Why can't I live in a normal neighborhood?

[Kino]

THERE IS MY REBUTTAL YOUNG...ERM...BRO OR SIS? ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE/FAIR LADY TO RESPOND TO IT?!

FORGIVE ME SWEETBRO FOR THE DELAY
THIS LADY PERSON SHALL RISE TO THE CHALLENGE ONCE AGAIN, MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL

But jeez, what a unique thought, to base fear not out of creepy, gory, icky shit, but generally unnerving, weird, "this shit ain't right" kind of stuff, that really hasn't been done before. Kinda like how people are freaked out by glitches from old N64. They're freaked out because THAT SHIT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, and if we embody that feeling, it could be something never seen before. Or maybe people will just laugh their asses off, everybody is different.

Yeah, I've never seen this done before so I'd really love to see a game with this aesthetic made. Something like a more linear LSD: Dream Emulator with better graphics and a more solid story. The varying-degrees-of-insanity aspect would be even more awesome than I could expect. I'm sure there's people out there that are tired of the same kind of horror too... there's a difference between "gross" and actually being creeped out. This will be a challenge, which is probably why it hasn't been done before but I say LET'S GO FOR IT.
Glitches are fantastic but there's a high risk for derp. This will be the main challenge for the game. Is this just going to be something for people to laugh at or can we actually scare people with such a concept? A small handful of lolwut moments (easter eggs? hard to reach places?) would be fine but this shouldn't happen when it's not on purpose. Also, we could have the weirdest environment or character designs but it's solely reliant on delivery. But I think this will be covered with the "you are never safe" vibe this game is going to have.
In the vidya world glitches are pretty much the purest form of the unexpected. This kind of unpredictably would keep the player on his/her toes easily so some glitch logic would definitely be a good addition to the game, as long as they aren't 100% jump out scares. I'll try to think of more glitch-reminiscent ideas but so far all I got:
Some sort of slow transition / take over

I'll admit this isn't the scariest thing in the world but it's an interesting idea. (Skip to 2:20 or something if you get bored).

Also, some sort of teleportation / wall glitchin'. A game glitch I've experienced is one of the NPCs / enemies abruptly jumping locations. Including RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME which was startling. Plus like in GTA seeing cars and people half sunk into the ground, flailing about. The first is a little too jump-out scare and the second one is silly so I'm not sure about those.
Lastly, enemies that walk through closed doors like ghosts when you think you are safe. Fuck. I could see something like that happening in this game since most of the enemies are hallucinations not bound to the laws of physics. But if this game gets too "glitchy" there might be too many cheap deaths... but at least it'd be a challenge.
Maybe it could be like the game Ai Oni. It's an indie horror game, made with the same program as Yumi Nikki so the the graphics aren't all that great. But the core of the game is that you're trapped in a house and you're just trying to avoid one HUGE monster that randomly starts chasing you at certain points. The only way to escape is to hide, usually in closets. After you hide, the screen turns black and you have to wait. If the monster "saw" you when you were entering the closet... after a few seconds in the dark the door will open abruptly and you get attacked/killed. Maybe these enemies in the game... if you're in their line of sight when you try to hide they'll be able to walk through walls and doors to get you.

But yeah, making non-ridiculous surreal horror will be a challenge.
Some people have serious phobias of game glitches. I usually laugh at glitches...
Watching the original source video for Get Down was a little unnerving though, mostly for the bone-crunching and other weird noises . Well, I would be unnerved if the song wasn't playing manually in my head... but I guess we'd have to the way that makes a usually silly glitch scary...

Like this...
(skip to 0:37 - 0:47, turn off sound)


Take away the dumb music and flailing around... I feel like that twisting / mutating / splitting in half animation could be disturbing if done right. Especially if it was kicked up a few notches.
But as is, lolwut.

I feel like the cutscene would take away from the immersion. It's what I liked about Silent Hill. The load times were brisk and negligible, everything felt seamless, even though it was obviously not. Loading screens and cut scenes, I feel like they have no place in a horror game. Dead Space did it pretty well. All cutscenes were a part of the game, so while talking to some mother fucker through a glass wall, at any moment a necromorph could jump out and bite your face or something to that variety. However, perhaps I'm being obtuse about this. The areas where you'd find mementos would not necessarily be high-danger areas, (Although, maybe a couple could be just for shits and giggles, and to add that little stealth gimmick.) so a cutscene would not interfere in the intensity of the game per se. As long as there's not too many of them. I just hope the loading times are few and far between.

So no cutscenes, okay. Yeah I agree... I tried thinking of an instance where you'd use a tiny cutscene, even if it looked like gameplay footage, but yeah it would be better without it. The story is up to the player to find, not to ram it down their throats. I like the idea of an interactive cutscene but I don't know if that would work for this.
So let's think of some area transfer ideas..?
Maybe you're looking at an old letter close up... once you press B or whatever, you stop reading the letter and return back to the game. The camera zooms out like it normally would and you'd find yourself in a new area, or as soon as you move away the old area changes into a new one you haven't seen yet. Like you walk down a hallway and it changes into another hallway from a different building. Of course things could be more extreme than that.
If it's a negative memory... like when he broke up with his old girlfriend or something. Before you're fully in the memory area a pot or something gets thrown at you and you hear her yelling... and then rest of the memory transfers in. This is cliche but I guess I'm just trying to say that some of the memories immediately throw you into a bit of danger. Not instant death but enough to keep you on your toes. Of course when you come in contact with a REALLY bad memory however, no mercy. These would probably be the "bosses" of the game. It would be fun if you were transferred to a really boring, safe looking area but then the walls fall back and the people shapeshift into horrible things and AW SHIT GIANT MONSTER. This would be set off when you do something casual like pick up a ringing phone or maybe something else. But nothing too threatening.

Loading screens are the worst, I'm not sure how to avoid those if there's going to be crazy animation everywhere though... but we can dream. There must be a way to sneak in the loading while you play, but it's never revealed and never shown on-screen.

The memories should allude to one another, at least give a good idea to where the next item should end up. Like...if the last words you're having with your wife in one memory is about her having a baby, you should expect something in the infant ward (I don't know the proper term for infant ward...), what an infant ward is doing in an asylum is not for me to decide. This is all brainstorming. Or maybe my initial idea, you will have a map of where you are. Everytime you go to a new area, you'll eventually find a map for that area. Maybe you have a master map, I don't know. Maybe you can even have a notepad with hand-drawn looking maps. But the point is, on the map you'll start with 2 major points of interest. A mark over where the generator is supposed to be and a mark over a possible memory. After getting your first memory, you'll write a note down in your notebook about it or you'll mark your map, or some shit. THE POINT IS you'll have a good idea of where you're supposed to go. If you decide to ignore the memory, fuck it. The memories should not be the entire game, they should be about plot and fleshing out your character and all that jazz. At most, they should be a cool and note-worthy mechanic that will be praised, but not the centerpiece. Maybe make the first few mandatory, then leave it to the player to decide if he wants to put up with that shit. Make it a challenge to get to them too. Like at some point, have a memory so fucking hard to get, that players should be like, "Fuck this shit. Wow, I'm just going to play the game." All challenges should be unique, or at least connected to their area. Like if it's in a dark corridor, make it a stealth challenge. Or if it's in a decrepit area, make it a platform challenge. If it's in a security area, marksman challenge, you get the idea.

When it comes to the ending being based on the memories...hmm... There should definitely be different endings depending on if you played the souvenir game or not. Yea...if you decided to leave the main character as a Link or Gordon Freeman, and not as a Drake or John Marshton, you should necessarily be punished for it, just given different view points. Good point.

Ooh, so like a trail of clues? I like. I also like the idea of a little spiralbound notebook / sketchbook type thing you keep with you. Sort of like Uncharted 2... the main character would keep a sketchbook with him. Over the course of the game the sketchbook had more and more drawings and notes in it. Plus clues what to do next in the game.
Of course, in this game the main character would probably not be the best artist. But at least in his notebook would be maps, a quick jot down of the memories you've experienced and what that could mean. And like you said, clues of what to do next. Maybe this is what you see when you push the start button? You push pause and he opens up his notebook. The first thing you see written down is a list "Save, Inventory, Memories, Map, Settings" etc... When you select something the main characters flips over some pages and there it is. If you select inventory you'll see the list of objects that you have / can equip. If you loose that item, later on when you check the inventory it'll be crossed out. If you have multiple items (like for healing, or pills) there will be roman numeral style hash marks next to that item on the list. Plus, since the main character is schizophrenic, there's no reason why the words or pictures wouldn't have to shift while you look at them. So, if you equip an item or throw out an item you can see your inventory change... like the pencil markings would shift about and change accordingly.
The map should update when you explore new areas. And when your sanity meter is 1/3 or less it'll be extremely hard to read.
ALSO, for extra bricks or as a random event, if you look at the map there could be a crudely-drawn picture of a monster that wasn't there before. But strangely enough, it's moving towards an X that's drawn on the map. Your location.


Yeah, besides memories there should be more than one other aspect to the game.
Like your interaction with NPCS / non-enemies would count towards a good or bad ending. But I wouldn't want it to be like Fable where you can only do really super good things or club baby seals with no in-between moral-wise. No matter what end you get, I'd want the player to make at least one horrible choice. Or at least make most choices grey as hell, like sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. But I'll save this for the character thread.

So does this mean the character is going to get weapons? I don't think the main character could realistically get his hands on a real gun or flamethrower. (Maybe you can when you've gone completely insane, but once you snap out of it you realize it's just a lighter or a plank of wood or something. Or maybe they disappear once you leave the memory). But for added horror I guess the main character should be helpless most of the time.
I like the stealth challenges idea. Instead of sneaking past guards you'd be sneaking past much worse things I bet. You know how guards in vidya usually have a routine path that they walk and they give the player convenient moments to pass by unnoticed? Since this is going to be a surreal game you could troll the fuck out of the player by throwing a few rules out the window. Like, the player would recognize the pattern this enemy is walking in since he/she'd be used to other video games. The guard walks down the hallway, keeping his back turned on the entrance. The player thinks they'd be safe enough since the enemy stands for a very long time looking in the opposite direction... once they get anywhere near the door however the guard instantly turns his head backwards Exorcist style, becomes demon-like, and relentlessly chases after you, even if you are able to get through the door. Or maybe you can't get through that door unless you get chased by the crazy guard. After which, you need to find a place to hide and once he's gone there'll be other people to sneak by. This game better have a sprint button.
But in other challenges it would be fun if you basically had to say "FUCK LOGIC" in order to beat them. Like when you're completely insane and trying to beat an objective you have to do something absurd.

What I had in mind was he wouldn't always be talking. Just like simple dialog, though memories or between workers. Yeah, we should make him reserved at least, and explain his personality though his memories, fleshing out who he is and why things are the way they are. Maybe you can even delve into his past exploits, who he was before the asylum, why he's in the asylum. But again, you can give all this future grade A writing straight from Sweet Bro himself a pass if you so choose to. I feel like there should be SOME story, you know. Not just "fix the facility" or "escape the facility" but more like a discovery kind of thing, unfolding all sorts of...shit that makes the player think "huh, that's pretty cool." Not only exploring the facility, but exploring your mind... Yeah, and not in the Psychonauts sense, just mementos.

Grade A writing you say?

But yeah, dialog between characters would be nice. And since it's not a cutscene, he'd be saying these things as you're running around.
Plus, maybe when you're investigating things? Like, you walk up to a creepy looking NPC and try talking to him... the main character then says "... I don't trust this guy just yet" or something short to that effect. You'd have to get more sane before you could talk to this NPC. Or if you pick up a letter he'll say who it's from and what he thought of the person. Nothing long, like a sentence at a time.
I just ask that there will be no long, opening dialog or cutscene. You should get thrown into the game immediately and maybe the opening credits could be implemented into that very first level. But I love games that throw you into the game quickly. A fast example would be Portal. No cutscene, but you're already trapped in the lab and the game tutorial adds to the plot more then just figuring out how to use the gun. I think you mentioned that near the beginning of the game the character is already outside of his room and hiding in some scary area. Or maybe when you start the game you're not in the asylum at all but after a short amount of time playing you realize it's a hallucination. The playable-cutscene sort of idea could really play a part here too.
But yeah, I really like the idea of no cutscenes and minimal dialog just to amplify the whole exploration aspect of the game and make things more immersive. You only should know as much as your character does as you piece his life back together. I also like it being an unusual plot / game. It would be interesting to play a game that isn't about killing stuff. Honestly, I don't think this game should give you that many opportunities to kill people. Maybe the monsters should be unkillable...

Beautiful. I love this idea much more than my own. At whole sanity, a realistic palette should be used. Maybe go to an actual asylum, take some pictures at various times of the day, look at them, those are our colors. And the lower your sanity, the flatter the colors, eventually making it almost 2d, maybe kind of cartoony? Nah, I think the whole surreal thing would work better if it was all realistic, yet the surreal elements were still present...but some kind of visual or maybe audio give. Maybe as you go loony, music begins to play or sounds are exaggerated. No...I don't want the game to go all cartoony once you lose sanity, because once you hit rock bottom, that's where the game should shine and strike fear into the player. That's when the game should go all LSD on you (if you haven't played it, it's a great game. Very weird, very surreal) and start to freak you out. Perhaps...perhaps to palettes could become exaggerated? Like white walls get all bright, like blindingly so and darkness starts to look like it's grabbing at you? How about when you're going insane, when you try to look out a window, the curtains violently close right when you're about to see what's outside? I think's the best answer I have for the moment.

I would love to go scout some asylums for photos sometime, that's a good idea. Or maybe just google for the time being...
Yeah, cartoony is not the best approach. More like the main character dropped acid? But I like the idea of unrealistic colors... and a feeling of artificial or unnatural lighting wherever you go. Like, normally, light would shine from the windows or a lamp. But when you're crazy maybe the floor-tiles light up, or maybe the light source is invisible but it's at a weird angle or shining horizontally or something. Or two light sources, one on the left and one or the right, that are different, jarring colors? Plus, patterns on wallpaper could start twisting around and other things. I like the curtain idea.

I think that's interesting. I think views should only start fighting with each other once shit really hits the fan. Like you're irrecoverably mentally broken at this point. It's almost the end of the game, you've found out who the Big Bad is at this point, some sort of TWEEST and you're breaking down, maybe you remembered your wife died or you killed her or some shit, and your brain is just flipping the FUCK out.

Okay, for the area, how about it's like one of the last areas of the game, preceding the climax where your character flips the fuck out? It's like a visitors center/recreation center. Perhaps it's the rooms of some of the less severe cases, the ones that aren't violent. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. You go into their rooms and find a couple actually cowering in there, too afraid to look or talk to you, since the facility is in total chaos and they've heard banging and screaming throughout the facility. So they're cowering and you're looking for a key or a memento or some shit. In each room you find some sort of THING and it affects how you see the world, since you've recently hit your breaking point and shit is affecting you in the worst ways. Maybe one room, there's a doll from a patient's daughter and suddenly, everything in that room is felt and there's a little platform challenge after that. Then you exit into the hall and everything is normal, or surreal as you put it. You enter another guy's room and you find a hand-drawn little picture and suddenly everything is all black and white, or crayon and you have another platform thing to get you back to reality. It could be a very interesting and memorable part of our game. It should also make you see what has happened to everyone else in the facility, not just the crazies, touch your mortality and see that everyone has a family, shit like that. Maybe the room with the doll, the guy in there is killed, his throat slit. That could be a real little egg, and people who see it might be touched. Oh shit...how about the doll is in there and on it is a note that says "i luv you dady" or something to that extent. Shit, I'm getting all depressed thinking about it. EVERY room in that area should be like that. It'd be amazing. Maybe in the last room, have it normal looking, but as you tear the wall paper away, the guy turns out to be a real psychopath, and he's not in his room. Then the view gets all grungy and silent hilly before you get back to reality. That's probably the room of the guy that killed our father character. I think that'd be pretty interesting. Something there for people who notice it, but it shouldn't be shoved down the player's throats, it should be relatively subtle.

Maybe some of the rooms would have subtle clues that you've already been there. Maybe you were the guy that slit the doctors throat? Like one of the boss battles was actually when you were flipping out and killing the doctor.
Also, they could be symbolic of each of the NPCs you interacted with.
You wouldn't need a note on the doll for people to understand. The symbolism should be light, but understandable. Like people would think about the game later and put the pieces together. The game should be satisfying game and plotwise even if they don't notice these things too.
But yeah, you should duke it out with one of the more violent inmates while also hanging out with the less violent ones from time-to-time (before they betray you or turn into monsters.)

Maybe you find out that this was the day that the doctors decided that you were better and that you were ready to be released. Either one of the more psychotic inmates essentially caused a prison break and the stresses of trying to survive broke you again or, for some reason, you totally snapped and you were the one that caused all of this. These could be some of the alternate endings.
Or like you said, you find out the character actually killed his dad. Maybe one of the earlier memories you find would be of the main character, as a child, witnessing his father's murder. Later on, you learn that this is just a repressed memory from the truth and the boy watching was actually the dad's stepson after remarrying. Maybe whether or not you were the murderer depends on how you play the game. If, as a player, you were more prone to violence you would get a more murderous backstory at the end of the game. Something like that.

PS: If we're going surreal, we GOT to have an MC Escher kind of room going on. Come on, it's a must. Maybe in one of the Cuckoo's Nest guy's rooms, he has an Escher painting or some shit. We just HAVE to stick something in there.

OH GOD YES.
Maybe if you try to climb stairs you're not supposed to yet, something like this would happen. You'd be in a maze of stairs and eventually you'd walk down the same stairs you were trying to climb and be back where you started.
But yeah, I wouldn't directly copy his art but using the concept behind it is a definite must.
Maybe we should have an art dump thread somewhere for inspiration...


Also, one last idea. Maybe your sanity bar is short at the beginning of the game, so that keeps you from accessing a lot of areas and you're crazy most of the time. But as the game progresses you can add to that stat (like how in most games you can add more hearts to your HP meter). Maybe when you're exploring these memories you could find a pill, a puzzle piece, marbles (because he, y'know, lost them? *bad pun*) or some other random object that you could find repeatedly in other memories. But these objects should be the same... if not the same, at least they should share similar qualities. If you find one it boosts your sanity bar... so you have to experience every memory to get a maxed-out sanity bar. Or maybe if you get 3/4ths of them it's maxed out. Doing so would allow you to access to every area in the game. But enemies in these new areas would probably cause a lot more damage to your sanity and enemies in older areas would be less menacing.
Maybe pills and pill bottles refill your sanity meter. If this hits zero you won't die. You'll just have one hell of a trip and the game gets a bit harder. If the sanity meter is at absolute zero your health can be attacked directly.
Food and first aid kits can heal your health. (In this prison-break scenario, all the doctors are gone and so is any semblance of order. Including organized meal times and the cafeteria is probably blocked off by violent inmates or already emptied. Main character guy would probably be hungry / thirsty. So food is health related).
Or maybe you should only have a sanity bar?

[brandedahall]

Jul 8, 2010 16:47:40 GMT -5 Kino said:

I like the stealth challenges idea. Instead of sneaking past guards you'd be sneaking past much worse things I bet. You know how guards in vidya usually have a routine path that they walk and they give the player convenient moments to pass by unnoticed? Since this is going to be a surreal game you could troll the fuck out of the player by throwing a few rules out the window. Like, the player would recognize the pattern this enemy is walking in since he/she'd be used to other video games. The guard walks down the hallway, keeping his back turned on the entrance. The player thinks they'd be safe enough since the enemy stands for a very long time looking in the opposite direction... once they get anywhere near the door however the guard instantly turns his head backwards Exorcist style, becomes demon-like, and relentlessly chases after you, even if you are able to get through the door. Or maybe you can't get through that door unless you get chased by the crazy guard. After which, you need to find a place to hide and once he's gone there'll be other people to sneak by. This game better have a sprint button.
But in other challenges it would be fun if you basically had to say "FUCK LOGIC" in order to beat them. Like when you're completely insane and trying to beat an objective you have to do something absurd.

dammit that sounds awesome, gives me the jitters just thinking about it and after enough time waiting by the door the guard would break through and come after you (thats if the setting would be free roam) and the player would have to hide.

[Sweet Bro]

Oh jeez, here we go. Fifty thousand words.

Time to separate my points with subheading.

"Glitches", so our programmers don't feel bad:
A very peculiar subject. If they're done right, it can take the game to another level of unpredictability. Sudden/unexpected pit falls, fake walls, more ridiculous glitches where objects are twisted and contorted in horrifying shapes. Maybe even fake coding errors, where enemies appear with wrong models and make wrong sounds...hrmm. Maybe when you're insane and try to talk to somebody, all you get is an enemy sound file, or maybe something silly like a dog barking. These 'glitches' have to be well done though. Very well done, lest player confuse them for actual glitches instead of sort of cameo appearances of famous glitches of the Nintendo 64 slant cartridge era. Otherwise, the game will be seen as shoddy, poorly coded, and that's not what we want to go for. But during phases of insanity, you should definitely NOT feel safe. Again, though, glitches are mostly not seen as terrifying, as they are unexpected and eventually hilarious. Cougar man and bird woman from RDR are pretty scary. Get Down without music is scary. Get Down with music is hilarious. Laddergoat is hilarious. Anyways, glitches always leave a feeling of wut, everything after is different depending on the player. I'll have to check out Ao Oni. Looks...interesting? That Pokemon video you posted also brings up an idea. Instead of a different style when going insane, your view would just be obscured by different textures like that video. Anyways, when you hit rock bottom, the laws of the game should be thrown out the window, against your favor. Now, the game shouldn't be unplayable, but the challenge should definitely be increased exponentially. That brings me to my next point.



Sanity, Insanity, and everywhere in between, maybe even drugs?:
I don't believer Sanity should be something you can control in the conventional sense, like you brought up pills and shit. Perhaps...perhaps pills could be used as an upper, but what if we take pills to a whole new level. What if medication becomes and gameplay mechanic? Some pills, the ones you'll use most often, are uppers and help you return to sanity. You'll find these all over the place. Doses will be around 2-3 per bottle, (If you chug the whole bottle, wouldn't that lead to, you know, death?) perhaps with more key pills, infinite. Maybe they could give you powers to surmount your meta-physical demons? There could be pills to make you larger, make you invisible, make you faster, make you see through walls, but if you use these pills too much the effects begin to become less prominent, and if you OD on the pills, your sanity hits zero (where you'd be at about mid sanity once you start using the effect pills, because at full sanity you can't use the pill because you're in reality) and there becomes some backfire relating to a phobia, and the effect of the pill. Like if you OD on the big pill, enemies become HUEG, Megalophobia. Or if you OD on the invisibility pill, you stand out more, maybe you become shiny or some shit, and eyes begin to appear and watch you out of nowhere, paranoia. Perhaps these can even affect the plot in some way. If you become paranoid, you might become unable to talk to Plot Point X or Side Quest Y, making you monitor your pill use. Thought there should still be instances where you MUST use them, just not everywhere. This is just an idea, if it doesn't sit well with you, feel free to shoot it down.

For the meters themselves and health bars, I think the environment should have a big affect on your sanity. Again, if you see something traumatic, or you recount a bad memory at some point, your meter should get lower, but if you're just on your way, chillin out, maybe find a cold beer, maybe recount your child's birth, your sanity gets higher. Yeah, senses should be a big part of the game. If you hear something unreal, or you see something ungodly, you should become disconnected and your sanity should go down. Getting back to reality, through touch, taste, smell, sound. Hearing a familiar sound or feeling something real should bring you back. Hearing PA announcement=Good. Watching co-worker being torn to shreads=Bad. That's what I had in mind for the mechanic. I agree on the health bar though. The sanity and health should be separate. I'll make a little mock up of the HUD I had in mind. Mental health, that is injuries inflicted by meta-physical beings, reflects your attachment to the world beyond sanity. Low sanity means more mental damage may be inflicted then what would be with higher sanity. If you reach 0% mental health, your physical health begins to suffer. Perhaps we can remove this and stick with sanity, I just don't like the idea of dying because of zero sanity, or being hit by a dreamt up thing and DYING, even though it's a hallucination. I'm thinking something like sanity recovers over time, relatively quickly if your mental health is solid, but if your mental health is low, you don't recover as much, or even after a threshold (30% I'm thinking) you stop recovering. I also bring up a different sort of health thing. I envisioned it something like MGS 3, because hey, you're in a hospital, why can't we go the whole nine yards. I think food is silly, but it should be a part. Starvation and thirst could lead to a steady decrease of health, but it may frustrate many player if we don't make food relatively common. I don't know, I brought up a lot of ideas in that, so just tell me what you think.



Surreality and the world beyond:
I think you brought up some great ideas when it comes to stealth + surrealism. Having enemies being unpredictable and contradictory to common sense logic would bring a new level of scares. Perhaps they'd be cheap, hopefully not. Making the enemy seem overbearing and super-powerful can make a scary game, but it can become tedious. Moments like...

The guard walks down the hallway, keeping his back turned on the entrance. The player thinks they'd be safe enough since the enemy stands for a very long time looking in the opposite direction... once they get anywhere near the door however the guard instantly turns his head backwards Exorcist style, becomes demon-like, and relentlessly chases after you, even if you are able to get through the door.

would be priceless to put into the game. "Fucking logic" should be the mainstay of our game when it comes to scary moments and more intuitive parts. The player would be forced to become more flexible and think outside the box. The theme of "You're insane and you're living a lie" should be prevalent the entire game. Like, say you're being chased at some point and you find a big pit full of rusty spike and shit. Rock and a hard place situation, but the right course of action would be to take a swan dive into the spikes, because, of course, it's actually a laundry chute into a big cart full of pillows. But that brings up another point that comes to mind that could be game breaking.



Enemies, who needs em'?:
Now, the image keeps popping into my head of some grungy dark sinister hallway with fucked up lighting and a brown/red sort of thing going on, and I don't like that. I don't like to think enemies being sinister Silent Hill knock offs. I think I need to take a trip to an insane asylum or read up some journals or logs by doctors to truly understand insane people to make everything work. Enemies, at most, should be common phobias, nothing terrifying in what the horror game market has considered conventional. Bah, I can't imagine it, but I don't want shit getting rusty once you go insane, you know? I think I need to dwell on this part of the game, because it doesn't seem right. It should seem to be a smooth mixture of surreality and reality hand in hand, but nothing grungy.



Memories, and hopefully mammaries:
You bring up a lot of good ideas that stick to me. At first it should just be like reading a letter or a note and then after some trigger, you become the memory. There could be a little scene, where the protagonist looks over the object in question, inspecting it, looking over little details that mean nothing to us, but everything to him/her, and after finding something, like a string, the trigger is pulled and the background changes, maybe all water color style.
Or maybe like so.


2 minutes and 57 seconds in.

No, I don't really like that, I think it should be more subtle than that. It could be different each time and be fun to make the different scenarios. Like in one instance, it could go down like you described.

If it's a negative memory... like when he broke up with his old girlfriend or something. Before you're fully in the memory area a pot or something gets thrown at you and you hear her yelling... and then rest of the memory transfers in.

Hopefully they can all be as cinematic as that. I think first person would work great for this case, otherwise it'll end up like that Silent Hill trailer I posted, which couldn't be as seamless. Obviously, this shouldn't be the decider for FP vs TP, but it's something to think about. Perhaps the protagonist finds a tube of lipstick and his lover wraps their arms around his shoulders and pull him into the scene. How about this, our character finds a set of brass knuckles and begins to shadow box, but as he's boxing he gets hit over the head with something, allowing for a brief blinking sequence, with the character stumbling backwards. Through the blinking, it's shown the character is in a new setting, what appears to be his home, and his father has become particularly violent and drunk. The father looms towards our protagonist as he is faced with several options that dictate his personality and past. Either he reaches for a knife on the table to slash at his dad, he runs away and hides from his father, or he gets beaten by his dad, leading to a severe downer in each case. Perhaps if in previous memories, our character developed a close relationship with his dad, this never happened, and instead is replaced by a memory of a mugging, where our character is faced with a threat to his life. But again, our protagonist has options, he can either give his wallet, or be shot, beaten, injured in some way, which lead to downers. Or maybe our character beats the shit out of this guy, which leads to another series of memories. Overlapping memories over one item should be avoided in most cases though. They should be interactive in almost every instance though, in some way, but scripted to hell. Maybe, one time you're strapped down by a doctor and you can't move nothing but your head, and depending on how much you move your head, it could dictate if you went through with a procedure or not? I don't know, I just want to stress this sort of interaction that changes the plot, giving the player a sort of freedom, a sort of choose-your-adventure thing, mite b cool.



Voices, or shut up you dumb faggot:
I think it would be nice if we had voices, but it would be imperative that the voice wasn't annoying or boring or had poor dialog. He's gotta be likable and funny, witty but not snarky. He's gotta be a bro, but not Nathan Drake bro. The voice has to be done right if it's in at all. Little lines when seeing something unique, like one of our 'glitches' perhaps to indicate that they are, indeed, on purpose. Little lines would be nice, like in RDR. We need human reaction though, a sort of attachment to him. He can't be all Duke Nukem, he needs to be more Nathan Drake, but less snarky. That reminds me, we can't go overboard with the memory shit, if it's all heavy duty and emotional and shit, our character needs to reflect that, he can't be all smart mouthing and witty and shit. Lines should not be often, but only for truly unique moments or memories. If we go all in with the plot, we need to make sure it's good, it can't be half-assed and laughable, but it can have the best plot in the world, but if the gameplay sucks, it's fucked...as a game.



Gameplay:
I'm quite partial to the idea of it being first person, but third person could work well. If we're going for immersion, first person is where it's at. If story telling is our deal, go for third person. Hell, it could even be adjustable in the options. Weapons should be relatively ineffective in this game. At most you'll find a pipe, maybe we can even go the Condemned route and pick up parts of the environment for temporary weapons. The goal should be avoiding combat, or running away. Fighting enemies should be out of desperation, not necessity. Your arsenal should be sensible things. Depending on where we begin our tale, the starting weapon could be anything. If it's an OR, then pick up a scalpel. If it's your room, looks like you're going fisticuffs until otherwise. No, you shouldn't get any guns, that'd suck you out of the game. Maybe you could get magic imaginary guns that take care of your hallucinations, and the terror sets in once you try to shoot something and it doesn't work because it's real, lulling you into a false sense of security, enforcing the feelings of caution and paranoia. That's just combat. But uhh...yeah, we can touch on this another time. That's all I got for the most part, just one more thing.



Menu:
I fully support your menu idea of a little notebook, something more than Uncharted though. We don't want to make it overly convoluted though, it should be simple, elegant in a way, but it should have a very hand-drawn kind of feel, scribbles and hand-writing and shit. Pressing start should lead to the character whipping out his notebook in a first person perspective. Inventory, Map, Options, Health, Memories, Notes. Maybe pressing a set key/button directly leads to notes, and an icon will be displayed when new notes are written, and a little sound bit will be played sounding like scribbling. Notes are kept, and when they become irrelevant, they are crossed out. Maybe if our protagonist is particularly OCD'd, he could organize his thoughts by category, and pressing select leads to a categorized menu. I had an idea that really takes a lot from that "pause screen" idea thread. When pausing during a chase scene, the protagonist whips out his notebook, but as he does, the monster eventually reaches over and eats the notebook in our guy's face and spits the paper at him in a sort of cartoony way with bits of paper floating all over the place, then our monster could grin, showing a menacing row of teeth before a quick game over.



Setting and overall feel:
I really liked that one part in Arkham Asylum with the Scarecrow and everything goes crazy, I think that was really well done and I want our game to be like that in many ways. That whole Scarecrow chapter was top-notch stuff. Here's one of the more memorable parts of the Scarecrow chapter if you don't know what I'm talking about.



The whole clip represents the feel I want to present, but the surreality I imagine appears at about 4 minutes in, it really is pretty cool. I'd like to imagine our game being 90% that.






Idea:
During some part of the last 50% of the game, you find a boss that you can only reach during low sanity, and it's necessary to the plot. As you begin to enter his lair, you see some grungy shit, contradictory to the surrealism you've seen throughout the game. It looks downright Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Organs are strewn all over the place, as gruesome a scene as you can paint, and your sanity is still like 0 at this point. Then you go on with the boss fight. After the fight, you find some uppers on the guy and take them, and your sanity goes to 100%, and your bar even increases a little, but the setting doesn't change. There are still giblets and organs everywhere, and it's all real, not a figment of your imagination. Turns out the guy really went to town during the black out. The second you step out of the room into somewhere normal, you throw up.




I think I'm going to make another thread to establish some things if you want. The title and some of the posts don't really fit, I'll make a main thread specifically for this game.

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