Resident Evil Survival Unit is so determined to be scary that the devs wired playtesters up to machines to check if their hearts were actually racing, because screw a survey. South Korean studio JOYCITY, working with Aniplex and Capcom, ran bio-signal focus tests to fine‑tune how much their free‑to‑play strategy spin‑off could get under people’s skin.
Set in a parallel timeline to Resident Evil 2 and 3, Survival Unit leans on base building, puzzles, and real-time defensive strategy over traditional over-the-shoulder zombie blasting. That’s a risky mix for a horror brand, so JOYCITY’s business lead Jun Seung Park says they strapped testers into gear that monitored brainwaves, eye movement, and pulse to get an “objective” read on tension and immersion. The idea was to see where the actual spikes happened, even if written feedback sounded calm.
Some of this testing shows up in a documentary-style video on JOYCITY’s official YouTube channel, where you can see the forehead-mounted brainwave sensors in action. It’s very “science fair by way of Umbrella Corp,” but Park claims the numbers gave them actionable insight on where to tweak scare pacing and atmosphere. They adjusted scenes based on when those signals dipped or spiked, not just when people said they were scared.
On the craft side, the team leaned heavily on classic Resident Evil tricks, particularly in sound design, to keep things grounded in the series’ mood. Producer Dongkyun Kye points to sequences that strip out background music and rely solely on footsteps to build dread, and says player reactions in those quiet segments reassured them the approach still works on mobile. Park credits Capcom’s “30 years’ worth of accumulated know-how” for guiding how far they could push fear without turning it into pure frustration.
Whether wiring testers up like lab rats actually makes a better horror game in the long run is debatable, but as marketing hooks go, “we measured your terror with hardware” is a pretty strong one.
Source: Automaton Media
