Resident Evil devs monitored players' brainwaves to ensure their free-to-play spin-off was sufficiently scary, which is weird because almost no one thinks it's scary

(Image credit: Aniplex Inc.)

When the free-to-play mobile spinoff Resident Evil Survival Unit quietly launched last November, I distinctly remember a lack of chatter around it. Resident Evil is one of my all-time favorite franchises, and even though it looked, smelled, and quacked like a generic mobile game wearing a Resident Evil skin, I still had to know if it was any good. And from what little I could find online, that did not appear to be the case, and so I quickly moved and forgot about it.

Now here I am, writing a story about how its developers literally monitored play testers' brainwaves to make sure the game was sufficiently scary, and suddenly I'm scratching my head wondering if I'm thinking of the right game. But no, it's the same poorly reviewed mobile game from South Korea-based studio JOYCITY, and it's most definitely not considered a scary game.

"We conducted a bio-signal-based focus group test, monitoring players' brainwaves, eye movements and pulse to objectively measure their levels of tension and immersion," said Seung Park. "Even if we received positive responses through surveys, looking at actual bio-signals could lead to a different conclusion. Through this data, we obtained meaningful results that helped us adjust the fear levels and immersion."

The only way I can make this make sense is by looking at it with the context that it's a machine-translated interview and that perhaps things were lost in translation. And to be fair, it sounds like game starts out like a pretty traditional, and competent, Resident Evil experience with mobile controls, but according to almost every review I've scrubbed through, it then turns into a pretty standard base-building mobile game, gacha mechanics and all, just with officially licensed Resident Evil vibes. Count me out.