Ed: Hello everybody. This is Eddie V. and Courty here from Boss Rush Network’s Pow Block Podcast. We’re here at the Blumhouse booth at PAX East 2026. I just played Grave Seasons, a murder mystery farming sim. It may sound weird, but trust me, you are going to love it. We do have a special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?
Emmett: Yeah, of course. Hi, my name is Emmett Nahil. I am the narrative director and co-founder of Perfect Garbage Studios, and we’re developing Grave Seasons.
Ed: Hi! So, how did you get into gaming, and then how did you get into game development?
Emmett: Personally, I was always into games. I was always into playing games. I loved the early Assassin’s Creed games back in the day. Inspired by those games, I’m a writer by trade, so I love fiction, and I love horror. So those two things combined naturally for me. The other co-founder of Perfect Garbage, Son, and I are best friends and continue to be best friends. We basically asked ourselves, “Do we want to make a video game?”
We’re both writers, and both are hugely enthusiastic about video games overall, as well as enthusiastic about horror. It naturally progressed from there. Grave Seasons is the second game that we’re planning to put out.
Ed: Now, Courty just told me that you guys had a debut game. Can you tell us a little bit about the studio’s debut game?
Emmett: Yeah, of course. So our debut game was Love Shore. It is actually a visual novel dating sim. It takes place in a sort of cyberpunk, neo-noir world of androids, cyborgs, and humans. It deals with a sort of hidden gods in a criminal underworld in this city called Love Shore. It came out in 2023, and it is available on Steam for people who are interested.
Ed: Oh, nice. Well, if people don’t know the premise of Grave Seasons or they haven’t seen the Indie World Direct that happened, can you break down what the premise of the game is?
Emmett: Yeah, so Grave Seasons is, again, a murder mystery farming sim. So we put you in the shoes of our farmer character, and you have arrived new, fresh on the shores of a town called Ashen Ridge. You have a little bit of a sketchy past and have come into possession of a farm. How? We’ll leave that up to players to discover. But as you start to farm and rehabilitate the area where you have started to reside, you learn about a series of supernatural serial killings that have started to occur in the town.
You can start to learn more about the killer, learn more about the town, and sell some crops at the same time. And eventually, potentially stop the killings from being deadly.
Ed: How long has the game been in development?
Emmett: So we started development around 2023, and the game is actually releasing on August fourteenth of 2026.
Ed: That’s close! That’s super close! Are you guys thinking of doing a physical for Switch or console?
Emmett: We’re thinking about it. We have many plans, none of which I can reveal right now.
Ed: Please create a Collector’s Edition. I know I need that one. We were talking about the game being in the Indie World Direct. How did you guys feel about it after you’d seen the presentation, and how has the response been for it?
Emmett: The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and for that, we’re incredibly thankful and incredibly grateful to everybody who has been excited about the concept early on, as well as folks who have just learned about it through the Indie Direct and have gotten excited since then. We’re just incredibly grateful to Nintendo and also to Blumhouse for helping us put this game out in the world and make it what it is today.
Ed: With Blumhouse, have they made a lot of games, or are they just now getting into games?
Emmett: So they’re in their first round of games that they’ve created, really, and they have a variety of awesome games. They put out Crisol: Theater of Idols, which is a first-person shooter heavily inspired by games like Bioshock and Bloodborne in that you use your blood as bullets.
So very different from Grave Seasons, but incredibly cool. You can get that game; it’s out now. You can get it on consoles as well as on Steam. They have a variety of other titles in their back catalog that they’re starting to grow, which is really cool.
Ed: I was actually shocked that they were even into games. You know, Blumhouse is known for its films and TV productions. When I saw this game, I was like, “Oh, this is cozy. This is cool. Blumhouse games? Uh-oh, what’s going on?” That’s kind of cool that you guys actually have a mixture of mystery, farming, and cozy. It looks like you could actually bring the cozy crowd, and maybe the horror gaming crowd, I should say, together. Was that your idea for the game design for it?
Emmett: Yeah, so we always wanted to honor both audiences, right? We didn’t want to abandon the cozy folks in favor of the horror folks or the horror folks in favor of the cozy folks. We want to create a game that can appeal to both audiences and give everyone something to latch on to and get excited about.
Ed: Are you a bit nervous? You guys are still in development. Are you a bit nervous that it’s almost getting close to the release? How do you feel about that? How do you celebrate after this game is released?
Ed: Celebration is tough when you’re a type-A perfectionist studio like we are. We are all workaholics for better or for worse. I think we’re gonna have to figure out how we’re gonna celebrate it once it’s done. Maybe get like three pizzas or something. I don’t know, a pizza party. We’ve paced ourselves well, I think, and we’re nearing the end of development. We are just getting excited to promote the game and to get it out into the hands of all the players who have also been excited about it.
Ed: Will you guys be watching some of the streams for this game? Just to see how people react to it.
Emmett: Listen, on camera, no, I would never. Personally, you know, you can’t help yourself, right? You want to know. You want to see people react to stuff. That’s what things like PAX are for. I get to stand here and watch streamers and awesome content creators like you guys react to the game. That’s been so, so cool because this is our first public demo. We were at Summer Games Fest before, but this is the first one where we get to just have regular players come up and interact with the game, and that’s been really rewarding.
Ed: Have you been intrigued just to see the reaction of people playing to be like, “Oh, they don’t know that this is about to happen.” I know you’ve got to keep things still under wraps.
Emmett: Yeah, 100%. Very intrigued. Very excited to see people witness the horrors beyond their comprehension, you know, all that stuff. It’s been great to see people jump, to be honest. It’s a little mean, but it is very fun. It’s a fun part of my job.
Ed: I just got two more questions before we head out. I’m doing a series called Beauty of Video Games. This year, it’s going to be about personal interests. Meaning games that you personally love that you find the beauty in, but others don’t, or anything. They may not get why you may love a bad game, or you may love something because it helped you. Is there a personal game for you that you just find beauty in?
Emmett: Yeah, so I’m a huge horror person, full stop, period. I love the genre. There is a game that is not accessible to a lot of people now, but that was in the past, the original Mirror’s Edge game. I loved that game. It was one of the first games that showed me that you could make a narrative out of the environment. That was really, really cool and mind-blowing as a kid to play that game on Xbox back in the day and see it.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad game, or people think it’s a bad game, but it’s not available anymore, really. I think that’s a real shame. So that’s the game that I think about when I think about interesting ways to construct narrative without a ton of dialogue, a ton of cut-scenes and stuff, because you’re just playing as the main character moving through the world and investigating stuff in there. I think that was really formative to me as a young, burgeoning writer and game developer.
Ed: Yeah. Yes, definitely with all the parkour that was going on. It was something completely new and I think it was I think it’s a game that people didn’t get. It had some flaws here and there, but with the movement, how can we respect Titanfall or Call of Duty, yet we can’t respect it in Mirror’s Edge?
Emmett: Exactly.
Ed: That’s a great answer. I love that game too. My last question for you is, what is your go-to snack? While you’re developing or writing, or you may have found a new snack that we don’t know about that you might want to put us on. What is that go-to snack for you?
Emmett: I’m a real sucker for a spicy snack. So purple Takis, Takis Fuego, that is my number one. They sell out quickly. I’m also a sucker for a good energy drink, but maybe not those two together. That’s like an acid reflux recipe, you know.
Ed: Yeah, I’ve seen you had the white monster. Don’t worry, our co-founder, Corey, loves the white ones.
Emmett: It’s good. It’s a good flavor.
Ed: For me, it’s the mango. I love the mango Monster.
Emmett: The mango’s good, too. The mango’s good, too.
Ed: Well, thank you so much, Emmett, for this time. Where can they find you, and how can they learn more about Grave Seasons?
Emmett: Yeah, so you can find Perfect Garbage at perfectgarbage.com. Pretty easy. Grave Seasons is available to wishlist on Steam, and it will be coming to consoles everywhere on August 14th. So you can find them on your console library, anything of that nature. For me personally, you can find me at emnays, E-M-N-A-Y-S, @bluesky, and also on Instagram.
Ed: Can they pre-order the game on Switch? Or is there a downloadable demo coming soon down the line?
Emmett: Can’t really say much about a demo at the moment, but maybe. Never say never.
Ed: Well, with that, everybody, this has been just an interesting time. Please go wishlist Grave Seasons on Steam. You will definitely enjoy it. Check it out. If you have not seen it in the Indie World Direct, what are you doing? Hop on and go see it. Thank you, Emmett, for your time
Emmett: My pleasure, and thank you for coming!
To learn more about Grave Seasons, check out Stephanie’s impression of the demo right here. Does this game have your interest? Let us know in the comments or on our Discord.
Featured Image: Perfect Garbage
Nintendo Pow Block – A Nintendo Podcast by Boss Rush
Nintendo Pow Block is a weekly Nintendo podcast hosted by Edward Varnell, Corey Dirrig, and their friends from around the internet. Each week, they dive into the latest Nintendo news and rumors for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, new and upcoming releases, updates to Nintendo Switch Online and the Nintendo Music app, and discuss what they’ve been playing in the Playing with Power segment.
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