...

I started working on Anza back in 2023, when I was experimenting with ways to visualize the desert in Unreal Engine. The project started as just something to do in my free time. Mostly I wanted to spend more time exploring the Anza Borrego Desert region's topology, since much of it isn't accessible on foot. I love heading out there to hike, camp, take photos, or just drive through. Even so, being alone in nature, cut off from cell signal and everybody else always carried a strange mix of comfort and vulnerability for me.

At one point in October a couple years back, I was driving alone at 2 am, trying to clear my head and shake off some real bad insomnia. As one does in the United States, I went to the nearest 7-11 since it was the only thing open. After that, I went down into the desert, figuring a little stargazing in the cold desert air would set me right. The night was alive with animals—crickets, coyotes, mice, bats. The whole night crew out in force. Not wanting to get cocky with coyotes out, I stuck near the car. I was the only one on the road for miles, and I managed to achieve a sliver of true tranquility there, staring up at the milky way.

I lose track of time, listening to the rustle of leaves in the wind, lizards and desert pocket mice scurrying from bush to bush. I hear the growing chatter of helicopters coming closer. They're keeping distance from one-another, but flying in a near-perfect parallel, floodlights sweeping back and forth methodically. The beam of one finds me and holds for a few seconds, blasting away my night vision. It flits off and they continue along their way. I shake it off, but I can’t see the galaxy and the desert lost its voice. The place felt eerie and dead all of a sudden, so I get back into the car and head on. Uncertainty begins to creep in, turning my solitude sour. I plan to head to a specific spot, a turnoff with a great view of the valley around, a slight backing hill to block the wind, and importantly no cholla cactus to stab me in the darkness. During the day it’s a great spot to hike down into the washes, and at night it gives as broad of a view of the stars as you can get by the roadside. As I pull up, a large quadcopter-style drone flies over the ridge, gliding across where I was about to set up shop. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but whatever was going on, I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. I turned around to go home.

I see a drone again a few minutes later, impossible to tell if it was the same one. The night goes quiet again, and I roll the windows down, slowing my speed to try to calm my nerves and snatch what peace of mind I still could out of the trip. I draw close to my earlier stargazing spot and a man jumps out into the road, one hand waving wildly, the other making the universal gesture for "going my way?" There's no campsite nearby, no other cars parked at the washes or turnouts. It's BLM land out there, so maybe he was camping in the brush. To my eye he was just hiding under a creosote bush. I flick my mind back to the stargazing earlier, the sounds of animals around me. Had I heard footsteps crunching on desiccated cholla trunks, or was that just the wind blowing a passing chunk of brush around? I swerve into the oncoming lane to pass him, pumping my breaks once to light the rear-view. I see him dashing back into the brush, crawling under a bush.

This is more or less when I decided to make a horror game! I’ve always loved the feeling of being alone in nature, but there’s a real uncertainty that comes with that. Even when I'm only dipping my toes in, still clutching to the roadside turnout with my car in sight, there’s a vulnerability that comes with isolation. I want to recreate that feeling in as many ways as I can while also showing off the sheer beauty and size of the Anza Borrego Desert.

So while the game and all the buildings and people are totally made up, the landscape itself is not. I built the world on a mix of 1m/pixel USGS elevation data, which I heavily modified and normalized in QGIS, and lower-res 10m/pixel data for the distant terrain. I made my favorite plants from that region- the teddy bear cholla cactus, wand sage, chuparosa, desert agave, creosote bushes, ocotillo, and especially desert sand verbena. I spent countless hours designing textures and terrain shaders to convey the geology of the southern region of the Anza Borrego as best I could, and I spent hundreds of hours more painting the landscape with erosion and detail to get it to look as close to the real place as my skills allow.