Post by steph on Jun 22, 2010 19:29:55 GMT -5
Master list for ideas on a horror game. See below for the results of the horror game ideas thread on /v/, as compiled by 404 and organized by Sweet Bro, who is a sweet bro:
1. Game mechanics for games w/enemies
Enemies cannot be killed
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One thing: If a game has weapons, and the enemies can die, it's not a fucking horror game.
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Quick monsters are scarier than slow monsters.
Slow monsters are only scary if they are un-killable and kill you in one hit.
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no ominous music to tell you an enemy is nearby. i say this in every thread like this, but fallout 3 is great for the fact that enemies can sneak right up on you out in the wasteland
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No weapons except for like a crowbar or some shit.
But the crowbar doesn't really do anything against the enemies, maybe it can knock them away when they attack you, but it can never kill them.
The crowbar is more for opening doors, breaking windows (and alerting a monster of your location), lifting floorboards, etc.
You have to escape every encounter.
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A.) You start in a labyrinth, and every turn, killed monster or boss encounter changes the path to the outside world. Except you don't tell anyone besides the people in your development crew that it happens.
B.) Place the game on a passenger jet. (very very cramped.)
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You guys have read ruby quest?
Here's a suggestion.
The enemies don't attack you. At first. They have their own objective and agenda which gets unraveled later during the game. People, damnit. Even if they're a little mutated, they're probably scared as you are.
When they lose it (whether you fuck up their objective or they flat out give into despair), that's when they become your enemy.
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>Be inside the enemy lines, constantly remind the player they are surrounded by monsters that want nothing more than to kill you in the most painful way.
>Start with little to no weapons
>Have scarce enemies, making it scarier for every encounter
>Have a bunch of hype about the final boss (strange sounds, enemies themselves cowering at said sounds, Shadows and hallucinations of the silhouette of the final boss, etc.)
>Have the corridor leading to the final boss be incredibly cramped. A lot of people are claustrophobic.
>Have the player always be disoriented, or lost inside the enemies territory.
>Make sure the enemies can run slightly faster than the player can.
>Having the player surrounded by many slowly closing enemies is nice.
>Have the player use mental skill while trying to fight off enemies. Usually a sense of urgency is needed here.
>Make the end VERY rewarding.
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2. Individual instances/scenarios
(maybe can make into individual game ideas?)
You're walking through a hallway and you can clearly see down the hall an open door. As you move towards it a humanoid monster quickly walks by the doorway, its head pointed directly at you.
You're forced to enter the room as there's no other place to go.
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You're walking down a long hallway (classic horror setting, say an office building or industrial complex) and the lights will just suddenly die. No warning, no flickering, just boom, pitch black darkness. And then you hear something running towards you.
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You walk into the room with all the security tvs. one of them is on. If you choose to watch it you'll notice a monster, dragging itself, towards a room... the same room that you're in.
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Abandoned industrial complex, faulty lighting.
You, a small torch and a baseball bat.
Just one monster in the complex with you. Hunting you without mercy.
You can't fight it, and you can only damage it when you lure it into specially set up trap scenarios throughout the game.
Damaging it only enrages the fucker.
It's faster than you, stronger than you, and it's just as smart as you.
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>A bit of heart-pounding running from an absolutely terrifying thing that is fast and strong as hell
>you find a door, slip in, and slam it behind you, locking it
>you see a gun on the table
>the monster is breaking through
>(use the gun? y/n)
>you click Y
>you pick up the gun, put it to your head, and shoot it
>game over
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Game starts, right in the action.
You're fighting monsters or something, maybe a boss or an endless army.
Depending on what is going on, the game will either eventually "end," "pause," or you will "win."
Zooms out, it was a normal nameless, faceless man playing games.
"Oh crap, it's late, I have to go to bed"
Walk into bedroom, get naked, (optional put on pajamas), get ready for bed.
At one point, a shadow person flashes somewhere the player is likely to see, but not 100%.
If you see it, screen shakes a bit, character's breathing increases, mumbles to himself.
Sleep now (maybe you're retarded, or didn't see the shadow creature), lose.
It has to start out as close as possible to a real person's life, then slowly slip away from there.
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You've been playing the game forever. Mentally exhausted, you kill the monster that has been relentlessly pursuing you for what seems like an eternity. It has tortured you. It seemed invincible. Everything you threw at it did nothing until a one-in-a-million scenario and the help of a now dead friend allowed you to finally vanquish it.
It's been an ordeal. You take a breath. Your last remaining friend is crying. It's over. It's finally, finally over.
You walk to the other end of the room, opening a door. This should lead out.
You open it to pure black. You reach right and immediately find a light switch, and you flip it on. Eggs. Thousands of them.
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You walk into the room with all the security tvs. one of them is on. If you choose to watch it you'll notice a monster, dragging itself, towards a room... the same room that you're in.
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>Can't fight back
>Run away from creatures the entire game
>Trapped in a room with all creatures
>Finally find a weapon
>Kill them all
They were human. You are in your office. You were mentally unstable the whole time and spent the entire game running away from your friends, family and doctors, until you finally reached your office, pulled the gun from the desk, and shot them all. (How to reveal/transition to real life?)
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3. General game mechanics
You would have a bar of say, adrenaline/sanity, and as it gets higher according to how brix shitting the part of the game is, you will struggle with reloading due to shaky hands, your character will start to scream as he encounters monsters etc.
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Have one "safe" place to save the game in an entire horror game. The room is full of nice normal things like seats and paintings and a large mirror. Every time you visit the room to save the game, everything gradually starts looking older in the mirror, the seats get dusty with cobwebs, the people and scenery in the paintings shrivel up, and the player character themselves starts looking a lot older to the point of being wizened and decrepit. Then after you've used the room to save about 10-15 times, suddenly the lights flicker off then on again and the reflection shows a the room how it was when you very first visited it with the player's reflection looking young and fresh.
In the reflection, the door opens but you aren't able to turn round and face the door you can only move the camera to look at all points of the mirror.
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You have a type of medicine you take with you. It allows you to see some of the monsters, and not lose health in the really fucked up areas. The problem is it also causes you to hallucinate. As the game goes on you must take the medicine more and more just in order to survive, and the more you take it the more you begin to wonder whether or not one of the worst recurring hallucinations you're having isn't actually real, and is in fact a hell of a lot worse than what the medicine is helping you against. Up to the player to keep taking it and find out, or try and survive in the dark without it.
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- Good pacing
- Trying not to resort on the same trick too many times
- Resorting to combat should be an act of desperation, not routine
- Unpredictability
- A good load of WTF
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YOU KNOW HOW WHEN YOU'RE REALLY FUCKING SCARED OR YOU HAVE LOW HEALTH YOU LIKE TO PULL UP THE PAUSE SCREEN SO YOU CAN CALM DOWN AND/OR THINK OUT YOUR FUTURE ACTION?
WELL GUESS WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER EVERYTIME YOU PAUSE IT, YOUR HEALTH STARTS DRAINING, SO THE LONGER YOU KEEP IT PAUSED, THE MORE HEALTH YOU LOSE. AND YOU DON'T HAVE A LOT OF HEALTH TO BEGIN WITH, SO YOU BETTER DO YOUR SHIT AND GET IT OVER WITH.
ALSO, THERE IS A SET SECTION IN THE BEGINNING TO GET YOUR CONTROLS AND SHIT RIGHT WHERE YOU DON'T LOSE HEALTH SO THAT WON'T BE A PROBLEM. (Could work for any type of game, preserved movement throughout pause screen)
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Pause is normal, as in most games.
But for every minute that goes by, there's a 1/50 chance an indestructible creature spawns behind you while you were out .
Pausing the game is always a gamble. When you get off the pause menu... you'd better fucking turn around and check before you keep playing. (How do people know it's because of the pause?)
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These things matter the most, in this particular order.
1. Suspension of disbelief by the player and a willingness to get "sucked into" the game
2. The ability of the game to properly immerse you
3. Proper atmosphere
4. Attention to detail
Everything else is secondary.
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Randomized levels. No saving. Every time you start the game it drops you at a random part in the game. The more you play the more the plot becomes clear. The real twist of the game is that it never ends. If you play the game long enough the plot just repeats itself with minor changes.
Or something like that.
I want a game that would really fuck with my head.
LSD Dream Simulator with a plot.
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maybe set intervals where you have to work your way through, well, a labyrinth. like the sunken sub in the abyss or the navidsons' house; like chapters or sections of the game. and stuff just moves and changes, but instantaneously. no creaking of wood or grinding of stone against stone as a wall slides shut, it's just DIFFERENT and there's no warning. the map could be like the last five or six rooms you visited, to simulate a real person's sense of direction, and if a hallway stopped being a hallway, you'd get those red scribbles over it on the map a la silent hill
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I think a better mechanic is to give them very brief periods of power over their enemy, and then somehow take that power away from them or make it obsolete. It seems to say that no matter how strong you get or what tools you acquire, you'll never be able to truly conquer your enemies.
When the monster is large and intimidating but is constantly aware of you and able to move quickly or project small extensions or monsters to attack you.
When the adversary is not enormous but rather mysterious and always keeping track of you and does not seem to mind much when you think you have damaged it.
When you cannot quite figure out what is after you but there are signs of it everywhere like dust falling from motion floors above you or lighting being disturbed or ominous camera angles or noises.
When you see the horror but your character does not.
When the above happens and the thing pauses to look at your character, but leaves.
Above all else, it cannot be explained. Things cease to be scary once you know what they are. (No enemies, 'mysterious antagonist', can be implemented into any game.)
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4. "The GAME is the enemy"
I don't really go for the whole creepy monsters and laughter stuff. I prefer it when it seems like the enemy isn't just in the game. The enemy is the game itself. You might be a character in it, but eventually it's going to start breaking rules and you'll realize it's targeting you, not your character.
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I LIKED HOUSE OF LEAVES
MAKE THE GAME WORLD SHIFT AND CHANGE
YOU TURN AROUND TO LOOK IN THE DIRECTION OF A NOISE
IT WAS NOTHING
TURN BACK AGAIN
NO MORE HALLWAY MOTHERFUCKER
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Oh shit! Make the environment your main antagonist, not some blubbering mass of flesh! What a fantastic idea!
You're a psych ward patient slowly falling into insanity. The game starts out as a tutorial, doctors wheel you out into a large sterile white tiled room, think Portal. They observe you from a window on one of the walls. You had passes some of the tests they had given you beforehand, off-screen, and are testing your sanity to see if you can complete basic motor functions before letting you out. At first you see a very basic obstacle course, something you'd see in boot camp (I know, an obstacle course has no place in an insanity ward, but bear with me.), but it slowly twists and turns and various visual effects are thrown hinting at your fall into insanity. At the end of the course you jump into the maw of some shark toothed indescribable thing. The game eventually becomes your (inadvertent) escape from this asylum.
****************************************************
5. Enemy ideas
- One that jumps out from nowhere. It's faster than you, but if you hit it enough, it runs off, but it always comes back later.
- One that's huge and unkillable. Only course of action is to run away or sneak past it if given the chance.
- One that doesn't actually attack you. It just follows you around a whole load and scares the fuck out of you. Most of the time you don;t even realize its there, until you look around the room, and see its eyes peering out at you. If you attack it, it does absolutely nothing. It doesn't even MOVE. Or make a noise. Maybe it can lay a few traps for you, like loosened floor boards or something.
- Your partner, who is a monster, as we all know now.
1. Game mechanics for games w/enemies
Enemies cannot be killed
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One thing: If a game has weapons, and the enemies can die, it's not a fucking horror game.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quick monsters are scarier than slow monsters.
Slow monsters are only scary if they are un-killable and kill you in one hit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
no ominous music to tell you an enemy is nearby. i say this in every thread like this, but fallout 3 is great for the fact that enemies can sneak right up on you out in the wasteland
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No weapons except for like a crowbar or some shit.
But the crowbar doesn't really do anything against the enemies, maybe it can knock them away when they attack you, but it can never kill them.
The crowbar is more for opening doors, breaking windows (and alerting a monster of your location), lifting floorboards, etc.
You have to escape every encounter.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.) You start in a labyrinth, and every turn, killed monster or boss encounter changes the path to the outside world. Except you don't tell anyone besides the people in your development crew that it happens.
B.) Place the game on a passenger jet. (very very cramped.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You guys have read ruby quest?
Here's a suggestion.
The enemies don't attack you. At first. They have their own objective and agenda which gets unraveled later during the game. People, damnit. Even if they're a little mutated, they're probably scared as you are.
When they lose it (whether you fuck up their objective or they flat out give into despair), that's when they become your enemy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Be inside the enemy lines, constantly remind the player they are surrounded by monsters that want nothing more than to kill you in the most painful way.
>Start with little to no weapons
>Have scarce enemies, making it scarier for every encounter
>Have a bunch of hype about the final boss (strange sounds, enemies themselves cowering at said sounds, Shadows and hallucinations of the silhouette of the final boss, etc.)
>Have the corridor leading to the final boss be incredibly cramped. A lot of people are claustrophobic.
>Have the player always be disoriented, or lost inside the enemies territory.
>Make sure the enemies can run slightly faster than the player can.
>Having the player surrounded by many slowly closing enemies is nice.
>Have the player use mental skill while trying to fight off enemies. Usually a sense of urgency is needed here.
>Make the end VERY rewarding.
****************************************************
2. Individual instances/scenarios
(maybe can make into individual game ideas?)
You're walking through a hallway and you can clearly see down the hall an open door. As you move towards it a humanoid monster quickly walks by the doorway, its head pointed directly at you.
You're forced to enter the room as there's no other place to go.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You're walking down a long hallway (classic horror setting, say an office building or industrial complex) and the lights will just suddenly die. No warning, no flickering, just boom, pitch black darkness. And then you hear something running towards you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You walk into the room with all the security tvs. one of them is on. If you choose to watch it you'll notice a monster, dragging itself, towards a room... the same room that you're in.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abandoned industrial complex, faulty lighting.
You, a small torch and a baseball bat.
Just one monster in the complex with you. Hunting you without mercy.
You can't fight it, and you can only damage it when you lure it into specially set up trap scenarios throughout the game.
Damaging it only enrages the fucker.
It's faster than you, stronger than you, and it's just as smart as you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>A bit of heart-pounding running from an absolutely terrifying thing that is fast and strong as hell
>you find a door, slip in, and slam it behind you, locking it
>you see a gun on the table
>the monster is breaking through
>(use the gun? y/n)
>you click Y
>you pick up the gun, put it to your head, and shoot it
>game over
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game starts, right in the action.
You're fighting monsters or something, maybe a boss or an endless army.
Depending on what is going on, the game will either eventually "end," "pause," or you will "win."
Zooms out, it was a normal nameless, faceless man playing games.
"Oh crap, it's late, I have to go to bed"
Walk into bedroom, get naked, (optional put on pajamas), get ready for bed.
At one point, a shadow person flashes somewhere the player is likely to see, but not 100%.
If you see it, screen shakes a bit, character's breathing increases, mumbles to himself.
Sleep now (maybe you're retarded, or didn't see the shadow creature), lose.
It has to start out as close as possible to a real person's life, then slowly slip away from there.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You've been playing the game forever. Mentally exhausted, you kill the monster that has been relentlessly pursuing you for what seems like an eternity. It has tortured you. It seemed invincible. Everything you threw at it did nothing until a one-in-a-million scenario and the help of a now dead friend allowed you to finally vanquish it.
It's been an ordeal. You take a breath. Your last remaining friend is crying. It's over. It's finally, finally over.
You walk to the other end of the room, opening a door. This should lead out.
You open it to pure black. You reach right and immediately find a light switch, and you flip it on. Eggs. Thousands of them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You walk into the room with all the security tvs. one of them is on. If you choose to watch it you'll notice a monster, dragging itself, towards a room... the same room that you're in.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Can't fight back
>Run away from creatures the entire game
>Trapped in a room with all creatures
>Finally find a weapon
>Kill them all
They were human. You are in your office. You were mentally unstable the whole time and spent the entire game running away from your friends, family and doctors, until you finally reached your office, pulled the gun from the desk, and shot them all. (How to reveal/transition to real life?)
****************************************************
3. General game mechanics
You would have a bar of say, adrenaline/sanity, and as it gets higher according to how brix shitting the part of the game is, you will struggle with reloading due to shaky hands, your character will start to scream as he encounters monsters etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have one "safe" place to save the game in an entire horror game. The room is full of nice normal things like seats and paintings and a large mirror. Every time you visit the room to save the game, everything gradually starts looking older in the mirror, the seats get dusty with cobwebs, the people and scenery in the paintings shrivel up, and the player character themselves starts looking a lot older to the point of being wizened and decrepit. Then after you've used the room to save about 10-15 times, suddenly the lights flicker off then on again and the reflection shows a the room how it was when you very first visited it with the player's reflection looking young and fresh.
In the reflection, the door opens but you aren't able to turn round and face the door you can only move the camera to look at all points of the mirror.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have a type of medicine you take with you. It allows you to see some of the monsters, and not lose health in the really fucked up areas. The problem is it also causes you to hallucinate. As the game goes on you must take the medicine more and more just in order to survive, and the more you take it the more you begin to wonder whether or not one of the worst recurring hallucinations you're having isn't actually real, and is in fact a hell of a lot worse than what the medicine is helping you against. Up to the player to keep taking it and find out, or try and survive in the dark without it.
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- Good pacing
- Trying not to resort on the same trick too many times
- Resorting to combat should be an act of desperation, not routine
- Unpredictability
- A good load of WTF
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YOU KNOW HOW WHEN YOU'RE REALLY FUCKING SCARED OR YOU HAVE LOW HEALTH YOU LIKE TO PULL UP THE PAUSE SCREEN SO YOU CAN CALM DOWN AND/OR THINK OUT YOUR FUTURE ACTION?
WELL GUESS WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER EVERYTIME YOU PAUSE IT, YOUR HEALTH STARTS DRAINING, SO THE LONGER YOU KEEP IT PAUSED, THE MORE HEALTH YOU LOSE. AND YOU DON'T HAVE A LOT OF HEALTH TO BEGIN WITH, SO YOU BETTER DO YOUR SHIT AND GET IT OVER WITH.
ALSO, THERE IS A SET SECTION IN THE BEGINNING TO GET YOUR CONTROLS AND SHIT RIGHT WHERE YOU DON'T LOSE HEALTH SO THAT WON'T BE A PROBLEM. (Could work for any type of game, preserved movement throughout pause screen)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pause is normal, as in most games.
But for every minute that goes by, there's a 1/50 chance an indestructible creature spawns behind you while you were out .
Pausing the game is always a gamble. When you get off the pause menu... you'd better fucking turn around and check before you keep playing. (How do people know it's because of the pause?)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These things matter the most, in this particular order.
1. Suspension of disbelief by the player and a willingness to get "sucked into" the game
2. The ability of the game to properly immerse you
3. Proper atmosphere
4. Attention to detail
Everything else is secondary.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Randomized levels. No saving. Every time you start the game it drops you at a random part in the game. The more you play the more the plot becomes clear. The real twist of the game is that it never ends. If you play the game long enough the plot just repeats itself with minor changes.
Or something like that.
I want a game that would really fuck with my head.
LSD Dream Simulator with a plot.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
maybe set intervals where you have to work your way through, well, a labyrinth. like the sunken sub in the abyss or the navidsons' house; like chapters or sections of the game. and stuff just moves and changes, but instantaneously. no creaking of wood or grinding of stone against stone as a wall slides shut, it's just DIFFERENT and there's no warning. the map could be like the last five or six rooms you visited, to simulate a real person's sense of direction, and if a hallway stopped being a hallway, you'd get those red scribbles over it on the map a la silent hill
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think a better mechanic is to give them very brief periods of power over their enemy, and then somehow take that power away from them or make it obsolete. It seems to say that no matter how strong you get or what tools you acquire, you'll never be able to truly conquer your enemies.
When the monster is large and intimidating but is constantly aware of you and able to move quickly or project small extensions or monsters to attack you.
When the adversary is not enormous but rather mysterious and always keeping track of you and does not seem to mind much when you think you have damaged it.
When you cannot quite figure out what is after you but there are signs of it everywhere like dust falling from motion floors above you or lighting being disturbed or ominous camera angles or noises.
When you see the horror but your character does not.
When the above happens and the thing pauses to look at your character, but leaves.
Above all else, it cannot be explained. Things cease to be scary once you know what they are. (No enemies, 'mysterious antagonist', can be implemented into any game.)
****************************************************
4. "The GAME is the enemy"
I don't really go for the whole creepy monsters and laughter stuff. I prefer it when it seems like the enemy isn't just in the game. The enemy is the game itself. You might be a character in it, but eventually it's going to start breaking rules and you'll realize it's targeting you, not your character.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I LIKED HOUSE OF LEAVES
MAKE THE GAME WORLD SHIFT AND CHANGE
YOU TURN AROUND TO LOOK IN THE DIRECTION OF A NOISE
IT WAS NOTHING
TURN BACK AGAIN
NO MORE HALLWAY MOTHERFUCKER
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh shit! Make the environment your main antagonist, not some blubbering mass of flesh! What a fantastic idea!
You're a psych ward patient slowly falling into insanity. The game starts out as a tutorial, doctors wheel you out into a large sterile white tiled room, think Portal. They observe you from a window on one of the walls. You had passes some of the tests they had given you beforehand, off-screen, and are testing your sanity to see if you can complete basic motor functions before letting you out. At first you see a very basic obstacle course, something you'd see in boot camp (I know, an obstacle course has no place in an insanity ward, but bear with me.), but it slowly twists and turns and various visual effects are thrown hinting at your fall into insanity. At the end of the course you jump into the maw of some shark toothed indescribable thing. The game eventually becomes your (inadvertent) escape from this asylum.
****************************************************
5. Enemy ideas
- One that jumps out from nowhere. It's faster than you, but if you hit it enough, it runs off, but it always comes back later.
- One that's huge and unkillable. Only course of action is to run away or sneak past it if given the chance.
- One that doesn't actually attack you. It just follows you around a whole load and scares the fuck out of you. Most of the time you don;t even realize its there, until you look around the room, and see its eyes peering out at you. If you attack it, it does absolutely nothing. It doesn't even MOVE. Or make a noise. Maybe it can lay a few traps for you, like loosened floor boards or something.
- Your partner, who is a monster, as we all know now.