Guide for Siren Head 2020 description

Siren Head: Toronto artist’s monster an unlikely gaming hit

Siren Head doesn’t feel like a full game, so much as a playable teaser for a creature feature. The indie horror game takes less than five minutes to complete: A walk down a forest path, a strange shape moving over the trees, an eerie noise, and finally an encounter with a horrifying, skyscraperlike beast.

It’s insubstantial, but it also leaves you wanting more - which may be why the game, from one-man developer Modus Interactive, has become an unlikely sensation.

Before its starring turn in the game, the titular Siren Head - a skeletal, 40-foot-tall nightmare crowned with two megaphones that emit snippets of public broadcasts and air raid sirens - lived exclusively in the artwork of Trevor Henderson. The Toronto-based horror illustrator has earned a considerable following for his found footage-style illustrations of various creepy creatures. (Full disclosure: Trevor and I have known each other since about 2008.)

Since its debut in 2018, Siren Head has enjoyed popularity among indie horror fans and creepypasta aficionados, earning status as something of a modern urban legend (along with Henderson’s other most enduring creation, a bony critter named Long Horse).

Modus’ brief game, the result of a PS1-inspired game jam, was released in late 2018 but didn’t get broadly played right away. Instead, a popular mod for Fallout 4 released earlier this year, in which Siren Head’s eerie PSAs and sirens warble across the foggy landscape before its massive frame materializes through the fog, has finally catapulted the “horrible human-eating Eldrich thing,” as Henderson lovingly refers to him, to indie gaming stardom.

In recent days, Siren Head has been the subject of Let’s Play videos (and gushing commentary) by some of YouTube’s biggest personalities, including Markiplier and Jacksepticeye, along with countless other channels, giving the creature a broad new audience.

We spoke to Henderson about the finer points of monster design, creepy 90s video game aesthetics, and suddenly having a lot of 12-year-old fans.