Game concept

[DaveW]

The idea of the stalker seeming helpful at first and then turning is certainly more interesting than having a generic 'out to get you' enemy. The difficulty is that I don't really want to have a vocal antagonist, because I want to make as much as possible in the game implied. Plus, a vocal antagonist like that would draw far too many similarities to Portal than I'd like. Plus, I don't think I'd be able to find a suitable voice actor and/or a sound guy able to modify the voice. That said maybe I could get the guy who voiced Clarence in Penumbra Black Plague.

So the difficulty would be establishing his motives non-verbally. I'll have to have a think about how I could do that.

(Actually, the sequence in the lighthouse I mentioned could be written to suggest the guy would rather commit suicide than 'let him off the island' - which would establish his motives for helping you, at least)


But the idea always was akin to the LOST smoke monster: he would only show up occasionally and the moments in-between encounters would probably be the scariest (when you're nervous he's about to attack you.)

[DDL]

You could just have things like "helpful item is found exactly where you might look for it", which you could start by not calling attention to, leaving the player to think "oh, it's just a handy gameplay conceit", but then later maybe actually show ...'something' leaving a key (or whatever) in a place you'd look. Have a wholly non-verbal 'helper'.

Then later you could start messing with the player/helper trust ratio ("why did the entity leave that key on a branch over a river?"). It could be aces.

[bobby 55]

Hehehe! Continuing on with DDL's idea. In a shooter (Medal of Honor...the original) one thing that made me jump, nearly literally, was a fricking train coming out of the mist with accompanied sound. Perhaps some sort of trap springing just early enough (so as not to cause damage) before your character reached a key, or journal entry, could add an "oh shit, what was that?" moment.

The idea being; it's all calm and quiet, then thwack, out of nowhere noise and motion.

[gamer0004]

Yeah having the guy help the player at first, in a subtle way (so not being present but by dropping the right items in such a way which cannot be mistaken for coincidence or game design) would be really cool.

[DaveW]

Ok, so maybe I can experiment trying to get those concepts into the linear section before I even think about trying to create an interesting non-linear section of the game. The linear section would be the first 10-15 minutes and act as the tutorial.


You wake up on a sinking ship with alarms going off around you, you have to swim underwater in order to find a hull breach and escape from the ship. It is also possible to find a communications room where you can send out a distress call (which will mean you get hints of a rescue attempt through radio broadcasts throughout the rest of the game)

You swim up to the surface and immediately in front of you is a large cove cut into the rock face. Atop the rocks is a large, non-operational lighthouse (which turns on when you begin walking around the island, basically telling the player to go there to see the cinematic). You swim into the cove and climb onto the broken jetty with an old speedboat moored up.

Inside, through a tunnel, is a large stash of drugs which have been laid to waste. There are a few, faded blood stains leading out to the jetty. There is a boarded up entrance to another part of the caves, and you need to pick up a crowbar from the ground and use it on the door to open it.

You're now in an old mine shaft - after a few maze-like tunnels you reach a wide opening with a corrugated metal office. Inside is the dead body of the mine's former manager slumped over a table. He's got a key wrapped around his neck - but you can't pick it up and most players wouldn't notice it. This will also be the only dead body you will see in the entire game. There's a switch to turn on the generator power, which lights the way further into the mine. You eventually reach the exit - but the gate is locked.

Your only option is to turn back, and when you reach the office again, the side has been ripped open and there is a trail of faded blood leading to a collapsed mine shaft. A hand sticks out from the rubble clutching the key. When you take it, the mine begins to shake. Moving back to the exit, the lights you turned on earlier begin to flicker until you reach the exit and enter the island.

[Chris]

The stalker parts sound like The Slender Man from Slender . Gyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhh!!!! no! No! No!


Haha. This is why i hate forests in the dark.

*Spotted by enemy audio music cue appears*

Holy fuck!! Hide!! Hide!! Neeeeeeeee!!

Maybe i should make a game jumpscare related Thread?

[Chris]

And may i suggest, if nobody suggested it, make an "Enemy Spotted You" music cue. Make it frightening,ofc, why not?

[Chris]

Ok. Sorry if just filled this place with some spam. i went waaay off topic.

Did i mention i was making a zombie mod?

Nice story you got there, what i got for my map was action and mystery.
you brewed this story up in 20 mins? Epik.

[AEmer]

@ DaveW
Well, that works.

I generally think that would be a good way of designing it: When you find something helpful in a place you already examined, and you know for sure it wasn't there before, and now its there. This would work with, for instance, a ladder. Consider this: You realize that the way out is over a tall ledge of some kind that you're at the foot of...and you see a ladder that's out of reach, but can clearly be used for getting up there. So you go to get the ladder, and as you're heading for it along a route that makes sense, you hear a loud noise and a clang, and when you reach the location where the ladder was, suddenly it's down at the foot of the ledge, where you want it to be for you to use, so you can climb up.

Some players might miss the significance because its always hard to do that kind of thing and having the player interpret it correctly (they might think it was a bug or shoddy design or what have you). To that I say, don't worry. Players don't have to be spoon fed.

[DaveW]

And may i suggest, if nobody suggested it, make an "Enemy Spotted You" music cue. Make it frightening,ofc, why not?

No no no no no

No audio cues. While they work for some games, the ideology of this concept is that the game world is presented as completely naturalistic- at no point do I grab control of the player and tell them "THIS is scary - look, be scared!" (there will be some sequences where the player's camera is controlled, but that's it). Granted, a lot of people may miss a glimpse of the stalker in the distant forest without an audio cue - but those that do spot it should be even more creeped out by it. The problem I have with audio cues is they remind you that you're playing a game rather than experiencing the horror for yourself.

By the same principle I'm not going to script in sequences that make people jump. That's a lazy way of doing horror - having someone walk around a corner and the stalker jump out at them. I also hate games that make me jump.

@ DaveW
Well, that works.

I generally think that would be a good way of designing it: When you find something helpful in a place you already examined, and you know for sure it wasn't there before, and now its there. This would work with, for instance, a ladder. Consider this: You realize that the way out is over a tall ledge of some kind that you're at the foot of...and you see a ladder that's out of reach, but can clearly be used for getting up there. So you go to get the ladder, and as you're heading for it along a route that makes sense, you hear a loud noise and a clang, and when you reach the location where the ladder was, suddenly it's down at the foot of the ledge, where you want it to be for you to use, so you can climb up.

Some players might miss the significance because its always hard to do that kind of thing and having the player interpret it correctly (they might think it was a bug or shoddy design or what have you). To that I say, don't worry. Players don't have to be spoon fed.

I'll make a note of that - might be able to work that into the docks section But yeah, I think there will have to be at least some occasions where it's completely obvious he's helped you out. Hopefully the event in the mine (where it's clear that someone was there after you to rip open the side of the shack and drag the body across the floor) would set the tone and people would be more attentive to someone helping them.

[Babeuf97]

This sounds like a good concept. The atmosphere you describe reminds me a lot of 'the Horla', which is possibly one of the best short horror stories I have read. It is about a mysterious being who is never seen although the narrator suspects he inhabits his house. Throughout the story there are only hints of its presence, such as water drunk out a glass. Also, the story is written in the form of a journal and as you said this type of narration might work better than voices or the like. Here is an example of how this might work in game :

Early in the game the player would find the journal of a sailor who landed on the island a few years before the story takes place. In the first entries of the journal the narrator would mention a helpful presence but the following pages would be missing. The other entries of the journal would be hidden on the island for the player to find. (Wait, now this sounds just like Myst doesn't it ?) This way it would be up to the player to find out what is going and would encourage him to explore the island (whether or not that 'thing' wants the player to find them is yours to determine).

As the journal goes it would be hinted how dangerous the thing is. Something fun would be to leave it unclear whether it is some supernatural being or the sailor himself who went mad and possessed after spending all these years alone on the island.

Well I know this is not that original, just my two cents really :p

[Chris]

And may i suggest, if nobody suggested it, make an "Enemy Spotted You" music cue. Make it frightening,ofc, why not?

No no no no no

No audio cues. While they work for some games, the ideology of this concept is that the game world is presented as completely naturalistic- at no point do I grab control of the player and tell them "THIS is scary - look, be scared!" (there will be some sequences where the player's camera is controlled, but that's it). Granted, a lot of people may miss a glimpse of the stalker in the distant forest without an audio cue - but those that do spot it should be even more creeped out by it. The problem I have with audio cues is they remind you that you're playing a game rather than experiencing the horror for yourself.

By the same principle I'm not going to script in sequences that make people jump. That's a lazy way of doing horror - having someone walk around a corner and the stalker jump out at them. I also hate games that make me jump.

Oh, OK. No music. Just like Slender. Only audio cues. Music at a few events or like that.
Might i give you Slender for your jumpscare moments?
I know you hate jumpscares, but this one will make you cry.

BTW you need a high graphics card for this.
https://rapidshare.com/#!download|854p1 ... |60869|0|0

Now...

[DaveW]

This sounds like a good concept. The atmosphere you describe reminds me a lot of 'the Horla', which is possibly one of the best short horror stories I have read. It is about a mysterious being who is never seen although the narrator suspects he inhabits his house. Throughout the story there are only hints of its presence, such as water drunk out a glass. Also, the story is written in the form of a journal and as you said this type of narration might work better than voices or the like. Here is an example of how this might work in game :

Early in the game the player would find the journal of a sailor who landed on the island a few years before the story takes place. In the first entries of the journal the narrator would mention a helpful presence but the following pages would be missing. The other entries of the journal would be hidden on the island for the player to find. (Wait, now this sounds just like Myst doesn't it ?) This way it would be up to the player to find out what is going and would encourage him to explore the island (whether or not that 'thing' wants the player to find them is yours to determine).

As the journal goes it would be hinted how dangerous the thing is. Something fun would be to leave it unclear whether it is some supernatural being or the sailor himself who went mad and possessed after spending all these years alone on the island.

Well I know this is not that original, just my two cents really :p

I'll give Horla a read. Right now as well as trying to learn the UDK, I'm trying to soak up as much inspiration as possible.

I've been thinking journals are the way to go with storytelling. I'd thought about having journals suggesting someone had come to the island and was making strange things happen, but that you never get an explanation for why everyone has disappeared. I actually quite like the idea of it being a sailor coming to the island, and you being able to read the journal from his perspective too. Maybe the local people blame him for the strange things that are happening, but his own journals are ambiguous.

Oh, OK. No music. Just like Slender. Only audio cues. Music at a few events or like that.
Might i give you Slender for your jumpscare moments?
I know you hate jumpscares, but this one will make you cry.

Well, actually music I have no problem with. It's specifically audio cues (at least, musical audio cues) that I want to avoid because it would break the game-play I'm trying to achieve.

What I think will make the game scary is that everything is presented naturally. There's no set path through the world, there's no HUD, there's little to no music etc. - so you don't feel "protected" by the fact you're in a game and everything that happens is predictable or scripted. Your only warning that you're about to be attacked is listening for footsteps and foliage rustling - if you don't listen out for things like that, the stalker will probably kill you. An audio cue just says to me "You're about to witness something scary that we've scripted to scare you."

I have got Slender installed though, I haven't got round to trying it out yet after having some boot issues with Windows.



Edit:

Had a go making some current-gen game artwork - my first time baking normal maps and importing into UDK etc. so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:

[Babeuf97]

The island you describe sounds pretty much - mind you, in a good way - like a modern version of the lost colony of Roanoke. Except these guys left no journals at all.

On a side note, these tombs are looking great (bad choice of words, but whatever).

About the gameplay : will the rifle be the only weapon available? I get it that a whole arsenal like in Battlefield 3 is not needed given the kind of atmosphere you are trying to set, but imo it would make sense if the player were allowed to pick up a few basic weapons such as a stick or hammer (that is, if you plan to include melee combat). And the character might also use his fists.

[DaveW]

Another thing for me to read up on then!

The rifle will be the only weapon. When you have it, you can use Mouse1 to fire and Mouse2 to switch to the flashlight. There'll be a button on the keyboard to do a melee attack if you run out of ammo, or if the stalker is next to you.

There'll be context specific items like crowbars but I don't want to advocate melee combat except as a last resort - I think it would feel too game-like. The rifle will only be used a few times anyway - most of the time it will just sit on your screen looking (hopefully - if I get the art right) awesome.