Your dream horror game?

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Grabthehoopka
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

matt wrote: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 thought of a game mechanic a while ago for some hypothetical Manhunt-style game where every time you kill somebody you would get their blood all over your hands and shirt, which would in turn make the player character freak out in a sanity-meter like effect, and the only way to get it to go down is to find a sink or some other pool of water and wash the blood off. Maybe something like that? Like, you have to stop and wash your hands at these water basins or wash stations? You could use an audio indicator like chittering, skittering noises that get louder and louder, and if you go too long then Thomas falls to his knees and scratches his face off like that one scene from Poltergeist. I know this is a lot of work, but maybe you could make a particle effect or a shader (or whatever the technical term for it is) like the shadow effect so it looks like bugs are crawling around just at the edges of the light?
matt wrote: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.
It's really good, and it's shocking how much blood and gore they got away with on network television. I would highly recommend the first 5 seasons, since that's how long the show's creator stayed on board, and that's how long he planned for the show to be. He planned a whole overarching storyline with a rather definitive ending, but executives did what executives do and sort of made him leave it more open-ended. He left and the show kept going on, but...it wasn't all that good, and although there were some really good ideas floating around, they either quickly resolved them before they really had a chance to develop and turn into something cool, or they made it drag on too long long and turn into something stupid. Anyways. I recommend it, yes.
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matt
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by matt »

Grabthehoopka wrote:You could use an audio indicator like chittering, skittering noises that get louder and louder, and if you go too long then Thomas falls to his knees and scratches his face off like that one scene from Poltergeist. I know this is a lot of work, but maybe you could make a particle effect or a shader (or whatever the technical term for it is) like the shadow effect so it looks like bugs are crawling around just at the edges of the light?
That sounds like a really good idea! We only have less than 5 months left in development, so it is beyond the scope of this game, but it is a really cool idea for the future.

I'll have to see if I can sell my wife on Supernatural. She is a big fan of Grimm, so maybe she'll give it a try. :)
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
Grabthehoopka
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

Yeah, I figured the time for creativity had come and gone. I don't know much about game development, but I imagine it's fairly similar to producing a movie, and yeah, once pre-production ends, there's too much at stake and not enough time to be getting creative. You stick to the plan, or you get replaced with someone who will.

There is always the future, though!
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

matt wrote:
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... :-/
Any plans to use green and yellow? Just unnatural shades of bright green and yellow to represent infected wounds or something, I'd think that would contrast very nastily with the black and white. Or maybe it'd just look terrible in the wrong way :mrgreen:
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matt
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by matt »

We added a small amount of green recently. :) We have yellow in the picture frame in the starting level, so I think all the colors have been covered. hahaha
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
Grabthehoopka
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

I always associate infection with nasty, dark shades of red and purple. Yellow and green I would associate with healing bruises.

Working your way up the secondary color wheel, eh? I don't remember off the top of my head, but weren't there some greens and purples in the wreath of flowers at the end of The Coming Storm?
ranger_lennier
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by ranger_lennier »

Grabthehoopka wrote: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!
Soma, Frictional's next game, is set in an underwater research facility. I haven't seen enough of it to know how the gameplay works, but I find the story intriguing. There seems to be a lot of involuntary mind uploading. While I'm supportive of mind uploading in general (though estimates of when it could actually be implemented vary wildly), as with most technologies, it could definitely be abused.
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

Grabthehoopka wrote:I always associate infection with nasty, dark shades of red and purple. Yellow and green I would associate with healing bruises.

Working your way up the secondary color wheel, eh? I don't remember off the top of my head, but weren't there some greens and purples in the wreath of flowers at the end of The Coming Storm?
I was thinking along the lines of pus, but you're right, I'm not that familiar with infected wounds.

Ugh something I just did and I don't recommend is google image searching "infected wounds". Good night everyone, I'll see myself out!
matt wrote:We added a small amount of green recently. :) We have yellow in the picture frame in the starting level, so I think all the colors have been covered. hahaha
The important ones anyway for sure!
Grabthehoopka
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by Grabthehoopka »

ranger_lennier wrote:Soma, Frictional's next game, is set in an underwater research facility. I haven't seen enough of it to know how the gameplay works, but I find the story intriguing.
Yeah, they haven't said how much the water stuff would be factored in. I was thinking more along the lines of the shark tank in Resident Evil, especially the amazing job they did updating it in the remake. Also, while Far Cry 3 definitely made me terrified of the water, with its crocodiles and sharks, I always associate traumatic water sections with the Tomb Raider series, since Eidos had an almost sadistic tendency to include at least one water section with water-dwelling predators in each game.
RightClickSaveAs wrote:Ugh something I just did and I don't recommend is google image searching "infected wounds". Good night everyone, I'll see myself out!
One of the worst shock videos I've ever seen was camcorder footage of some dumbass with an infected tattoo site in the doctor's office. Initially, you just see a tiny tinge of red, but it's hard to tell cause this guy's back is completely covered in tattoos and he's a rather large fellow to begin with. So the doctor takes his sickle-scalpel thing and cuts this huge, wide incision across it and ends up basically lancing this guy's entire back. Over the span of about 10 seconds, he manages to squeeze like a gallon of pus out of this guy's back. It's equal parts horrifying and impressive. If you're a bad enough dude, you can easily find it on youtube and the like.
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gagaplex
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Re: Your dream horror game?

Post by gagaplex »

Not underwater, but also a highly "elemental" game if you will is Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason. It's actually one of my favourite action/horror games and all about ice and water physics (when the ice melts). Severely underappreciated by the wider public, if you ask me.

Here's a pic that captures the great atmosphere quite well:
Image
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