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[absolute8]

So there's this chat room...

The admin of this chat room is supposedly a dead guy who used to dwell in a now abandoned and decrepit manor.

If the rumored "dead" guy in charge of an Internet chat room isn't creepy enough for you, the manor is linked to numerous real and unexplained disappearances.

All urban legends aside, there's a treasure in the walls of the place if you have the gall to visit and unwrap the mysteries with the dead dude's "help". He gives these assignments requiring members to break in and visit the manor. A little urban exploration is stressful enough as it is, but then there is the warning emblazoned on the loading screen preceding the chat room:

"Beware of Troll"

Concept:

Internet troll or inexplicable horror? Engage in horrifying urban exploration to unravel a grave mystery and hidden treasure. Go to the manor, but beware the troll.

Style:

I'm using a 5 color palette for this game. So far it looks like this:



Why?
Well, it works for the mood of the game and I really like working with values over colors. This is currently the most honest expression of my preferred artistic aesthetic. I am heavily influenced by early Gameboy games.

Engine: Construct 2

Why?
It's suitable and proven as a decent engine. Not to kick at Unity or Game Maker, but it simply suits me.

Gameplay:

The game will have basic keyboard controls for walking, running, and interacting with objects and the environment.

The chat room will act as a hub for storing archive items and story progression in the form of chat-room banter and links to websites and online articles. You will also choose who will go out for the next assignment.

About assignments:

You will be required to do everything from breaking a window to finding a secret passage in a moldy basement. Most assignments will reveal new archive items, others will place you in very real danger.

The darkness is your adversary. Stick around long enough for your battery to run out and you'll come face to face with an unseen terror. Hide or run, just don't get lost.

About:

This game is to prove that genuine horror is a product of concept and situation. Not to knock all the hyper realistic horror games going for the P.T., hyper real aesthetic, but I'd rather go the opposite direction.

Why?

I believe pixel art preserves just the right amount of imagination to truly terrify players when given the right care.

Needs:

-I need a sound guy RIGHT NOW!

First Assets:

[rj]

fukkkkkkk yes

[Panurge]

Love the style and the premise. The framing device of the chatroom is a neat idea and if you get the assignments right that could lead to a lot of replay value within the one location. Will be watching this one!

[s0]

woah, great story premise. and nice art too. following. 

[Xorglord]

Super cool! Following this one :D.

[Connor]

I LOVE how this looks. My friend turned me away big time from construct by being a complete snob about it, but good luck with using it. It looks like its working out spectacularly for you thus far.

[AaronB]

This game is to prove that genuine horror is a product of concept and situation.

The best kind of horror in my opinion 

[FRACTURES]

Looks really great. Sent you a PM

[absolute8]

Wow, thanks for the flood of interest, guys.

I've done a lot of meditation on scares and the psychological effects of tension and the unseen.

Not to mention, I'm a fan of this type of stuff myself. As a fan, I find there are woefully few games and movies that satisfy my taste and likely yours.

I will engineer this game to deliver on fears in it's own right -- no buzz words, no false advertisements; just pure exercise in terror.

Also, no "cheap" jump scares or bs -- whatever I put out, I assure, it will scare you, because it will first scare me.

P.S. I'll set up my Twitch for streaming art at some point. Right now it exists, but I have a bit of changes to make.

Later, and thanks again, guys.

Oh, and if you sent me a PM about music/sound, give me a few days to get back to ya. I have to take listen and get a feel for things.

[absolute8]

Ok, let's get down to business:

Random Mission and "Scare/tension" Generation:

I've been toying around with having a bit of gameplay dependent upon the will of the RNG. This gameplay will be contained within recognizable and understandable game rules, but it will also allow for some truly unexpected moments.

One of my favorite horror mechanics from survival horror games of olde is the zombie in the squad car from Res 3. If you haven't played Res 3 basically here's what happens: There is an unseen zombie in a squad car. You cautiously walk past it a few times because it seems a bit off and nothing happens. The game allows you to voluntarily do this over and over again until, BANG! The zombie jumps out. This jump scare may be a bit dated by today's standards, but there is potential in this mechanic, especially if the threat is randomized. We'll see.

Conclusion: This is still a conceptual thing at the moment, but I'll toss some zeros and ones around into Construct and see what happens.

Chatroom UX:

I drew up this mockup for the chatroom:



You will notice that it does not have an input box for the player. I want it to feel like an authentic chat room experience but without the advent of a player "self". My reason for this choice is that you will play as a variety of human visitors to the chat room.

The random banter and chat antics will be funny and enjoyable along with some cryptic and scary input from various visitors and the admin.

Human chat participants will be non-renewable. They die or go missing, they are gone. Period. Think of it as a rogue-lite with a set number of extra lives kinda like Heavy Rain.

Well anyway, that's it for now.

[absolute8]

Getting the boring UI stuff out the way:



Meanwhile, I've been working out the "conflict" system of the game. There will be no classical combat. Instead you will be expected to do the following:

1. Keep track of your flashlight/torch power source.
2. Keep track of your location within the building. (I'm going with the Dark Souls breadcrumbs method as opposed to the map. Getting lost is one of the major fears and a map may grossly undermine that.)
3. Assessing actual threats

Now, that the third thing is of the utmost importance. There are enemies that will stalk you in a variety of different ways without making themselves directly visible. They will leave hardly noticeable patterns of their predatory actions, which you must interpret from all the little strange psychological creaks and groans of an old mansion.

Interpret the wrong threats in the wrong place when your battery runs out, then you risk being taken in the dark.

This of course is just a basic overview of how the game will play.
I suppose I'll have a demo featuring one of these "monsters" shortly.

The main theme of this game is fear of the unseen and I intend to design around that principle. Patterns will play a huge role in terms of sounds and visuals.

More later...

[absolute8]

As a side note, I'd like to stress that the original design of Freddy Krueger is f*ckin' GENIUS!

I could gush about all the fine details of this guy on and on and come to one sane conclusion:

Only the wonderful miasma of the subconscious could construct such a perfect product of nightmare fuel. No think-tanks. No group talks. No creativity scrimmages. Only pure subconscious could construct a guy like that.

Sure, wikipedia provides a number of waking inspirations for Wes Craven's creation of Freddy, but only the right subconscious inspirations could find a cause to combine those elements into Freddy.

My whole point is not to strain and push for inspiration. Even for game dev we can receive a kind of blockage as a result.

I'm not doing a classical design doc for my game as an exercise to let my subconscious flow until the most essential decisions are made. Hopefully this will lend a hand towards creating an experience or monster that is just as timeless as Mr Krueger.

[Superb Joe]

Being a troll is good

[absolute8]

Being a troll is good

True.

I intend to play off the lack of real world visual perspective beyond legend and artistic depiction.

In other words, the fear of seeing something you shouldn't see. There is an opportunity here to stray away from the bumpy, bumbling, ugly bridge monster with this concept.  It can still look that way in the light, but the way it chooses to portray itself in the dark can be radically different and psychological.

[absolute8]

Heya people,

So I've been doing the things and here are some updates:

1. Doors: I've created a door class (family) which successfully transfers you between areas.

2. Stairs: I'm working on adding stairs to the game. Example below:



I haven't started animating the characters to walk up and down stairs yet, but I've been considering the different options.

There is, of course, the Castlevania method of animating characters on stairs...



but I am open to the more cinematic Resident Evil approach.



I'm open to suggestions. Which approach do you think would lend more to the experience?

I recognize that stairs have the possibility of being slow and redundant, but also useful for building mood and tension.

[Lares Yamoir]

I like the game boy like aesthetic, so I would rather see the metroid stairs. I wouldn't expect resident evil like stairs in a 2D game, so that would be immersion breaking for me, I think.

[ashtonmorris]

Great concept! I like the color pallet and art direction so far too ^_^

[LyricalReverie]

.

[rj]

go resi full stop

any time you have an inclination to do something bizarre and it’s something that wouldnmt harm the theme or tone or any other element of the work

go for it

just. do that. it’s going to have way more impact that way.

make stairs events this way. places of tension, but safety (you won’t get attacked on stairs) that you can lter subvert (abruptly cutting the stairs motion back to “reality” in the one time you are inevitably attacked)

[absolute8]

New stuff soon!
Just getting things out of the way and whatnot.