Acid Wizard Studio

Vegetal Horrors: Blair Witch, Darkwood and the Non-Human Turn in Game Studies

This abstract explores the "Vegetal Turn" in game studies, analyzing how plants contribute to horror in videogames, specifically using Blair Witch (Bloober Team, 2019) and Darkwood (Acid Wizard Studio, 2017) as case studies.

• Proposes extending the Non-Human Turn from Animal Studies into a 'Vegetal Turn', treating plants as agents of radical alterity rather than inert scenery, in order to challenge 'plant blindness' in Western culture and game studies.
• Uses Blair Witch (Bloober Team, 2019) and Darkwood (Acid Wizard Studio, 2017) as case studies, showing how horror games make hidden plant life visible and affectively powerful.
• In Blair Witch, wood is depicted as both inert material and something seemingly self-shaping, through sculpted log figures and overgrown forests that reclaim human architecture and disorient the player.