Sell Pares, Run From a Ghost + Uncover Dark Secrets in This Filipino Horror Game

(SPOT.ph) You’re Jesse, a fresh architecture graduate with an apprenticeship lined up. Then your father falls into a coma, forcing you to put everything on hold and run the family pares stall to help with the hospital bills. As if life hasn’t thrown enough at you, a young, bloodied woman starts following you.

That’s the premise of Kalayaan Road, a Filipino story-driven horror game that unfolds through Jesse’s perspective over roughly 45 to 60 minutes.

Gameplay is fairly straightforward: walk around, speak with various customers, collect clues, make choices, and solve simple puzzles as more of the story unfolds. There are a few jumpscares along the way, but much of the game involves paying attention to what's happening around you—and there is plenty to notice.

You’ll find the MRT line looming above the street. “SMMC” metal sheets line construction sites, while “Malolo” cigarettes are among the items for sale at the stall. Part of Jesse’s routine is cooking pares for customers, so the game even has you putting together the dish with ingredients like star anise. At the hospital, bantays sleep on rows of stainless-steel benches through the night. Then there’s Mayor Makisig, whose name and face you’ll see everywhere in the game.

All those familiar details make Kalayaan Road feel distinctly Filipino, even if the road itself is fictional.

As Jesse digs deeper, he discovers that his father, who, as it turns out, has been hiding a dark secret for years. Don’t worry, we’re not giving anything away—that much is in the official game synopsis.

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Behind this game is LawdGames—or Lord Barron Rodriguez, a 26-year-old developer from Muntinlupa. He’s in his seventh year of college after having shifted from BS Accountancy to BS Mechanical Engineering, with just one subject left before graduating. A longtime 3D art hobbyist, he spent 10 months creating Kalayaan Road, his first game.

For a first attempt at game development, the horror part is a little ironic considering Rodriguez is scared of horror games himself.

“I’ve always been scared of playing horror games because of the jumpscares, so I thought it would be fun to make one myself. At least this time, I know where the jumpscares are because I’m the one putting them there,” Rodriguez told SPOT.ph, adding that the ghost isn’t the only thing Jesse has to worry about. “As I continued developing the game, though, the story got bigger and I started adding things I wanted to say about the Philippines. That’s how Mayor Makisig came into the story.”

Not to give too much away—after all, part of the fun is piecing the story together yourself—but Makisig is only one part of what Kalayaan Road is trying to say.

One character, Rafa, spends six months in jail after stealing canned goods. Another named Joshua works a 24-hour shift at the hospital—a purposely exaggerated version to show how “overworked and undercompensated healthcare workers can be.” Those are only two of several very Filipino frustrations that gradually work their way into what originally looks like a straightforward ghost story.

Rodriguez admitted some players expected the game to be scarier ("I think I held back a little without realizing it"), but he described it as more of a story-driven horror, whose most unsettling parts are rooted in real life.

“I didn’t want the horror to be just about making the player jump. For me, the scarier part is the story itself, especially how someone in a position of power can use that power to do terrible things while still maintaining a good image in front of the public. The corruption, murder, and other real-world themes are part of the horror too because, unlike the ghost, those are things that can actually happen.”

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For Rodriguez, all those threads eventually come back to the one central idea.

“People aren’t always who they appear to be. It’s easy to look up to someone and trust the image they show us, but I think we should always be open to the truth, even when it goes against what we already believe about that person. At the end of the day, facts should always come first.”

It's pretty heavy stuff for a game that starts out with you cooking and selling pares. Even so, Rodriguez doesn’t want the heavier themes to overshadow the fact that Kalayaan Road is meant to be a fun experience first and foremost.

“Of course, I still want people to enjoy the game. I wanted to make an entertaining horror story while also giving players something to think about after they finish it.”

As of writing, Kalayaan Road has already been downloaded more than 100 times—far more attention than Rodriguez expected when he first started making the game for fun. Safe to say, he’s not stopping here. He has already put his last semester on hold to focus on his next game, and this time, he said he plans to make it a lot scarier.

If you want to find out what Jesse’s father has been hiding, Kalayaan Road is available for purchase for $3.99 or P199 on itch.io. Players can also choose between English and Filipino versions of the game.

Also read:  Ligaw, Make Tusok the Fishball, Jeepney Simulator + More: Pinoy-Made Games to Download and Play