Emily Sondering
speaker
103 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Emily Sondering’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Hello. Yes. I'm super excited that you guys have me here today. And what an epic intro.
Yeah, so hi, I'm Emily. I am a Los Angeles-based game developer and game dev creator. You might know me from game dev videos I post on Instagram and YouTube under the name Sondering Emily. I also previously did make a game called A Taste of the Past. It is on Steam and has over 120,000 plays, which was really exciting. That's awesome. And now I am working on my first horror game, Lily's World XD.
It's the first time I'm going solo. And the premise of the game is you investigate a young girl's computer. It's set in the early 2000s. So you do things like chat on AIM, go through your cringy blog. You have, I recreate Friendster in my game. Everything seems normal until someone realizes you're not Lily.
Yeah. Creepy, dark things happen.
I definitely am a gamer. I feel like it's strange to make games without playing them. It's like writing a book without reading books or making movies without watching them. I typically play more independent, story-driven games. I've never been super into AAA, although I do really like The Last of Us.
Yeah, actually, before this, I used to only make cozy games because that was all I played. And then earlier this year, I discovered the indie horror game called Omori and it blew my mind.
So good. And that made me realize the potential of horror to tell a really moving story. So after playing a few other horror games, another notable one I love is called Inscription.
And I decided, why not? Give my own hand at it. And that's really what led to Lily's World XD.
Which character did she cosplay? Because I have also cosplayed, and I'm wondering if we cosplayed the same person.
She's Basil, and then I went as Mari.
Yeah, so horror is something that I got interested in over the last year. Before that, I'd never really played horror games. But in terms of what I enjoy in the horror genre, I specifically like psychological horror games. I'm not a huge fan of like Scary Monster in the Woods or Jump Scare. I like horror that gets under your skin and messes with your brain.
And... Pushes the genre entirely. Outside of horror, I really enjoy heartfelt story games. So, basically the opposite. Horror that messes your mind or horror that touches your heart. Or games that touch your heart. So, some of my favorite games in the opposing genre would be Spiritfarer. Before Your Eyes is probably my favorite game of all time.
It's a game that uses your webcam and every time you blink, it progresses the story. What? What a cool mechanic. Yeah, it's really cool. So... It tracks your eye movement when you play the game.
But I will say it's more than just a gimmick. It works really well with the story and the message it's trying to tell. It's a game about life flashing before your eyes. So then that's why there's also the blinking element. But yeah, I would say I also really like management games. So I really like Cult of the Lamb. That was a great game.
backlog man it's for that never ending it just keeps getting added to yeah i this is funny because this blinking game i feel like i just sit there and stare i'm like no i can't advance yet no honestly okay the thing with the blinking game is that you want to keep your eyes open as long as possible for the game and so my eyes end up hurting but then by the end of the game i'm crying because it's very emotional so i'm just like blinking and the game just keeps switching i keep blinking
Yeah, so actually before I got into horror games, I only promoted cozy games on my channel. And then eventually I started promoting horror and I expected there to be a drop off because the audience is now confused that I'm switching genres. But surprisingly, my videos about horror games do just as well as my videos about cozy games.
I do think that they surprisingly share an audience, at least from what I see in my own video performance.
Yeah. So the first one is actually I mentioned earlier, which is The Last of Us. Yep. So before that, I thought that games were just about violence or shooting or I thought about like multiplayer Call of Duty, which never really appealed to me. Also, The Last of Us came out when I was like 13 or 14. And so at that point in my life, games were a quote unquote boys club type thing.
And it was when I discovered The Last of Us that I realized that games could be such a powerful medium for storytelling. And also, like, Ellie was one of the main characters. Girls can play too. So I got really involved in gaming after that. I... Was really into AAA at the time and then eventually made my way to indie.
I would say like another moment that really solidified that I wanted to be a game developer was the game called Night in the Woods. It's a game about a young girl who drops out of college and goes back to her hometown and realizes it's the same but also very different. And that's actually something that I was going through at the time.
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