Psychological Horror Game Who's Lila? Gets Feature Film Adaptation
The adaptation of a game whose core mechanic is facial-expression control into a film raises questions about how the unique interactive element will translate to a passive medium.
Reporting from 1 sources: 4Gamer.net.
Garage Heathen's psychological horror adventure game Who's Lila?, where players control facial expressions instead of dialogue choices, is being adapted into a feature film. Seattle filmmaker Julian Wilson will collaborate with the original creator on production and has launched a Patreon campaign to fund the film's costs.
Garage Heathen, the developer behind the 2022 psychological horror adventure game Who's Lila?, announced a feature film adaptation on Tuesday. The film will be produced in collaboration with Seattle-based filmmaker Julian Wilson, who has worked across music videos, short films, and indie projects as a director, producer, writer, and editor. Wilson has launched a Patreon fundraising campaign to cover production costs.
Who's Lila? follows protagonist William, who becomes a suspect after a girl named Tanya Kennedy goes missing. Instead of selecting dialogue options, players manually control William's facial expressions, with a neural network determining how the story progresses based on those expressions. The game holds a 'Very Positive' rating on Steam from over 3,600 user reviews, with 94% positive ratings.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.