Steve Lovell said:
Zhukov said:
Not sure how you'd work the whole horror thing into it though.
a fear of water perhaps or you have an insanity bar which would change the world around you in a believable way, so you're not sure what you are seeing.
It's the word of Steve.
Interesting thought, though I'd avoid sanity bars if possible; they didn't work for me but annoyed the hell out of me in that Cthulhu game.
As for how the rest of the game would build up, I have a few ideas. First of all, the ship should be similar to those "ghost houses" that you can see on youtube in various videos. Those things are abandoned and the only danger they pose is probably the fact that they're about to collapse, but I always find them genuinely creepy to watch (let alone play in them). So if I have to draw a comparison to a game in general, it would be the first Condemned with its slummish atmosphere, minus the in-your-face jump scares (not that it didn't work for me, I just don't think it would fit on a ship).
A lot of games have the player somehow get into the setting in the beginning of the game, like Harry Mason driving into Silent Hill, the main characters wandering into that ghost mansion in Fatal Frame, the nameless man who would crash into the ocean before finding Rapture, etc. For this idea, it kinda seems obvious that the player's character should find the ship, and I'd go with a luxury cruise liner in favor of any other ships here. But instead of doing the obvious, why not have the player go to his/her bed one night on this ship, while everything is normal, only to wake up and find noone's around and it seems like half a decade just passed by that night. The environment changed (the ship is decaying and old now; it was summer the other day but now everything is cold and cloudy, with a small amount of rain and some minorly aggressive waves of the ocean), and as the player moves on with his/her business he (I'll refer to it as a he from now on) would find out bits and bobs about what happened to the crew, eventually finding out that there are no escape pods left and the water is way too cold to grab a table and swim away with it.
The water rising from above is a good idea, I'd go with it, and if the ship would turn over it would be something like the dark world in Silent Hill (not too friendly environment turned into a definitely hostile and unfriendly one), though I'm not sure you could turn the ship over and over and get away with it in the plot. On the other hand, this game would be probably dealing with something paranormal so why not. I'd also put underwater scenes into it which would give ground to one enemy that would appear in the game: sharks (not sure if sharks are living in those kind of cold waters, but again if not, having them there just adds to the mystery and paranormal bits). Aside from them the main dangers the game keeps up its sleeve would be hazardous areas (possibility of drowning or freezing to death in the cold water; collapsing bits; almost blowing up engines). At one point in the game there would be a strong storm the ship enters where the player must navigate on the outside of the ship to reach the bridge and do various task to help the ship stabilize itself, and try to avoid a big waterspout that's about to run into the ship. Now I know that these things, even if they hint at something paranormal, don't sound anything like horror. But for this last part check out the wikipedia page for waterspouts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterspout) and take a look at those pictures, namely the third one taken on the Bahamas. I'm sure I'd crap my pants even if I was on an indestructible submarine on the surface watching it. I'm also sure these would eventually work as horror elements if they would be executed well.
Of course that would not be enough for a horror game so there should be some kind of monsters or ghosts that would haunt the player, or hunt him for that matter. But these should be very rare, making their appearance all the more powerful and effective, and while they shouldn't be indestructible, it would be stupid to just go out and fight them. Other than that, I don't know what they should be and what they should be like.
Wow I've got carried away by this. Anyway, I'm not a very creative person so I'm sure I couldn't fill all the remaining gaps to make it a good game idea or even a good horror story, but that might be because the above just wouldn't work. Or would it actually? Any other ideas (expansive or completely new) to make this sound good?
Also,
lacktheknack said:
There was an old adventure game called Morpheus, I think it was you all "alone" on a giant ship floating in the middle of the ocean.
Don't remember any of the details, though.
Looked this up and it actually sounds pretty interesting. I'll see if I can find a copy of it; will be hard since I live in Hungary but you'd be surprised what one can find at used game/DVD sales both at retailers and online, so wish me luck.
