Necromorph

Wanat's wife came up with the term "Necromorph" at a whim later in the development of the original Dead Space; the team found it useful as an internal reference, but decided to limit its usage to a minimum as it does not match the serious tone of the video games series' narrative.

The Necromorphs are intended to instill a sense of unease from the player's fleeting glimpses of their former humanity, though later games introduce other variants made from non-human biomass like dogs and alien lifeforms.

The limitations of the in-game engine also presented a major influence over the design process, requiring team members to come up with solutions which work around these restrictions or discard certain Necromorph monster concepts altogether.

A staple antagonistic force across all franchise media, the Necromorphs of Dead Space have been recognized by critics as one of the most influential and memorable video game depictions of horror themes.

[6] Dead Space 3 reveals that the Necromorphs are in truth part of a life cycle that culminates in the completion of a "Convergence" event and the formation of colossal space-faring entities known as Brethren Moons, the true source of the Marker signals.

It was important for Wanat and his team that the Necromorphs' design aesthetics reflected an adequate "glimmer of their former human self" visually; the goal was not to create something that is gross for its own sake, but enough to make players feel a sense of fear and revulsion.

Wanat's wife came up with the term "Necromorph" to describe the undead antagonists of the Dead Space series, after she perused the creatures' conceptual designs and thought they were alien forms made out of corpses.

However, the art director of Dead Space 2, Ian Milham, said the biology of parasitic fungus left the biggest impact on the creatures' design process and compared the contents of a mycology textbook to that of a horror novel.

[11] A major aspect of the team's research for the Necromorph visual design involved the collection of medical, autopsy, and accident photos, which were kept in an office folder labeled "body trauma".

[1] In an effort to study and reimagine how the individual body parts could be rearranged into something horrific, the team realized that the more they made the Necromorphs "look like normal people who went through something terrible, the deeper the emotional impact".

[1] The first game's deserted space station setting and the variety of creature designs conceived by the artistic team led to the creation of a diverse range of levels for the player to encounter and engage the Necromorphs.

[8] According to Wanat, a primary concern for most Necromorph units is that they need to be able to pass through doorways, which influenced how tight the team could design corridors, as well as the methods they used to depict level spaces to feel more claustophobic.

The incorporation of a ventilation shaft system, which provide alternative routes for the AI-controlled Necromorphs to reroute and regroup without forcing the developers to build additional space in the level to accommodate them, is an important solution that circumnavigates the limitations posed by the environment, and fulfill an additional goal of adding tension to the survival horror driven gameplay by serving as "monster closets": this is because the Necromorphs could jump scare players anytime and anywhere, especially when they pass by ventilation shaft openings.

To create a "truly terrifying" aural experience with the Necromorphs, Veca took inspiration from sounds made by real life wild animals, which from a scientific perspective conveys subconscious messages to humanity's primal instincts in preparation for imminent danger.

Caty McCarthy from USGamer described the Necromorphs to be a revolting yet memorable mixture of the Alien franchise's facehuggers and common tropes from gruesome zombie films, and that their penchant for emerging from unexpected spaces to ambush the player character is "exhilarating".

She suggested that much of the critical acclaim and fan following of the Dead Space franchise could be credited to the "horrifying levels of Necromorphs that Wanat and other artists at Visceral Games designed over the years".

Tom Power concurred that plenty of the praise the first Dead Space received was due to the effective portrayal of the Necromorphs, and that they have been an iconic part of video game culture for over a decade.

[16] Ben Reeves, also from Game Informer, praised Veca's effective use of layering familiar sounds to unnerve players and "fool their minds into fear" by exploiting the human subconscious.

[22] On the other hand, Simon Park assessed the multiplayer mode to be a "slight but focused" experience and praised the tactical respawn options for various Necromorph forms, which differ from each other in power or strength, as an "ingenious system".