Nick Lives, Creative Director at Night Signal Entertainment Talks Please Insert Disc – Interview Series

Picture this: it’s the break of dawn, and the console that you own—a piece of revolutionary hardware that just so happens to hold the keys to countless worlds—is offering you the opportunity to delve deeper into its inner nexus of never-before-seen nodes and menus. Alas, there is but one caveat to this: the errors here aren’t necessarily designed to be fixed, but rather, to manipulate, confuse, and ultimately terrorize those courageous enough to experiment with the UI. This is, in short, the basic setup for developer Night Signal Entertainment’s upcoming horror, Please Insert Disc — and we’re all for the concept.

In an effort to learn more about the latest IP in the studio’s catalog, I decided to reach out to Night Signal’s Creative Director, Nick Lives.

Please Insert Disc is booting up (or at least attempting to) from within the inner nexus of a seemingly sinister game system. Suffice it to say, this is a concept that we are eager to learn more about. Before we write ourselves into that particular code, though, let’s dial it back a bit. Night Signal Entertainment — how did it all come together?

Nick: NSE’s co–founder and my longtime friend David Johnsen and I had worked together previously on a horror game called Night Signal back in 2022, to somewhat little fanfare, but it caught the attention of some of my longtime horror heroes like Puppet Combo and Trevor Henderson, which encouraged us to make another game like it. When we started working on our next title Home Safety Hotline, it started picking up some serious steam in the press/attention department. At that point it seemed like a good time to start up a proper company dedicated to our brand of horror, named after the game that started this particular creative trajectory. I had also been wanting to expand our creative output for a while into film and other mediums, and this company seemed like a good way to signal (pun intended) that intention with the “Entertainment” aspect of our name and kicking off the company’s first year by releasing an original short horror film, The Vanishing of S.S. Willie.

Let’s shift our attention back over to your upcoming puzzle-centric horror game, Please Insert Disc. Clearly, there are some deep ties to the world of 2000’s gaming culture here. Mind telling us more about the sources you used to elevate this image?

Nick: We pulled inspiration from the PlayStation 2, Gamecube and original Xbox mainly when designing the menus of the game’s fictional console, the Neptune II. They all had a creepy liminal yet futuristic aspect to them that somewhat defined that console generation. To further ground you in the era, the Neptune II even has an Xbox-like music player where you’ll get to listen to fictional bands inspired by Blink 182, Evanescence and more.

Take us back to 2002. What’s the story behind Please Insert Disc? Who are we, and what are we aiming to accomplish as a seemingly normal gamer?

Nick: In Please Insert Disc’s story, you are indeed simply a normal gamer in their teens just trying to play their favorite skateboarding game Hell Grinders. When the game stops working suddenly and you get the titular error message, your goal is simple – get the damn console to work again so you can get back to playing Hell Grinders.

You’ve mentioned that there’ll be various undertones of horror stitched into the gameplay. Could you tell us a bit about the sorts of terrors that we’ll be dealing with?

Nick: Without spoiling too much, the game primarily draws its horror from an old paranoia I used to have about consoles and computers of the era – that deep inside, there might be something trying to communicate with me. The idea that errors aren’t just errors, they’re something trying to scream at me from within.

Mind if we ask you for a few quick troubleshooting tips? Is there a “secret” to the process of fixing the system without onboarding one or two nasty surprises along the way?

Nick: Alas, there are no ways to fix the console without stumbling across the horrors, save for possibly sending it back to the manufacturer to be repaired by them, as the console suggests. Like most teenagers, your character is rather stubborn and morbidly curious.

We understand that Please Insert Disc has only just had the veil removed, but we have to ask: what’s next for the project? Are we likely to see more of the game in all its retro colors before year’s end?

Nick: We’re just as eager to share more about the game as it develops, but we’re more likely to start showing off more early next year once it’s had more time in the oven. The game relies a lot on revelation and surprise, so we’ll have to be careful not to spoil too much of the game by oversharing before people get their hands on it.

I promise I won’t leave you.

Please Insert Disc is an upcoming puzzle horror game set in 2002 about navigating the underbelly of your game console to restore its functionality – but waking something in the process. 💿

💙Wishlist Now: https://t.co/7HyyYicdXW pic.twitter.com/8pCFgM84Si

— Nick Lives 🤡 (@SlickNickLives) October 24, 2024

How can we stay up to date with Please Insert Disc? Are we able to share any event details, newsletters, or social feeds with our readers?

Nick: You can follow @NightSignalEntertainment on TikTok and Instagram, @SlickNickLives on X and BlueSky, and if you’d like to get the earliest peeks at Please Insert Disc’s ongoing development, you can follow us on Patreon!

Would you like to add anything else to the page before we go ahead and close the book?

Nick: We’d love to urge your readers to be sure to Wishlist the game on Steam, as it makes a huge difference for us when it comes to launch day visibility. We’re also extremely grateful for the spotlight, thanks so much for talking with us, Jord!

Thanks for your time, Nick! We look forward to seeing more of Please Insert Disc over the coming weeks, months, and years!

You can find more information on Night Signal Entertainment’s Please Insert Disc on X. Also, don’t forget to add the game to your wishlist for additional updates and pre-launch coverage here.