Survival Horror on a Cruise Ship

[SilverUchiha]

I love the idea, but I wish you'd stop sharing such amazing ideas that will never exist. You either need to get deeper into the game-design world or just start making these yourself with some independent studio. All these ideas are simply going to waste just sitting here.

 

[Eetinam]

The controls would definitely have to be changed to more classic 'move to that section of the screen,' or at least have the option of changing to that. I can see the logic of Yahtzee's method, if you're running from monsters that involves entering multiple rooms then switching cameras could cause havoc to maintaining direction, but I think it would be too awkward the rest of the time.
A possible solution to people saying that having control of the security so you can see what's coming kills the horror, here's a possible solution: All your enemies surely have the same cybernetic implants you do, so you could make it that if you spend too long watching them through cameras or play around with the power too much, they'll get suspicious and connect themselves to the system, which could lead them to finding where you currently are. You'd probably still see them coming, but should seriously up the tension.

 

[12th_milkshake]

I'm pretty impressed by the game idea.... Made me think of systemshock/bioshock thingy so you Must have shock in the title! that is all.

 

[teh_Canape]

didn't Cold Fear take place in a cruise ship or something like that? =P

 

[Farther than stars]

This is a far cry from the Yahtzee who made the "No More Heroes" review in which he said and I quote:

"...any game designer who sacrifices fun to make an artistic statement is obviously stuck so far up his own ass that he's in danger of choking on his own head."

At least he acknowledged that those controls that he described would be about as smooth as gravel, but that last paragraph did have a bit too much of a god complex associated with it to be to my liking.

 

[Joshua Kerwood]

So, the game would be like 1-part Resident Evil, 1-part System shock 2, one part Night Trap (old game on Sega CD involving controlling cameras and activating traps to kill people). Sounds a bit on the complicated to control side, but I think that if I saw it in production, I would probably look into buying it (assuming I had a PC or other system that was up to the task). If I were the one making it, I would give it multiple endings based on various factors like if you found a way to escape the ship, if you managed to solve the mystery of who was responsible for the tragedy, if you manage to find a cure for the virus, and the manner by which you avoided being killed (You get a special ending if you can resolve it without killing any of the survivors, or if you killed all of them). I would indeed buy this game if that were the case.

 

[Guardian of Nekops]

Having the camera automatically follow you into new rooms (thanks to a totally believable interface setting in your implants) with an option to shift your hackervision to rooms you don't happen to be in would probably cause less annoyance, but yes. This seems a very promising idea.

The prospect of using this same control system for first-person control of, say, repair droids is also appealing. Using such segments to access places where the cameras have been damaged would be a good in-game excuse.

 

[srpilha]

Huh. Well, that's a first. I'm actually very intrigued by such an idea. I've never played survival horror on a boat, and combining that with the third/first person seems appropriate. Just one problem...

Why is the ship's network unsecured? I know that's a stupid question, but wouldn't there be, like, a few passwords to set up? Isn't that common logic?

didn't you read the "twist"? the whole thing was a hack job made with the *intention* of giving people access to these (manipulated thus murderous) views.

Quite brilliant. Of course I wouldn't play it because I don't have that many pants to crap into.

 

[skylog]

I wonder if Yahtzee's ever played 999 on the DS. That's a game on a luxury cruise ship that did the horror thing pretty well.

 

[german_dan]

well go on then....get your team together!
may I suggest these guys for the engine: http://www.wolfire.com/

and then onward to kickstarter for funding! I'll expect to have this game on my
Xbox(720? ) by the end of 2013!

 

[thiosk]

Oh, you mean this one?

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/1476/684489-front_large.jpg

You play an unknown someone trying to guide another unknown girl around a destroyed (science) vessel. You guide here around by using the security system to turn lights on and off, removed dangers for her, and generally do what you described, except she's controlled by an AI instead of FPS controls.
**snips**

Yep. I've played through the first bit of it, but havn't completed it by any stretch of the imagination. Theres some fiddily business that turned me off, but the third-person-escort-sorta-survival-horror-on-a-boat is all there. Its a very nice little game, and I'd suggest anyone interested in yahtzee's concept try it out.

 

[DaveHz]

Come on, the revelation about the virus would have been, or should I say, would be one of the coolest endings of any game ever, so it sucks that he already spoiled it for us

 

[Ashcrexl]

oh hey! the big twist at the end sounds almost exactly like the big twist at the end of this:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/515898

but yours looks to be a lot better presented, so that's pretty cool

 

[irishda]

I would stay in the Kubrick vein with a cruise-ship horror game with a mix of detective mystery. Our character slowly devolves into madness aboard the last voyage of a historic (and rumored to be evil) ship, and must fight his own sanity. To unearth the ship's secrets, the game will focus primarily on exploration and conversing with the various other people on the ship. But the kicker is twofold, what clues has he uncovered that are real and which is ones that are just the product of his own insanity? Secondly, there would be no meter for a player's insanity level. The higher the level would alter things in game, but the extent to which you notice them isn't so assured. The player would never be quite sure what was real, and what was fake. Insanity is increased by following red herrings and sanity is restored by uncovering more pieces to the puzzle of the ship.

The ending would be dependent on the level of insanity reached by the voyage's end. Is it really one man fighting against time to save himself and others on a cruise? Or is it already too late?

DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUHHHHH

 

[nothingspringstomind]

I had an idea similar to this in high school but set in an alternate world fuedal Japan.

In it, you played as a blind Ronin who had a pet bird that he could see through the eyes of. It would perch on vantage points for most of the gameplay, but would actually require realtime flight to get to the next vantage point in an area, leaving you temporarily vulnerable from attack by whatever antagonist i was eventually going to think up.
For a few sections i thought about having it perch on the characters' shoulder and the side of his head would be constantly visible, leaving your field of view hindered on one side.
About halfway through the game, the enemies would figure out that this supposedly blind man who kept beating them up used the bird as his eyes and would actively try to attack it, meaning you would have to keep it alive in order to progress.

Then a game came out on PS2 that was a third person action adventure with some sort of barbarian dude who had a pet bird that you could see through the eyes of in order to solve puzzles and see around corners to ambush enemies.

So i gave up.

I eventually made him into a character in a very short lived comic. But it was a bit shit, so i left the idea alone until now.

 

[Covarr]

This idea kind of reminds me of an episode of Immersion [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcD7LMDNG0w]. Even though it would take some getting used to, I think it would work nicely with some practice (a skill curve? Of course!). I like this idea (and this is coming from a guy who very much DIDN'T like the original RE, though not because of the awkwardness of the controls, but because they were slow and it took WAY too long to turn around).

P.S. Thanks

 

[josemlopes]

The cameras part remind me of The Experiment 112 or something like that.

I would like there to exist a survival horror game all inside a submarine. A cruise would also be cool but give total freedom to the player to explore every room of it.

 

[Therumancer]

Interesting idea. Truthfully I do kind of wish people would do more cyberpunk horror games, there have only been a few that have showed the potential of it as a genere, but few people seem to want to take on the challenge. "Hell", "Bloodnet", "Ripper", and others all blended those elements to some extent. Honestly though I'm not entirely sure I consider a technological threat like a perception distorting virus to really count as "horror" in the constraints of Cyberpunk (or what most people consider cyberpunk) because most works within the genere are already techno-thrillers with a lot of bad things going on. Truthfully I'd think if you were going to do a game like this it would probably be better to go the "Cthulhupunk" route and use a supernatural menace. For all the trippiness of "what was I actually fighting" as a question, within the context of the genere, that's not horror, that's your average thursday. All the points about how viruses could be used for terrorism or an anti-personell weapon are well known to genere fans.

That said perhaps you (Yahtzee) if you are despite all odds reading this, should make your next adventure game about you as a seriel killer, murdering other game reviewers, editors, and various analogies to some of the more deserving industry personalities in a biting satire of the industry and it's nature. Sort of like the imagine that comes to mind if you know anything about Spider Robinson and notice one of his titles is "Kill The Editor", though the less said about the actual story in question the better.

 

[Something Amyss]

Actually sounds like a pretty good idea. Maybe later in the game when you find out about the virus, it´ll start messing with your ability to transfer/remove power to/from areas(because that´s how viruses work in the future) making you even more exposed and vunerable? Or is that to much

Regardless, sounds like a game I´d buy.

Viruses could work like that now. I mean, we have viruses that interfere with brain and nervous system functions, and ostensibly your neural interface would require at least one of those. Though you probably don't need it to be more than Treknobabble to make it work, long as the game is compelling enough.

This is a game I'd totally try, even though it's kind of against my normal genre of play.