‘Dead Letter Dept.’ — A Look Into the Creation of an Indie Horror Classic (Interview)

For the last couple of months, I have been recommending Dead Letter Dept. to anyone who will listen to me rant about it. I reviewed it back in January and upon playing it, the game immediately became one of my favorites. So, naturally, I had to reach out to Mike Monroe and Scott McKie, co-founders of Belief Engine, to learn more about this game.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

‘dEAD LETTER DEPT.’ ORIGINS

How have you guys been doing?

Mike: Pretty good! The game did better than I ever expected, honestly, because I was like “Does anyone want a typing horror game?”

That’s really the place I wanted to start: how did ‘Dead Letter Dept.’ come about?

Mike: That’s kind of a long story. How much of it do you want?

Honestly, I’m so interested in how it started because I remember seeing that it was based on a real-life experience.

Mike: So, the big backstory is, since 2013, every October, we just played a bunch of horror games because we just try to find whatever is on the Internet. And after every October, I’m just like, “Oh, I’m so pumped.” So many weird ideas start coming to my brain. I’ve never had time to actually work on anything. I’m just writing down ideas for years, and someday, if I ever make a game, I want to do this in it, or something like that. And it wasn’t until 2020 that I finally had the free time to work on something. I was trying to find some ideas of something to try. I wanted to make a game where — have you ever heard of the “flow state”?

Yeah.

Mike: I wanted to try to mess with people in their flow state a little bit. I was trying to figure out what’s an easy way to get someone to a flow state. I knew that doing data entry stuff — or typing — was a nice and easy way to do that. [Looking at Scott] I remember asking you ’cause I think you told me a couple of times about your job in college. Right?

Scott: Yeah. In college, for one year, I had an overnight job working at the postal processing plant in Boston. Every Thursday, I would get out of my evening classes, get dinner, go to work. I took the T out to the industrial district. I crossed a bridge, went to this dark warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and did the postal data entry. And then I would get out around the time that the sun was coming up, at which point I would take the T back. I’d go to my morning classes, then I would go home and go to sleep. For a year, I was up for 24 hours once every week.

Wow!

Scott: It was great. I loved it!

Hearing that story is kind of crazy. I mean, I knew the bones of ‘Dead Letter Dept.’ was inspired by it. But the actual gameplay, too.

Mike: I took a lot of inspiration from that just because I liked the way [Scott] painted the picture. My brain started filming these scenes. Then it was: “Alright, we’ll stuff something in and we’ll go from there and figure it out.” And as things started getting stuffed in, I was thinking I actually like the way this feels. So, let’s see if we can keep exploring it. I would have [Scott] playtest and kept referring to him because I don’t have access to the postal service software. And I wasn’t trying to recreate that exactly.

Mike: I wanted to limit myself to just having a single text field because something about that was just creepy. Just having this big, blank text field of possibility. So, that was a big design challenge. But I would still refer to Scott. [Looking at Scott] When you’re doing this job, what were the weird things that would come up that would be interesting? The weird mail you would see?

Getting into the game

Scott: Yeah, so the mechanics of the actual job are very, very different. But the basic idea is there. And some of the things that I remember from the job is: we were meant to go as fast as possible. And there would be bits of downtime, so I wouldn’t be consciously paying attention to things. But I would start noticing recurring addresses show up. In actuality, it was usually something like a bunch of magazines being delivered to an office building. So I’d be seeing the same address over and over again, and not consciously aware of it. But I’d be like, “Oh, this is really familiar. I wonder what’s going on here,” and then there would be a lull, and so I’d be able to let my imagination wander.

Playing through Dead Letter Dept. the first time, I experienced it straight-up — I wasn’t really looking for anything. And what I found was: I enjoyed doing it blind. But after you told me about the other endings and stuff, the second and third playthrough, I actually started looking for stuff and crazier things started happening. There was one moment when I went up to one of the apartment buildings next door. It had an eviction notice on it, I heard this breathing, and then my screen cracked. And I’m sitting there like “What?” How did you guys come to that atmosphere and getting that in the game?

Mike: It’s hard to say. A lot of it was experimentation with stuff; lighting and atmosphere. Music is a huge thing. I know I wanted to do a lot more implied horror. Stuff that’s there, but you’re never quite sure 100%. To me, that’s what’s really unnerving, if you’re never quite sure if there’s something in the corner. So, I wanted to try exploring that. And I would add a lot of stuff that wouldn’t always happen depending on certain circumstances. And I probably added a lot of stuff that — I don’t think anyone’s ever gonna see this? They’ll probably play through once and never see this. Maybe someone will do a deep dive and notice it. I started adding a bunch of those, and I might be wasting a lot of time, but I think that actually gave it a bunch of variety.

Yeah, I definitely think it did. You just mentioned seeing something and not knowing if you actually did. I remember typing in one section and thinking I saw a little head pop up, and then I looked at it, and it wasn’t there. And I’m like, “Was I actually tripping? Did I — Is this game screwing with me right now?” Because every time I play it, I turn the lights out and put my headphones on, because it just feels right. You guys nailed that.

Mike: Thank you. I’m really glad to hear that. Yeah, that was the interesting thing. I’ll make this game where I try to mess with people’s flow state and see if that amplifies the horror. Because it’s just a theory. It was this weird thing where some people would be so much into the flow state, they just would never notice some things. But other times, it’d be like, “Was there something there?”

Mike: And I really liked that part, where you’re just never 100% sure if something was there or not. I think it worked out okay. Because the theme of the game started becoming trying to develop paranoia a bit. Like I said, just collecting years of horror game idea notes and thinking, “Is there a way I can make this work in this game? Well, maybe if I present it like this, or something like that, or do it for this thing.”

Yeah, I think that’s the thing you guys did well. When I think of horror — especially now — with American horror, it’s jump scare, jump scare, jump scare! The cat jumps across with that little musical sting, or something like that. You guys really locked down actual fear. The first 15 to 20 minutes, it’s all good. And then after that, it just creeps on you and it stays. It’s almost like it’s sitting on your shoulder the entire time.

Mike: Cool! I’m really glad to hear that because by the end of this game, working on it, I was just like, “I have no idea what this game is anymore.” I’ve seen every single pore of it.

finishing THE STORY

You’ve mentioned the 6 endings. Was there more you wanted to do? And you just kind of gave yourself that hard cap where you’re saying, “All right, we gotta stop here.”

Mike: I’d been messing around with different endings as the game went on, and I wasn’t really quite sure which direction to take it. So when I finally found what became, I guess I would call the “good ending,” I still had all these other outcomes. Now I was thinking, can I still use these for something? Because I thought these were still cool moments. And I found some natural paths to hook them into the game. So it was like, okay, you would get this ending if you had these things happen.

Mike: It’s kind of like a way to try to save the ending exploration phase I had where I just couldn’t really figure out how to end the game for a long time. So I just had a bunch of ideas that I was trying to figure out how to tie together. There’s some extra weird endings I wanted to try to put in, and I might add them in a content update. But I still have to figure out exactly how that might work. They would mostly just be — well, I guess I can’t spoil it — just weird wiki ones for horror game fans or something like that.

Scott: I know which one you’re talking about.

See, now I’ve gotta dive back into it. I think I’ve gotten three of the endings. But the possession ending seems to be the one I get the most because I get so locked in on just being scared and then I forget to do the other stuff. So tying into that, how did you weave the story into it? Because I feel like that would have been one of the harder parts, trying to figure out what story you wanted to do while you were trying to get this right.

Mike: We figured out, basically, the foundation of what everything would be based off of to work with. And then it was just sort of like layering levels of story. It’s obviously not a very straightforward story, because my goal was to not spell everything out. But if you look for it, it’s there, at least. So the possession ending is a very core story, where if you never play the game again, you at least get some sort of arc out of that. So yeah, the layering of if you just played it once kind of story and then if you dug in deeper, what’s happening there. And then, on top of that, like all the weird little stories happening in the mail. So it’s kind of like seeing if that would build up to do something.

Scott: Sort of like painting a picture with themes.

‘Dead letter dept.’ was indeed messing with me

Yeah, that makes sense. So, I have to ask because this is something that, when I first saw it, it threw me off so much. What’s up with the teeth?

Mike: Yeah, I don’t know, something about — there’s some people with some really funky-looking teeth!

It’s unsettling as hell!

Mike: And when it’s coming out of a thing you’re staring at all the time, I think there’s kind of a theme of being consumed by this process and this machine that I thought the teeth would add.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense outside of the fact that it’s just flat-out uncomfortable! That’s also one of the other things I wanted to talk about. One of the things I mentioned in the review is just how restrained you guys were about straight-up scaring people. Because that insert key, I mean, as soon as I hit that, the first thought in my head is “Alright, I’m gonna be jumping a little bit.”

And it was rare. How did you settle on the timing of it? Were you kind of worried about using that key and coming up with it, thinking that people were going to be expecting it?

Mike: I wanted you to always be guessing. Basically, that was the rule. Restraint was definitely the big part where it took a long time to tune it the right way where stuff wasn’t happening too much. Because if you press that insert key every single time and something’s happening, you’re like, I don’t care anymore. But, if it’s only like every once in a while, you’re just always a little anxious to press it.

Yeah, that screen crack gets me every time.

Scott: Yeah, we both agree that horror doesn’t work if it’s predictable. Like, if you can learn the rules of the system, then you won’t be scared. So, it can’t be too predictable. And it also can’t be too random. Because if there is nothing to go off of, then you’re gonna be less surprised because you know there are no rules. But my advice was to try and weave it so that there are rules, but they’re inscrutable.

Mike: Yeah, before this was even a typing game. It was a weird game jam we did at the end of 2019, we were just trying to game jam a game where you were doing all these weird, hidden rituals, but you were never quite sure what the rules were. And I ended up building Dead Letter Dept. off of the foundation of that.

Mike: So I’d have all this weird code that would still be doing weird shit. And I wouldn’t know what it’s doing sometimes, it would freak me out like, “How would that happen?” But I’d be thinking that was cool. How do I make that actually happen on purpose? So, I liked having this haunted code base. It was an interesting way to develop, and I think it was good for inspirational stuff. I definitely had to tone it down a bit after a while. Because I had to make sure the game was stable.

So, how long did it take you to actually go from beginning to end — planning to release ‘Dead Letter Dept.’?

Mike: So, this started at the end of 2020, and I was thinking this will be a 6-month game, an experimental game. I’ll just release the next Halloween or something like that. And then I think I just started getting sucked into how to make it work, and having all these ideas for stories I could do with it. So, I kept messing with it. And I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t figure out how to just be like, “Alright, it’s done, push it out.” It wasn’t until 2022. “Okay, I need to put out a demo for this thing to see if anybody cares about this concept.”

Mike: Because I don’t want to spend four years on this thing. But I did. But I need to put a demo out, and that’s where I found the opportunity to link up with the Haunted PS1 demo disk stuff to try to get it on that. Just to see if there was an audience interested in stuff like that. And I put it on the Steam Next Fest that year. From there, It was just like, “Okay, how do I finish the game exactly? How do I make this tell a good story?” So it was, yeah, basically four years. I mean, I had [Scott] to bounce ideas off of, and he was a playtester. But when you’re the primary solo dev, it’s like, “Oh, my God! Everything takes forever to get moving.”

It definitely feels like you took your time on it. And you should be commended for that, I know how tough that is.

Mike: Thank you. Yeah, I would get whittled down into presentation details. What I noticed is you can kind of feel how some games always feel like this one specific kind of game engine. And those kind of things I wanted to get erased as much as I could, because once that goes away, you’re not quite sure what the game feels like.

It felt like a point-and-click adventure sometimes. Then, other times, it was a typing game. Up to this point, I’d never played a typing game, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Mike: Yeah, I’ve never made a typing game. So this was also a very strange experience, but I kind of thought having your apartment and going to work would be a nice pacing between the typing segments. And it’s also a good opportunity to try out some stuff.

Scott: Yeah, that workday cycle came from the original prototype as well.

Mike: Yeah, the one we did together.

Horror found right in front of you

Yeah, it was pretty cool. And on a personal level, I used to work in retail, always working the night shift. And the store would close at 12, I’d get home around 12:30. That part of it — outside of the horror elements — really hit hard for me because I understood what it was like to be doing this job that you really don’t want to be doing.

And to come home at the end of the night, you’re just like “shit.” That was one of the things that really landed with me, that feeling of being stuck, which actually made the possession ending better for me. Because it feels like, “I’m just gonna be here forever. And this is my life from now on.” So, how did you guys weave that into ‘Dead Letter Dept.’ — was that theme intentional?

Scott: Oh, one hundred percent.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, we both had night jobs. It’s something where it gets hard to socialize sometimes because you just have your coworkers. And everyone else is doing their shit during the day. And we’re night owls, anyway. So we already kind of experience that on a basic level, too. It’s an isolating experience. And weaving that into a horror story just like, you know, a peanut butter and chocolate kind of thing. Then, I felt like I was making this horror sandwich. Because it’s compounding that with moving to a new city where you’re just trying to meet new folks and stuff like that. But you’re in this job and it’s kinda hard. I mean, granted, [Scott’s] night job was kind of nice, but I did a night job stocking shelves, too.

Scott: Oh, yeah, so did I, being stuck with coworkers who are very, very different people from me.

Mike: I think you said originally, you like the typing job because it wasn’t stocking at CVS anymore.

‘dead letter dept.’ had me unsure of what i was reading

I definitely understand that. I’ve got a few more questions for you. The actual letters themselves. There are some insane stories in those letters. How did you come up with those?

Mike: I had [Scott] help me write a couple of them. Some were just me writing stuff in 2020 and thinking, “I don’t know where I’m gonna put this, I’m just gonna write this down and see if this is something I can use.” Some of it was researching details, and the feelings of being stuck in a job that feels like it’s stripping your humanity. I used a lot of research on the moderation farms where people sit in front of computers and look at some of the worst parts of the Internet. What that does to your psyche, getting ideas of what it would be like to subject yourself to that all the time. The Sin Eater story is kind of a direct reference to that. Some are actual letters that were sent to us that we got permission from a friend to put in the game.

Oh, wow!

Mike: I just had to blot out stuff. But [it was] just kind of all over the place. Because it was meant to be a lot of different mail, so it was hard to keep it diverse but also keep it unified at the same time.

How did you nail down the computer talking to you? How did you get that part down as the game progressed? Was it a matter of something you were doing in the game, or was it part of the story?

Mike: Kind of both, the thing I was going for with that is this aspect of we’re always controlling the software, right? We’re always telling it what to do. But some of that I wanted to start to mess around with, where it’s now telling you what to do. And it’s kind of threatening you about it. To get those parts figured out, I had to do a lot of playtesting because some people would just get really mad at those sections. Especially the ones where you have to type in the weird letters and stuff like that.

THE COMPUTER KNOWS, JIM!

That actually hit on the last thing I wanted to touch on. At a certain point, after my third or fourth playthrough, I started to try to anticipate certain things because I wanted to get these other endings. So, when the game would try to make me do something, I would type in “no” and hit enter. It just reset and the screen would crack more. I’m thinking, well, maybe if I just keep doing it. And nothing happened. So, that was cool. Because it’s like I’m trying to resist this thing, and it will not let me. You really got ahead of me on that!

Mike: Yeah, I had to do some playtesting to see what people would want to do in those situations to be able to make it work.

Scott: Yeah, also maybe a little bit of how much people were willing to put up with.

Mike: That’s the thing, too, I wanna make sure people weren’t stuck. That was the biggest thing in this part. What’s that word for when you’re just sort of tortured into being accepting of it?

Scott: Resigned.

Mike: “Resigned.” Yeah. Where they just say, “Fine. I’ll do the thing.”

Yeah, that’s how it felt. I’m thinking, “I guess this is where I gotta go with it to keep going.” I really appreciate you guys giving me this time to talk about Dead Letter Dept. I’m looking forward to whatever you do next. And you know, whatever content update comes, I’ll be ready for it.

Mike: Sweet! Thank you very much. Let me know if you get any more of those endings!

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A huge “thank you” again to Mike and Scott for taking the time to talk to me about Dead Letter Dept. Go get this on Steam, you won’t regret it.