New Horror-Game Mechanics

[MrShowerHead]

sandbox zombie-infested city, no slow moving zombie either, limited ammo, limited population, and no way out

I've been thinking something like this too.

My version of it was more of a RPG game.You could choose something like your weapons, how does your character look etc. Then I've thinking something like mission/quests. Saving survivors, killing attacking zombie hordes. Something like that. And these would come at random times(like Mount&Blade) Maybe even add a hunger meter(Sims style) you would have to search houses for food and ammo. It would be awesome, if someone would make a city like this and made every house is available to access.

BTW, if anyone knows any good zombie RPG games, let me know

 

[AnAngryMoose]

*snip*

That would be amazing, it would be great to see someone finally using the 'your console is possessed/broken' trick again, never played Eternal Darkness but I've always loved the idea it went to that level to screw with the player.

I agree completely with both these people. Someone hire dathwampeer for game mechanics ideas!

 

[AnAngryMoose]

A scare-meter, that makes you lose the grip of your weapons, as well as killing you when you get too scared it would work like the longer you fight the more scared you'll get as well as making some of the exploring have frightening bits to make the player question if he should investigate or not, another thing would be that whenever a player let's go of a certain button in panic events the weapon or flashlight would drop and you would be in complete darkness until you found it again.

I like this, but maybe without the actual meter. And also based on context. For example, let's say you have a pistol. A zombie is approaching. You fire off 6 bullets and it doesn't flinch... that's an "oh shit" moment and your character then begins to act scared. On the other hand, if you fire 2 bullets into it's face and it drops... no problems.

On top of that you could add some sort of test like that Silent Hill game for the Wii to figure out how easily scared you are so when something does worry you, the character should respond accordingly.

 

[teknoarcanist]

@zetsubou I love the idea of having to hold a button or two to grip an item in hand. Not for forty hours, maybe, but in a 'walking through the abandoned highway tunnel' section, that would be fantastic, especially if punctuated with frantic action sections and lights placed periodically. Do I pick up the flashlight, or haul ass for that distant glow?

 

[TOGSolid]

I want to take the F.E.A.R to the next level, odd warning signs like suddenly your partners face suddenly has this creepy smile and raspy sound and the sounds growing larger, with a heartbeat music and the world growing increasingly odd like people vanishing in thin air or you crashing into invisible walls.

FEAR is broken as a horror game because it's incredibly predictable and about as scary as Nacho Libre.

You cannot have sudden scary music whenever something is about to happen because that is an auditory clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

You cannot have radio static whenever something is about to happen because that is an auditory clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

You cannot have odd visual glitches whenever something is about to happen because that is a visual clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

Are you guys sensing a trend? The best horror games and movies don't have retarded clues that something is about to happen. The player needs to be constantly thinking that at any time they could get shredded or they'll stumble onto something. The music should be constant, the tension should be constant. It's ok to have fucked up things happen during a firefight, in fact, that'd be a great change of pace considering how badly written most horror games are. It's ok to have fucked up things NOT happen between firefights occasionally just to keep the player guessing.

Basically take FEAR and do the complete opposite of it and you'll have a game that has the potential to be scary.

http://www.amnesiagame.com/#main

Everyone watch the video. A big plus for this game (for me, anyway) is the fact that you can't fight the enemy in any way, only avoid them. This should make the game waaaay scarier.

Penumbra: Overture. Google it.

 

[SnowdensOfYesteryear]

I want to take the F.E.A.R to the next level, odd warning signs like suddenly your partners face suddenly has this creepy smile and raspy sound and the sounds growing larger, with a heartbeat music and the world growing increasingly odd like people vanishing in thin air or you crashing into invisible walls.

FEAR is broken as a horror game because it's incredibly predictable and about as scary as Nacho Libre.

You cannot have sudden scary music whenever something is about to happen because that is an auditory clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

You cannot have radio static whenever something is about to happen because that is an auditory clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

You cannot have odd visual glitches whenever something is about to happen because that is a visual clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

Are you guys sensing a trend? The best horror games and movies don't have retarded clues that something is about to happen. The player needs to be constantly thinking that at any time they could get shredded or they'll stumble onto something. The music should be constant, the tension should be constant. It's ok to have fucked up things happen during a firefight, in fact, that'd be a great change of pace considering how badly written most horror games are. It's ok to have fucked up things NOT happen between firefights occasionally just to keep the player guessing.

Basically take FEAR and do the complete opposite of it and you'll have a game that has the potential to be scary.

http://www.amnesiagame.com/#main

Everyone watch the video. A big plus for this game (for me, anyway) is the fact that you can't fight the enemy in any way, only avoid them. This should make the game waaaay scarier.

Penumbra: Overture. Google it.

Disagree. Good games have been made where you have a warning sign, though I do agree with you on a point needs to be farther away from FEAR. Maybe have an auditory cue when nothing happens, and scattered throughout the game have one or two where it actually does indicate something.

 

[TOGSolid]

Disagree. Good games have been made where you have a warning sign, though I do agree with you on a point needs to be farther away from FEAR. Maybe have an auditory cue when nothing happens, and scattered throughout the game have one or two where it actually does indicate something.

But that's just going along with my general point of the need to keep the player off balance. If you have cues happen and sometime result in nothing at all then the player will never be sure of wtf is going to happen which means that it's going to be easy to set them up for a scare.
It's all about tension and almost every horror game/movie made sucks shit at it.

 

[HeySeansOnline]

You find a small weapons cache, the player automatically takes the big gun inside, put this cache right after an intense ammo burning firefight, now low on ammo he thinks he is saved thanks to this gun, he gets swarmed by a group of enemies, the gun jams.

More annoying or cinematic than anything scary. Seriously, if a large group of enemies spawned STRAIGHT AFTER a massive gunfight, depending on the difficulty, I'd probably hurl the controller at the screen, hunt you down as you are responsible for the idea and force you to play it =)

Ok you have me there, instead make the first fight just enemies who are hard to hit and drain your ammo, and the second fight one with AI partners, like you run into the cache and its close to a group of friendlies, like a small makeshift base, then when the second big fight starts your gun jams, and you have to try to escape as your team is overun.

 

[Judgement101]

Shock-images of their character dead, and then make their character die in that way so the game is saying "You f***ed up, this is what will happen"

 

[Harkonnen64]

Here's an idea that I know hasn't been tried before: Flight simulation horror! I don't even know if that would be any good; I just know it would be original.

A game where you play as a grilled cheese sandwich escaping a young man trying to eat you would also be original but would you play it?

 

[Estocavio]

How about have the antagonist as a regular human being for once? I can guarantee that humans are more malicious, deadly and psychotic than any deformed monster.

Claudia Wolf (Silent Hill 3) and especially Eddie Dombrowski (Silent Hill 2) do nicely to fit your quota, even though you fight hundreds of monsters along the way.

If they replaced the monsters with raving lunartics that would work

 

[jeejvebe]

How about a thriller-game, without any supernatural elements.
Maybe you could play the target of a serial killer, just an ordinary human trying to stay alive.

 

[Fenreil]

They need to add elements that pretend to fuck with your console, like in Eternal Darkness. Watching your volume bar go down by itself or having the game pretend to erase your data is pretty fucking awesome. Add in the stuff other people suggested (limited weapons, etc.) and you're golden.

 

[Gralian]

Instead of making it monster horror or alien horror (á la Dead Space), actually make it about supernatural horror. Ghosts and stuff. And for the love of god don't explain it to the audience halfway in. Because the only reason we find shit scary is because it's unexplained. It's SUPERnatural. If you start to rationalise it we lose all fascination. The dude in the bedsheets pretending to be a ghost isn't scary if you know the trick behind it. Just like magic and mind tricks aren't amusing anymore when you know how they are performed. Alan Wake had a nice idea but ultimately fell short due to humanising the darkness via Jagger. But the strange happenings and disturbing voices of Taken who were stuck on a loop ("You forgot your lunchbox!") was what really sold the atmosphere of the game, and it's good they never explained what the darkness was or where it came from clearly. Because the mystery of it is what made the game memorable for me.

In fact, just focus on atmosphere entirely. Because it's scarier than anything that might go bump in the night.

 

[Darren-Jaguar]

Or just have a sort of "stress" system, that sort of works like stamina, and if it runs out your guy kills themselves, and it works like a normal death.

I've always thought it'd be an idea to have 2 "health" bars (not necessarily in horror, though):
Physical Health and Pain Threshold.

Physical Health doesn't restore easily. Goes too low, you may limp. Take too much and you'll die in some nasty way.
Pain Threshold restores slowly all the time. Goes too low, you'll probably writhe on the floor in pain, and if it goes too high you'll get a heart attack or something.

Because some things hurt and don't damage you.

 

[Proteus214]

The player character has a heart condition that acts up when he/she becomes scared. Kind of inspired by a combination of sanity in Eternal Darkness or having your character start panicking enough to blow your cover if you stare at a monster for too long in Penumbra.

 

[Tharwen]

I think that it would be extremely disturbing to make random little details about the game change. Maybe items move around your inventory and disappear (or new ones arrive), NPCs' clothes/memories/intentions change randomly, or a door will move to a different part of the room when your back is turned. If you could avoid making anything jump out at the player and never tell him that there's anything wrong, it would be an extremely immersive experience. Perhaps it could only work in the first portion of the game, before you find out that there's a direct threat.

Maybe things could start to become more obviously wrong, and NPCs start to cast two shadows/become more and more disfigured over time/laugh at things that scare you etc. Eventually, it turns out that there is something corrupting the people around you (but you're immune) and you end up on your own in the place you were exploring, needing to find a way out.

 

[Luke5515]

I was just thinking about how fighting back against the enemy kind of killed the horror sometimes. That brought me to thinking about how when playing spy on tf2 my heart would start pounding whenever i was low on cloak and there are lots of people around and maybe a pyro or two. You have to start making up new hiding places and be really smart about your movements.
I think that would be fun. Some unspeakable evil is slowly taking over the world and all you know is that it originated from X. You must go sneak into X and try to figure out how to stop it. You get spotted, you don't get killed, but you get attacked until you retreat and have to sneak some more, but now you need to use a different rout, seeing as the enemy knows where you came from. Also at the end you find you can't stop it and go insane. End.

 

[wolfshrimp]

There was a game once called Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi which had the interesting idea of randomising the environment so no two playthroughs were ever the same. Combined with the ability of enemies to smash through floors and attack you. I found it particularly terrifying, they got the atmosphere right- limiting your attack capabilities but with a slow gradient of new weapons and enemies. The graphics weren't awesome but there was this grainy image overlay that made it rather like an old film.

FEAR was scary in a way but broke up the action and horror sections too predictably... the atmospherics were good.

 

[cornmancer]

I am the dude who slaps my friends when they say they want to see a movie in 3D, but I can see 3D horror movies and games being great.