Your dream horror game?

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Grabthehoopka
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Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

Going for a bit of a longshot here, but I have been thinking recently, and got curious enough to ask-

Alright, so you're in that fantasy scenario. You know the one, where you, man/woman with (probably) no experience somehow leading a decently-sized stable of developers on a game project that you have complete control over. So, you decide to make a horror game, and you don't have to worry about budget, schedule, logistics, that sort of thing.

What would your dream horror game be like and why?
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JPrice
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by JPrice »

Hmmmm good question!
I'd certainly have a few ideas I suppose.

- I'd like the idea of having a game set within a house, like strictly confined to where you can't go outside at all. The more you progress in the game, the more abstract and strange the layout of the house would become. I'm not sure on specifics or story as it's just an idea hahaa

- I think something else that'd interesting would be a future setting where people have cybernetic enhancements (Like Deus Ex: HR) but the control centre for the enhancements located within the brain go AWOL and cause those with them to become rabid killing machines. As a result a good majority of an area has become raught with violence and destruction. You'd have to traverse though the area and such. Mainly through sneaking and such of course hahaa

- Something else that would be neat would be a game where evolution out passes those of humans. So all of the animals in the world would surpass human beings. As a result humans have gone into hiding and you play as a character who has to navigate back to their initial colony whilst avoiding all sorts of advanced creatures and animals.

- Also I want another Condemned style game with a melee combat focus. Maybe even have it slightly open world-ish with a delapetated city that's overrun with crazy people, would never happen but a man can dream though hahaa

Keep in mind I just came up with these now so they're probably not terribly original or scary hahaa
"Always look on the bright side of life"
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matt
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by matt »

Neverending Nightmares? :-P

I try to focus most of my dreaming on what is achievable given our limited resources. However, I quite enjoy working on realistic looking 3D games, so it might be fun to return to that space.

I would probably want to explore the formula of Neverending Nightmares more with trippy nightmares and explore the idea of branching narratives more so than I'll be able to on Neverending Nightmares - or at least the first Neverending Nightmares. :)

I imagine that you are asking everyone else BUT me, so I'll shut up now. hehehe

I'd totally play all of your games, JPrice! :-D
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

JPrice wrote:Hmmmm good question!
- I'd like the idea of having a game set within a house, like strictly confined to where you can't go outside at all. The more you progress in the game, the more abstract and strange the layout of the house would become. I'm not sure on specifics or story as it's just an idea hahaa
Has anyone here read House of Leaves? I started it not long ago, and I think a horror game could do something really cool with that idea. Basically it's a house that has something very wrong going on with it, mysterious hallways appearing and the dimensions are all wrong when it's measured.

It would love to see a huge, sweeping horror game that spans several centuries, following the course of some The Thing-like ancient evil presence that exists throughout the ages. You'd start off as a Stone Age hunter-gatherer who finds themself being stalked by something strange, and you have to SURVIVE the HORROR (survival horror section :) ). Then the game would skip ahead to ancient Greece, where you're just hanging out at the Parthenon when suddenly OH NO, some of your robed friends are mysteriously being killed off in grisly ways, and you have to solve the mystery before YOU'RE NEXT. Jump ahead again to Western Europe in the 1300s, and you're a plague doctor who begins to suspect that there's something EVIL behind this pestilence that is killing off half the population. Basically it'd be a series of short games all jammed together into one huge one that would let you walk around in all these different periods of history and combine mystery solving adventure with survival horror, and it would all tie in to some primeval horror that has been with mankind since the beginning. I'm sure it would be a nightmare to design and who knows how it would actually play, but hey! I'm abusing my hypothetical unlimited resources and budget!
matt wrote: I would probably want to explore the formula of Neverending Nightmares more with trippy nightmares and explore the idea of branching narratives more so than I'll be able to on Neverending Nightmares - or at least the first Neverending Nightmares. :)
Branching storylines that just go all over the place, where you can go back and every single scene has the potential to branch off and go somewhere completely new, would be neat to see in an unlimited budget, no timeline situation. Although I'm sure the technical realities of that would make it tough even then.

You mentioned Duke Nukem Forever in the last project update, and that's a great example of a developer that had basically unlimited resources and freedom yet wasn't able to create anything. It seems like sometimes constraints and a tight focus can be much better in the long run.
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gagaplex
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by gagaplex »

Bah, I would probably want to make what'd basically be System Shock 3. But then I couldn't play it myself and be surprised or really affected by the game, so I think I'd rather leave it to others to develop and for me to enjoy playing, unaware of what's to come (at least for the first run through...).
Grabthehoopka
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

Of the ideas I've had that are actually possible, I'm really surprised that nobody has tried to make a traditional survival horror game centering entirely around water enemies. I think pretty much everyone has a very kneejerk fear of water-going carnivorous creatures, since sharks and crocodiles and such are pretty much the last things still alive on this earth that you could confidently call "monsters", not to mention all the crap that lives in the pitch black part of the ocean. *shudder* Where's my Deep Blue Sea game, goddammit!

That also reminds me of the time I was working for the school paper and I was looking up legends and ghost stories at high schools in California (for reasons), and there was one from a high school in Alameda I think, where they say a kid got his toes caught in the grate on the bottom of the pool and drowned, and allegedly there have been accounts of kids on the swim and water polo teams who have swam over the grate and felt someone grab one of their feet.
Now, I didn't do very much research into it, it's obviously something the sports teams made up to haze the newer members and there probably never was a kid who drowned, but fuck me if that wasn't one of the creepiest things I'd ever read. So if actual water monsters don't cut it for you, maybe water ghosts? Has anyone ever seen The Devil's Backbone?
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gagaplex
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by gagaplex »

Grabthehoopka wrote:o if actual water monsters don't cut it for you, maybe water ghosts?
Oh, did you watch the season 1 episode of Supernatural "Dead in the Water"? Love that show (well, especially its early episodes) because they basically mix ghost- and monster-hunting with murder-mysteries and the like. You might enjoy that episode, if you haven't seen it yet.
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JPrice
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by JPrice »

Ahhh yes it's strange how water monsters aren't used more
If you like them as much as this there's one that is pretty cool, it's called the mermaid swamp (do you know it?).

anyways my dream horror game would surely be one with a lot of ghost, but I'm not going to share the story, that way if I ever release it, you won't be spoiled.
"Always look on the bright side of life"
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Grabthehoopka
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

gagaplex wrote:Oh, did you watch the season 1 episode of Supernatural "Dead in the Water"?
Yeah, although that was more TV-budget, since you didn't really see the ghost itself until towards the end. before that it was just people sticking their faces in the grody lake water. I think if you were making a horror game, you could get away with not showing anything for a while, but getting it across that it's a clear threat might be a little trickier.

I saw a preview for a survival horror game being made with Oculus Rift in mind that takes place at the bottom of the ocean outside of an oil rig or something. I don't remember what it was called, but it involves weird alien creatures that are attracted to light and moment-to-moment gameplay involves strategically turning lights on to distract them so you can sneak by. One of the neater aspects the preview mentioned was that your health is represented by cracks on your pressure suit's visor, and the more damage you take, the wider the cracks spread, and if any of the fractures touch each other, your visor implodes and you die. I have to imagine that's pretty intense in VR.

Anyways, like I said, I don't remember what it's called, and I tried to look it up, but I can't seem to find it, so I'm hoping somebody knows what I'm talking about.
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matt
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by matt »

But hey Matt if you wanna steal my idea, have Thomas experience a vision where he gets dirty and that dirt just slowly sinks into his skin and burns/erodes it away. I won't mind if you do steal it hahaha :P
That sounds cool, but the vision things are a ton of work to do, and I'm not sure we'll be able to finish the ones I have planned. hahah

In general, while fear of contamination is something I've struggled with, I haven't figured out a good way to represent it in game. I was considering having a bathroom with the toilets overflowing and whatnot, but I think that is super hard to represent well with our art style. I was thinking I could color it brown, but I had terrible flashbacks to "The Human Centipede: Full Sequence", and I want to stay as far away from that movie as possible. I think it was possibly the worst use of black and white ever and of course the most tasteless use of color in a mostly black and white movie... :-/
I saw a preview for a survival horror game being made with Oculus Rift in mind that takes place at the bottom of the ocean outside of an oil rig or something. I don't remember what it was called, but it involves weird alien creatures that are attracted to light and moment-to-moment gameplay involves strategically turning lights on to distract them so you can sneak by.
I also saw a preview of that, but I too don't remember what it is called. There are quite a few VR horror games. A similar one to the one you mentioned that I was reading about today is called Monstrum, but I'm pretty sure it's a different game.

While I don't watch Supernatural, my wife and I watch Grimm, which seems pretty similar. Maybe we'll have to check that show out.
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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