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Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#1: Mar 17th 2013 at 5:44:06 PM

I have a sneaking suspicion we've already had a thread like this... I hope I'm wrong.

Anyway, survival horror: Many fans, little good material. The Silent Hill and Resident Evil series both appear to be circling the drain, and without some seriously innovative designers, it's unlikely we'll see a truly good instalment from either ever again. (For the record, I liked Downpour and Homecoming, but they just weren't SH 2.)

So let's let the fans of survival horror have a say...

Invent your OWN survival horror game!

It can be uniquely suited to your own tastes and fears, or designed for a broader audience. It can be a continuation of a series you love (e.g. Silent Hill 5 or 6 as YOU would have made it), a survival horror-ified version of a non-horror game (e.g. Kirby in Silent Hill), or something else altogether. Just be creative... And SCARY. You can title it, write the plot, design the monsters (if there are any), anything.

Also, feel free to provide feedback on others' ideas.

Here's my idea:

A World War II survival horror, post D-Day. You alternate between playing as a German Jewish woman hiding for her life in Berlin, the seat of the Reich, and as a Wehrmacht soldier who gets separated from his unit in France.

The former would be more Silent Hill, with the protag being lost in what she thinks is a ruined corner of Berlin, at first excited because she thinks the Allies have attacked. But soon she realizes that's not the case...

The second would, I was thinking, evoke Slender Man... and Silent Hill. Silent Hill LOOOVES people with guilty consciousnesses, so it's perfect for, say, a more sympathetic German soldier who doubts his country's agenda and wonders if what he's doing is right. Stranded alone in the French woods, he has a limited supply of ammo (say a sidearm and 50 MP rounds), though he can use melee weapons if his ammo runs out.

For the woman, constant shifts in reality would confuse the player. Her Silent Hill-esque enemies would, of course, resemble Nazis in some way, but then she would be confronted occasionally by REAL Nazis, with an inability to tell the difference. The player can choose between hiding, running and fighting back with on-hand weapons (say a kitchen knife or a lead pipe), but if you choose to engage it's 50/50 as to whether it's a real Nazi who's just going to shoot you dead. There would be no automatic death, however, so if you confront an armed Nazi and somehow manage to kill him, you can take his weapons. There might also be other firearms lying about, given that this is wartime, but the game would attempt to be realistic in their placement and not simply leave them lying around where the player can easily see them—they'd be hidden in safes, in closets, that sort of thing.

It's similar for the soldier, who at first thinks the things in the woods are enemy soldiers... or possibly his allies. Sometimes they're enemy soldiers (inexplicably wandering alone in the forest, thanks to the Silent Hill aura), which the player can kill and loot for weapons and ammo, but most of the time they're Slender Man-like monsters which are VERY hard to kill. In a dark forest, however, they look the same, so it's a calculated risk: Attack, in case it's an enemy soldier with goodies, or run in case it's not.

There might be a connection between the characters, in order to connect the alternating segments, and there might not. Thoughts?

edited 17th Mar '13 5:48:12 PM by Alma

You need an adult.
tsstevens Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did from Reading tropes such as Righting Great Wrongs Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: She's holding a very large knife
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
#2: Mar 17th 2013 at 6:26:11 PM

I'd bring Resident Evil back to it's roots and make it about survival and horror. Guns? Heh, what guns? Make the threat real, and deadly. Build up the atmosphere rather than hordes of enemies. Perhaps something of a remake of the first game, again, with a different cast and depending on the walkthrough the traitor doesn't even do anything, or does and is never caught or discovered. Have them look like they are taking out the Tyrant but is instead really setting it on the character. Maybe throw in a spider farm that the virus infects. Black Tiger funnelwebs that are extremely aggressive and have the proportionate strength and poison for their size, trapdoors that lie in wait on soft ground before they spring out and rip your character in half from the force of the strike. Now that would be Nightmare Fuel. Bring back the gore...not gratuitous like Mortal Kombat 9 but make it so that if you die once to a creature that melts your skin off then you're really scared and determined not to let it happen again. And play on fears that could happen or would be realistic, no Dead Space here. Maybe a human stalking you with a gun. You trying to uncover clues while the guilty party tries to silence you. Have settings based on real life horror shows...crypts, gulags and concentration camps, mass graves, that would add to the fear factor.

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
Noaqiyeum we must dissent (it/they) from across the gulf of space (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#4: Mar 17th 2013 at 6:38:58 PM

[up] OH GOD YES

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Rotpar Always 3:00 am in the Filth (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Always 3:00 am in the Filth
#5: Mar 17th 2013 at 6:44:27 PM

[up][up][up]

I'm up for that provided that combat is functional. Bad controls aren't a feature that builds tension, they're bad game design. You want to avoid run and gun action? Few guns. Less ammo. Tougher monsters. Maybe a mechanic that makes you less accurate, fear causing you to tremble and hyperventilate. But don't restrict my aim to the enemy's chest, the ceiling three away, and the floor three feet away and claim it makes the game frightening.

I had a thought when the Phantom Pain/ Metal Gear Solid 5? trailer came out. A survival horror game that played like a MGS game. One where you crawl under tables and hope the monster passes by.

edited 17th Mar '13 6:46:49 PM by Rotpar

But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.
Bur from Flyover Country (Living Relic) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
#6: Mar 17th 2013 at 6:45:32 PM

I want one that takes place in a Nursing Home of Horrors. Nursing homes can be awful, there has to be some kind of messed up shit circling around there. You have a little old lady who just keeps on noticing things are...off. It can start off normal: her kids stop visiting, she's being given more meds, her room neighbor changes frequently... and it just builds. Spirits of angry, unfulfilled residents, current residents who suddenly have scars or grow quiet, secret staff meetings... and the little old lady decides she has to get out. Of course, from there it goes all to hell. Or maybe Silent Hill. The nursing home growing layers upon layers of pain and anguish and maybe scientific experimentation.

Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#7: Mar 17th 2013 at 7:07:47 PM

Re. Resident Evil, I'd like it to be made so that the horror doesn't depend on the player character being a near-cripple.

The control system in the original Resident Evil is HORRIBLE. Some say shitty controls/combat improve the atmosphere of a survival horror game (by contributing to that feeling of helplessness), but I'd like to see a game do it with a fluid control system. It quickly becomes an exercise in frustration when you're repeatedly killed by the same enemy simply because you can't get away first enough (both player characters are VERY slow), or hit the wrong button and turn to the left when you wanted to turn right, etc. That happened to me when I recently started playing the RE 1 remake again. The first time I played the game, I gave up because I got stuck in an unwinnable situation: I had no ammo, was down to my last bit of health, and could only progress by getting an important item off the collar of a zombie dog, but there was more than one dog and I was guaranteed to die trying. I could find no health or ammo anywhere that would have improved my odds, and the save system of the game was so that I would have lost a lot of progress if I had reloaded from an earlier save, which in a game as slow-paced as RE 1 is not something you're aching to do. The game has "ragequit" all over it.

Silent Hill was only slightly better in this sense, but to be fair, I played the game on PC and control-PC ports always handle funny.

Edit:

I'm up for that provided that combat is functional. Bad controls aren't a feature that builds tension, they're bad game design. You want to avoid run and gun action? Few guns. Less ammo. Tougher monsters. Maybe a mechanic that makes you less accurate, fear causing you to tremble and hyperventilate. But don't restrict my aim to the enemy's chest, the ceiling three away, and the floor three feet away and claim it makes the game frightening.

This, basically. Damn me and my habit of skimming over posts.

However, I'm not so sure about "sanity" mechanics... They can have a somewhat narmy effect. In Amnesia, for example, you can lose sanity points from things like... a window blowing open. It gave the impression that, rather than the castle being very scary, the player character was just a wuss.

Maybe give the enemies literal fear- or insanity-inducing powers—like eyebeams that reduce health and sanity meters—rather than using the horror equivalent of a laugh track in a sitcom. "YOU ARE SCARED NOW."

One game I did find rather creepy was Dear Esther—but only in retrospect. I noticed only one human silhouette in the game and didn't think much about it, but later, when I read the wiki page for the game, I learned that there are many ghosts/silhouettes that wander the island and watch you, and I was creeped out. Even though they never attack or even approach the player—you can only see them from a distance, unless you use noclip, and even then they're creepy. It's funny because the developers probably never intended the ghosts to be seen up close, so all that they are is a vague, dark blob with eyes... But damn.

edited 17th Mar '13 7:19:54 PM by Alma

You need an adult.
tsstevens Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did from Reading tropes such as Righting Great Wrongs Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: She's holding a very large knife
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
#8: Mar 17th 2013 at 7:38:55 PM

With the bad controls of earlier RE games it would be anything you can do in real life you can do in the game. You want to shoot that zombie in the balls? Go ahead and aim the gun so you can shoot it in the balls, provided you want to waste what precious little ammo you have getting your jollies doing so. When that trapdoor spider launches at you do you want to kick it in the eyes? Provided you can react fast enough, you can. You want to jump out that second story window? Jump out that second story window and see if you survive...maybe different characters so you can be Leon or take damage, whatever.

One idea for the controls...as well as having R1 aim the weapon have L1 drop into a fighting stance and the face buttons control each limb, ala Tekken, with each character having different moves and skills so even if you are completely powerless you're not helpless.

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#9: Mar 17th 2013 at 8:18:21 PM

Also: Different crouch heights.

The human body is not a giant action figure that can only assume a maximum of one crouch position. It can adjust the height of its crouch, or even crawl or slide. Some games address this by having a "prone" mode (lying on the ground/army crawling) but I'd like games to address in general the flexibility of the human body. Haven't we all had that moment when we thought "Dammit, if this was real life, I could TOTALLY squeeze past that wall!" Or "I could TOTALLY jump that fence!" The player character in the majority of video games behaves less like a person and more like a box with wheels, running into short fences because he can't figure out how to put one leg over and then the other.

I don't want them to use QTEs either... I'm OK with multiple control schemes—dependent on whether the character is walking/running in open space, climbing, crouching or squeezing through walls—as long as the controls are intuitive. I'd like a MUCH higher degree of interactivity in games, rather than the current standard of "walk, fight, press E to interact with object".

But that's more of a general vidja gaems whinge.

On Silent Hill:

I think the American developers don't understand sex very well. Which may sound strange, but think about it: In the American games, we've had a) a poor imitation of an earlier Japanese design (Siam from Homecoming—I see SH 3's Closer in the big meaty fists, and the female part is Mannequin-esque), b) a big-titted zombie nurse or c) a beefcake Pyramid Head. Downpour didn't have the nurses, but it had a Barbie doll-looking prostitute (that I would frankly have laughed at in a horror film, but we don't see it up real close in the game) and an evil housewife. Oh, America—you and your hilarious female stereotypes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the American monsters feel very vanilla in that sense, while the Japanese-designed ones were more perverse. It takes a pervert to design a good Silent Hill monster. tongue

edited 17th Mar '13 8:33:11 PM by Alma

You need an adult.
MasterInferno It's Like Arguing on the Internet from Tomb of Malevolence Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
It's Like Arguing on the Internet
#10: Mar 17th 2013 at 8:38:32 PM

Downpour was made by a Czech studio...

Somehow you know that the time is right.
Noaqiyeum we must dissent (it/they) from across the gulf of space (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
we must dissent (it/they)
#11: Mar 17th 2013 at 8:42:41 PM

Maybe give the enemies literal fear- or insanity-inducing powers—like eyebeams that reduce health and sanity meters—rather than using the horror equivalent of a laugh track in a sitcom. "YOU ARE SCARED NOW."

You mean, like Eternal Darkness? ^_^

ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NO
Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#12: Mar 17th 2013 at 9:13:31 PM

[up][up] It was? I didn't know that. Balanced against Homecoming, then, I'd have to say I prefer Homecoming. It's a very "Americanized" version of Silent Hill and it has a weak grasp of what made the series scary, but the monster designs are much more imaginative than in Downpour. The monsters in Downpour were just... dudes.

[up] Never played that. Is it good? Worth buying on Ebay?

edited 17th Mar '13 9:14:53 PM by Alma

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LizardBite Shameless Self-Promoter from Two Galaxies Over Since: Jan, 2001
#13: Mar 17th 2013 at 9:15:03 PM

[up][up][up] The first two encounters with the "barbie doll prostitutes" were, quite frankly, the creepiest parts of Downpour, so I'm actually quite fond of that particular enemy.

How about a game where you and a small group of people find yourself in an enclosed location and need to find a way out? There could be a large emphasis on building a relationship with the other characters (a la Bioware's games), and as the game progresses and dark secrets are revealed and monsters start showing up, characters either start going crazy or turn out to be more than they seem, and the way you interact with them plays a big role in how the story turns out (i.e. Who survives, did anyone go crazy, which betrayals were the most devastating, etc).

[up] Monster design was pretty much the only part of Homecoming that I would rate higher than Downpour.

edited 17th Mar '13 9:16:24 PM by LizardBite

Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#14: Mar 17th 2013 at 9:28:06 PM

Having to break the doll itself while its glowing outline attacked you was a novel idea (especially in one part when the doll couldn't be easily reached), but I wish it had been used on a better-looking enemy than the Barbie doll.

I liked Downpour, but I'm less impressed with it now than I was when I first finished it. Decent story: good characters, good usage of a central theme (revenge), good "reveal" re. Anne and her father. The bad would be the monster designs, the overly-bright "Otherworld" with its weird black hole chases, the half-assed "morality" system and a feeling (IMO) that the plot was protecting Murphy from having committed any real sins.

I like the idea of a survival horror RPG, maybe something in the vein of the Cube films. For some reason, all the other characters look to the PC for guidance, and it's you who decides how to navigate the trapped rooms—thus it's your fault if someone gets killed.

edited 17th Mar '13 9:32:12 PM by Alma

You need an adult.
Noaqiyeum we must dissent (it/they) from across the gulf of space (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
we must dissent (it/they)
#15: Mar 17th 2013 at 9:32:48 PM

[up][up][up] To be honest, I've never actually played it - my only gaming platform is a PC - but everything I've read and seen of it is that it's exceptional in most respects.

And it does indeed do what you were talking about, which is why I thought of it. The basic sanity meter mechanic is that you lose sanity when you see a monster or when a monster sees you, and gain some of it back by finishing them off (but later-game enemies, especially under Xel'lotath, vanish before giving you the opportunity to get cathartic on their corpses). The lower your sanity, the more likely you are to hallucinate. You have a choice between letting your sanity fall to zero, at which point sanity damage eats into your health instead, or maintaining it by depleting your magic reserves instead.

edited 17th Mar '13 9:33:11 PM by Noaqiyeum

ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NO
Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#16: Mar 17th 2013 at 9:44:05 PM

That's still somewhat on the Amnesia side of sanity mechanics. I was talking about some sort of physical ability, where being struck by such a creature causes a sanity drain, rather than merely seeing them. I'll look into the game though. I'm always eager for a good survival horror game.

Maybe sanity mechanics in general aren't a good idea. The most effective scares, for me, are ones that don't presuppose a player reaction by playing a Scare Chord or screwing with the interface.

There's a moment in Bioshock when you walk up to a wall to examine something, and when you turn back around, a doctor splicer is standing right behind you, his face filling almost the entire screen. It's effective because it had no musical cues whatsoever and it's in a game that's largely considered not to be horror. The moment at the beginning when the hook splicer is tearing your bathysphere to pieces also made me panic because I thought I was supposed to do something to escape, like hit a button before the bathysphere sank. But nah, it's just scripted.

edited 17th Mar '13 9:45:35 PM by Alma

You need an adult.
Noaqiyeum we must dissent (it/they) from across the gulf of space (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
we must dissent (it/they)
#17: Mar 17th 2013 at 10:15:52 PM

I'm confused. What part of what I said made it not a physical ability? -_^ It looks at your character and they lose sanity, they kill it and gain some of it back. Maybe we're thinking of different things by 'sanity effects'?

This is one of the things I think Eternal Darkness does effectively - all of the hallucinations are cosmetic, so the only affect the meter has on gameplay is to force the health-versus-magic choice. The only jump scare I can think of is the infamous bathtub. Everything else is either background (changing paintings in-universe, Dutch Angles for the player), or quickly rescinded (This... isn't... really... HAPPENING!).

edited 17th Mar '13 10:16:39 PM by Noaqiyeum

ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NO
0dd1 Just awesome like that from Nowhere Land Since: Sep, 2009
Just awesome like that
#18: Mar 18th 2013 at 12:28:30 AM

A horror game in which you must survive.

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.
Alma The Harbinger of Strange from Coruscant Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Harbinger of Strange
#19: Mar 18th 2013 at 3:04:33 AM

[up] Can't tell if trolling. tongue

You need an adult.
tsstevens Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did from Reading tropes such as Righting Great Wrongs Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: She's holding a very large knife
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
#20: Mar 18th 2013 at 4:38:17 AM

A survival game where you have to be horrible.

Not trolling. Think Saw with asshole victims, a vigilante will kill you if you don't carry out a series of ironic punishments on their chosen victims If your life worth more than crashing the stocks of an embezzler then making him Driven to Suicide? Can you stomach reenacting the concentration camps on that Neo Nazi so you can live? Would you dare have a pedophile raped...you get the idea.

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
TAPETRVE from The city of Vlurxtrznbnaxl Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: She's holding a very large knife
#21: Mar 18th 2013 at 5:13:28 AM

Hm, I just thought of a roguelike horror game that revolves around Better to Die than Be Killed as a central gameplay mechanic. You basically navigate a procedurally generated 19th century township and meet strange characters on your way, some of which are friendly, some of which are hostile. You carry a journal and a gun with only a few rounds. Hostile encounters may end in several ways:

  • You get killed, in which case it's game over.
  • You avoid or kill the enemy, the latter of which is possible, but will most probably cost you more than one bullet due to a severe lack of aiming skills and is only advised if you have ammo to spare or are close to a plot resolution.
  • You commit suicide by shooting yourself in the temple, in which case you revive somewhere in a safe street corner. The play field is randomised again, and while you get to keep all the stuff in your inventory, you lose part of your memory, which means that entries get excised from your journal and plot relevant items are being "neutralised", i.e. bereft of their purpose.

It's up to you to keep or discard seemingly useless objects: You will encounter new characters that have new information for you and may be able to repurpose some of your items. Moreover, you might even encounter characters that got lost due to "suicide formatting" again in later chapters, and if you happen to carry a relevant item, you would be able to resume their plot line.

The suicide mechanic would also be of help if you get yourself into a seemingly unwinnable situation (a puzzle you can't solve, for instance). Killing yourself too often in a row will start to affect your perception, though, and eventually kill you off for real.

Fear the cinnamon sugar swirl. By the Gods, fear it, Laurence.
Cider The Final ECW Champion from Not New York Since: May, 2009 Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
The Final ECW Champion
#22: Mar 18th 2013 at 7:57:06 AM

An exorcist took on more than he could handle and got lost in the castle of the devil (not that one), being guided by what he thinks is an angel gradually getting braver and bolder as he thinks he is getting closer to escape, engineering his own ruin without even knowing it. Losing the game would be death, obviously , but survival will still not lead to happily ever after (even though our player character thinks it does)

If a sequel was possible it would reveal his best friends were really his enemies and his enemies his best friends and that the only reason he seems to have come out mostly okay was because of Deus ex Machina...which can't help anymore because it was compromised to save him. It would then focus on his wife, whom he unwittingly dragged into everything in the mistaken belief his worst problems were over.


A delinquent criminal is abducted to be a sex slave to the fair folk who get lost and lose him on an alien world full of hostile life forms. His captors are actively hunting for him and the wildlife is curious at best. Ignorant to his surrounding he slept on a nest and is now infected with a parasite that accidentally crawled under his skin and cannot get out. It attracts the alien life forms who otherwise would not pay attention to him in hopes they will eat this improper host and let it propagate inside a better body. On the positive side it has a natural aversion to the fair folk, who are even worse hosts and will give him an early warning to their arrival(explaining why they just cannot grab him again).
You play as a termite scout fleeing in the face of an innumerable horde of ants who annihilate everything in their path through a landscape riddled with Melanolestes, spiders and chickens in an effort to get back home and warn the mound.

edited 19th Mar '13 8:53:45 AM by Cider

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
TAPETRVE from The city of Vlurxtrznbnaxl Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: She's holding a very large knife
#23: Mar 18th 2013 at 10:19:49 AM

[up]The latter sounds like a nice sequel to Deadly Creatures to me cool .

Fear the cinnamon sugar swirl. By the Gods, fear it, Laurence.
NEO from Qrrbrbirlbel Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
#24: Mar 18th 2013 at 11:21:28 AM

Majora's Mask: The Ben Drowned Version.

No regret shall pass over the threshold!
ironcommando smol aberration from Somewhere in space Since: May, 2009 Relationship Status: Abstaining
#25: Mar 18th 2013 at 12:22:23 PM

A story centered around a Creepypasta chain mail (a.k.a. those "if you don't copy/pass down this message, you will die/get bad luck" hoaxes). Except that this one chain-mail hoax actually does kill the readers later if they doesn't pass it on and turns them into undead monsters.

Naturally, the protagonist, his loved ones, and a whole load of others around the world read it and dismiss it, thinking it's yet another hoax. And then people start dying and turning into monsters from strange attacks... and we find out that the guy who posted the message may not be human.

edited 18th Mar '13 12:24:23 PM by ironcommando

...eheh

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