Devlog 2 · 30 October 2026
From grey clay to nightmare
Home Haunt is an AR horror game prototype for iPhone, based on Nikolai Gogol's «Viy» (1835). A student has to read prayers over a dead witch for three nights, and in our game the haunting happens in your own room. This devlog is about the monsters: how they look, how they move, and how they were made.
The short version: the models are AI-generated, the animations come from a free CC0 library, and none of it is final.
The cast
Twelve models are in the video: Pannochka (the dead witch), Viy, Chort, the old woman, Upyr, Kikimora, Vurdalak, the Winged, three wall spirits (pig-snout Chort, Hairy Bies, thin Chort) and the Rooster.
How they were made, honestly
- Models: generated in Tripo AI. Eleven were text-to-model; the old woman was image-to-model from a T-pose concept. Textures are Tripo's PBR textures.
- Rig: Tripo's auto-rig, a 23-bone skeleton. We did not use Mixamo.
- Animation: free CC0 clips from the Quaternius Universal Animation Library 1 and 2. We did not animate them; we retargeted them onto the Tripo rig.
- The Winged and the Rooster have no bones. They move by code.
- The video is staged in Blender for this devlog and is not a game capture. The last seconds are real iPhone screen recordings.
From clay to texture
Each model starts as a raw mesh. In the video a hot line sweeps from the feet to the head: grey clay above it, textured model below.
Fitting a phone
Raw Tripo meshes are too heavy for AR, where the phone also runs the camera and the room mesh. We thin them in Blender and shrink textures from 4096 to 1024.
| Model | Tripo, triangles | In game |
|---|---|---|
| Pannochka | 23,528 | 14,774 |
| Viy | 38,566 | 15,759 |
| Chort | 38,444 | 7,880 |
| The old woman | 28,101 | 13,789 |
| Upyr | 23,872 | 11,819 |
| Kikimora | 24,111 | 11,818 |
| The Winged | 9,498 | 5,910 |
Movement
Pannochka gets up from her coffin and gropes the air. Viy trudges at half speed, to feel heavy. Chort stalks in jerks. The old woman and Upyr walk. Kikimora creeps. The Winged flies by code: its wings squeeze and sway.
What is missing
No facial animation yet. Viy's heavy eyelids are procedural in the game, not part of the model. Pannochka's glowing eyes are a separate effect in the game and are not in the Blender render. The light, fog and candles in the video exist only for the devlog.
Where the game is
Home Haunt is in closed testing on iPhone through TestFlight. Co-op is the next big piece: two phones, two homes, one night. If you have an iPhone and want to test, write to [email protected].