Picturesque village near Selby becomes unlikely scene of alien abduction in new video game

Darren Hall has filmed an alien abduction video game around his village of North Yorkshire

That's according to a new video game, devised and filmed around Monk Fryston near Selby by graphics designer Darren Hall.

Mr Hall, 40, has created The Dark Side Of The Moon, a choose-your-own-adventure style video game inspired by books he loved as a teenager.

He has spent the past eighteen months filming scenes for the game on public footpaths and woodland in the village, where he lives with his wife Lindsey and two children, Taylor, 14, and Annalise, 11.

The game follows the story of Dean Hamilton, who wakes up one morning to discover both his children have gone missing in the night. Players then help Dean navigate to discovery the mystery of who - or what - has abducted his children in the night.

And it is a true family affair, with Taylor and Annalise playing the children in the game, filming in their breaks from home-schooling.

Mr Hall said: "It’s an alien abduction story where everything is not quite as it seems, it’s full of twists of turns.

"I’m a normal guy who woke up one morning and wanted to make computer games, and now I’ve done it."

Most of the exterior shots around Monk Fryston were filmed before lockdown, with locations including the village church and the grounds of Monk Fryston Hall.

Mr Hall said: "It happened a few times during filming that we’d be spotted by joggers and dog-walkers, they’d be fascinated and they’d just stand there and watch."

And luckily for Mr Hall, lockdown came at the right time - with just interior shots still to be filmed, where his house doubled up as his main character's.

He said: "What did become a difficulty was doing edits, coding and all the geeky stuff - we’ve got two children, and when homeschooling started, that ate up a lot of my time."

The game will be released on online platform Steam in March.

And Mr Hall revealed that, just like in his game, he does believe that extra-terrestrials are out there, though perhaps not in the picturesque countryside surrounding Monk Fryston.

He said: "My fascination is with the whole question of what is out there that we just don't know about. It just intrigues me.

"I do believe there's aliens out there. There's something out there but I don't know what."