fan created videogame

[Zemalac]

Have something that creates a flicker of movement on the edge of the screen at infrequent intervals. They spin around, weapon ready, and see...nothing. The room is empty. Have this happen occasionally, but not so often that they get used to it.

That's the evilest idea I came up with. Seriously, no survival-horror games use the absence of enemies as effectively as the enemies themselves, but that's where the real pervasive horror is.

 

[DARKLARK]

if its horror you gotta go with great sound design,creepy noises as well as realistic gun shots. Im so sick of games where the gun sound like a childs toy GUNS ARE LOUD! Also make sure the story kick ass and has no amnesiacs who are searching for the past or some homo shit like that.

 

[this_was_a_mistake]

-Make it as disturbing and violent as possible.
-no music. Nothing is scarier than absolute silence, it give you a sense of loneliness until some dude comes out of nowhere to saw your face off.
-Make it realistic, but playable.
-rip off other survival horrors.
-make the situations realistic.
-have a story that does not explain much. just as Yahtzee once said in his condemned 2 review

 

[The Wooster]

Ok. Here's a free idea:

Separate the point of view from the player's control of the character.

The game is set 'somewhere' which has some moving and some static (and some half-broken) Closed-Circuit Television Cameras in rooms.

Check out 'The experiment' or 'Experience 112' there's a guest review of it in the Escapist review section.

 

[Danny Ocean]

If there is music, don't make it start at set points. Make the trigger for the tense music something like taking damage, or a small proximity to an enemy. Or Line of Sight to one.

 

[Uncompetative]

Ok. Here's a free idea:

Separate the point of view from the player's control of the character.

The game is set 'somewhere' which has some moving and some static (and some half-broken) Closed-Circuit Television Cameras in rooms.

Check out 'The experiment' or 'Experience 112' there's a guest review of it in the Escapist review section.

I did. It is quite different.

In 'The experiment' you control the cameras and influence where your 'friend' goes by remotely unlocking doors and turning lights on and off in order to persuade them to move about. It defines itself as an adventure game.

In my proposed idea you don't control the cameras (they are on an automatic cycle), or remotely unlock doors or turn lights on and off... you directly control one of four 'friends' at any one time (selected by pressing one of the four face buttons on the gamepad). So, it is a survival horror game that is not first person (like Condemned) or third person (like Resident Evil), but "fifth person" as you are the fifth person in the group who is passively surveilling where your friends are moving as they go to get help. As far as the story is concerned, you cannot communicate, or control, your friends movements directly, or indirectly.

In reality you take over the AI of each friend to move them around, find objects in the environment to use as makeshift weapons to fend off the zombie threat. This is made much more tense by only being allowed to control one at a time and for your actions to be 'blind' unless a CCTV camera happens to be covering that room. Therefore, the game becomes a puzzle of how to coordinate group movement through a set of rooms that are sampled on to a rack of nine screens in a regular, cyclic, pattern.

I would have thought I'd hear something from demonwaffle...

It is my long-standing policy to never talk about a project before I have got a working prototype that will demonstrate its unique concepts. If all you have is a great story and artwork you are better off doing it as a Graphic Novel. Only do it as a videogame when you know exactly how the controls will work and have 'played it' in some crude form. Peter Molyneux, Shigeru Miyamoto, Bungie, etc. all work like this.

The bald fact is that User Interface (or User Experience) design is not remotely as appealing as drawing fantasy monsters and thinking up a creative narrative. Programming a playable prototype (even a 2D version of a 3D game) feels like a bore and you can easily think of excuses to not do one until you have secured your financing.

However, you are far more likely to distinguish yourself from the ranks of a myriad tin-pot start-ups (or bedroom programmers) if you can put a gamepad into the hands of the men who will pay your bills for the next three to four years and say 'try it'.

demonwaffle should consider following the indie route successfully taken by 'Introversion', a team which concentrates on unique and innovative gameplay, but doesn't get bogged down with large budgets and weighty narratives as all their games use vector graphics.

I don't want to come across as a troll, but I suspect this 'fan created videogame' will dissipate into vapor.

 

[Parsley]

The freakiest horror films and games have a childrens song sung spookely in one scene or another. Like hearing ring a ringa rosies while walking though an abandoned rusted playpark

 

[DamienHell]

Take a page from the penumbra book, invicible enemies. If you can't kill them they become SO MUCH scarier

 

[BentNeatly]

Read my post about a wild west RPG, possibly an MMO. I would love so badly to be part of the team that created that game.

 

[BentNeatly]

The freakiest horror films and games have a childrens song sung spookely in one scene or another. Like hearing ring a ringa rosies while walking though an abandoned rusted playpark

Ring AROUND the rosie. also, thats a cheap hollywood scare.

 

[alygishere]

If you make a game that iy's supposed to be a survival-horror , make it really dark , so you only have a flashlight that runs out of batteries , guns to have limited ammo ,like 2-3 bullet per enemy , and the enemy to die requiring 2 bullets , sound it's one of the greatest part , make it extremly silent , and when an enemy comes , see that he makes a noise , so that you know he is somewhere but not knowing where he is , you could give him hallucinations , eventually give him a friend that you can start to attach to and then let the player make a choice like help his player and almost certainly die , or go on and let him die , involve kids , but once again , one of the most important things , the sound , silent as it can be , and make strange noises that can scare him , well at least that's what I would do

 

[fedpayne]

Get an elevator full of blood, like the Shining, but have it open on the player, and they see red for ages after that.

 

[demonwaffle]

How about a part where You are forced to use a mere child's dead infected body as a sheild or let all your friends die.