.”
“There’s lots of anime in [Possessors],” Hutchison interjected.
The team’s connected approach to finding inspiration was the theme of the rest of the interview, with Hutchison adding in more context and appreciation for Heart Machine’s collaborative process. “I do think something really cool that we do as a team is rather than spending a lot of time trying to share inspirations, we will take an hour out of each sprint—so like one hour, every two weeks—and watch the anime together or play a game together. And then we talk about what’s working and what makes [the story or game] feel good. I think it’s a great way to get to show something that you know and share why it’s inspiring to you.”
“There’s lots of anime in Possessors.”
This, of course, led to the all-important question: What was their anime shortlist? What had the team watched for inspiration, and what did they enjoy? Making an anime list is always a tough endeavor, and it was the same here. While Tyler Hutchison went back and forth on what to present, of course noting that Ranking of the Kings was currently his favorite anime, Myriame Lachapelle jumped in.
“Early in production, we did watch Jujutsu Kaisen, that inspired our visual effects and artists. We also watched Demon Slayer for a little bit,” Lachapelle said. “Now, the game is very far along, but we’re currently watching DanDaDan, which we all love as a team, and it’s very good news that the new season [is] coming [next month].”
Still charmingly struggling to make an anime shortlist for players, I let Hutchison off the hook. His passion for anime was clear, as was his love for Ranking of the Kings, but sometimes, picking anime is like picking your favorite child.
But after my time with the developers and playing the demo, the key element of Possessors is how well the team at Heart Machine has balanced emotionally resonant storytelling with kinetic and engaging mechanics. The depth the art team brought to the side-scrolling stage and character designs stand out, but more importantly, I can’t wait to explore my own brokenness and healing with Luca and Rhem. Sometimes, you just need to look in a mirror, and other times, you need to accept a pact with a demon.
Possessor(s) will release in 2025 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
