Before I was an internationally famous Cinepunx writer I played in a band bigger than KISS where we wore ski masks and wrote songs about spooky stuff like killing women and mutilating their corpses. That’s how I came to befriend Cara “Dirt” Cadaver, creator and star of VILE, the new Final Girl Games title. VILE is an indie game that covers all the big topics like swapping videotapes in the late 90s, cat vaccines, and the ageless parasocial relationship of fans and artists. VILE centers around a fan of a porn star who focuses her art around horror, both in the content itself and setting.
As are most games in the itch.io world, especially in the booming horror sub genre, VILE is short and can be finished in an hour, but it sits with you. It makes you wonder how every conversation goes for people, especially women, and maybe your quick joke about sex with an internet stranger was a lot harder for them to swallow. On top of her own games, Cara has worked as a QA on FLATHEAD for DreadXP, worked alongside Black Eyed Priest Games and Henry Hoare, and has a Twitter presence unmatched by the Asami Yamazakis of the world.
Hello Dirt, can you give us some backstory on VILE? How did you come up with the idea, how long was development, what has changed since the planning stage and launching it?
It actually came to me while I was watering plants at my part-time job in a greenhouse. It’s usually a task that takes around 6 hours and my brain tends to wander all over the place in that time. I was thinking about old Nokia phones and started wondering how I could make a game using inspiration from old tech. I planned out this paranormal story, something about a haunted cell phone and a girl using it while she was walking home from work. it felt very inauthentic. I went back to the drawing board and much like ATTACHMENT_NOT_FOUND I started pulling from my real life experiences and from then development came as naturally as writing in my diary.
I am notorious for adding things to projects right before they are supposed to be done so that is quite literally what I was doing right before answering these questions.
I think I started working on the idea in June so its taken since then.
What is your history with video games, horror, and the combination?
My older brother is basically the reason I like most of the things I like now. I stole his personality a little bit when I was a kid. He showed me everything cool and correct. I remember watching him play RESIDENT EVIL 4 when we were kids and being so obsessed with it, the day he let me borrow it and play it for myself is burned into my brain. I think I stayed up playing it until the morning and have replayed it at least four million times since.
I explored the genre independently, developed my taste, and really made it my own thing, but yeah my brother opened the door to all things cool when I was younger and I’d never admit it to him but I owe a lot of who I am to growing up with him as my best friend.
I think I started liking horror movies as an adult as some insane way of dealing with trauma. It kind of felt like stepping into these horrific scenarios through a screen was a way of coping and processing the horrific scenarios I was dealing with. 
How did Final Girl Games start?
My first year of college I had a class that was ‘make a game in 5 days’ every single week. My prof would throw out a theme, we could be as literal or abstract as we wanted and make whatever we felt like. I always went in wanting to try something new. A new mechanic or art style – whatever. That taught me a lot about idea development too.
The theme one week was throwback and I immediately wanted to make a myspace/2000s-inspired game and that’s when I made ATTACHMENT_NOT_FOUND. I was dying to put it up on itch.io and send it to my friends. I needed a dev name and I just thought Final Girl was so fitting. Most of the stories I want to tell are based on the horrors of just existing as a woman – as cliche as maybe that sounds, and the final girl is such an iconic trope. I think it was between that and my twitch username at the time but Dirtlord Games sounds crazy. 
How did you wind up working with other people? What’s your advice to the other young aspiring video game makers of the world?
I say this with the disclaimer that for luck to work, you have to be good at what you do – but I got incredibly INCREDIBLY lucky.
I was (and still am) a huge fan of BLOODWASH, and connected with Henry and Jordan through being the insane BLOODWASH girl on Twitter. They both are huge inspirations to me and Henry mentoring me and passing along so much knowledge and encouragement has been crucial to my path.
My advice? Hell I am still looking for advice myself if you have any haha
For game developers and anyone who wants to make things – I would say the most important thing is don’t be afraid to make the weird thing. If you are passionate about an idea and care about it someone else will too. Making something that makes you feel insane and strange and all pulled apart like yarn is fucking awesome. 
What’s a dream project for you?
This is a lame answer but everything I work on is or has been my dream project at one point. I dreamed about making a game like ANF, and then I dreamed about making something like VILE.
Maybe a dating sim with a killer twist – who knows. It changes all the time. I have more ideas than I do brains.
Is SECRET GARDEN ever going to see the light of day? Some of us would really like to hear that opening scene’s song from the band who wore ski masks and were bigger than KISS
I was getting too many insane fan DMs asking me to give out personal information about the band who wore ski masks and were bigger than KISS – it was far too overwhelming working with giant stars like that.
Secret Garden was so fun to start work on and I love what I made so far but it got to the point I mentioned earlier where the story didn’t feel like one I wanted to tell anymore. It lost the connection to real-life experiences that make my games feel like me – I think.
Too silly perhaps. 
What’s next for you and Final Girl Games? What’s next for you in your other works?
If all goes to plan I’ll be announcing the next title early in the new year. I had a lot of fun with the live footage stuff in VILE and I have a really cool idea how to utilize that more in the future.
I am hoping this next story will be a lot scarier than what I have made so far.
What would you like people to take away from VILE?
I feel like this should be the simplest question but I think its also the biggest.
Every single woman can tell you an experience where a man made them feel small, or less deserving or like we fucking owed them something. If you play VILE and it makes you think even just a little bit, ask any woman you know about one of these times.
Last word is yours.
I know this game covers some hard topics but I have a lot of really wonderful men in my life. For every scumbag who takes advantage of your friendship and trust and tries to sleep with you, or belittle you, or humiliate you, or thinks that they know you based on a tweet and then gets mad when you aren’t what they imagined in their horrible twisted little brain, or makes assumptions about you, I promise there is also a dude like my buddy James who will never do any of those things, who is good and safe and honest.
In a world full of scumbags, be like my buddy James.
VILE is available now on the Final Girl Games itch.io
