Share your videogame/mod ideas

[Meelis13]

  Reverend_UshankaCat_ said:

Now I'm starting to think this actually has potential! What's TWC though?

Total war center- basically site where most modders of total war games are

[Selfsurprise]

A first-person survival horror title with an emphasis on dialogue and locating of "found footage" tapes, running and even fighting are desperate and typically unsuccessful last resorts, at best. The overarching premise and setting of the title is a government-ordained cordoned-off council estate in an undisclosed suburban part of the Midlands in England, mysteriously closed off from public access and beyond the social services jurisdiction since the late 90's. You play as a specialized therapist named Dr. Yanaye Woolrich who (paradoxically) fancies herself both as a proponent of a gentler and more progressive approach to severe mental illness, as well as an "alienist" of aberrant human behaviour in the archaic sense. After uncovering some vague hints in psychotherapeutic archives relating to [REDACTED], housing a community of overlooked case histories, Miss Woolrich makes several well-placed inquiries and after a lengthy period of litigation and wrangling, manages to gain a confirmation from her senior colleagues to survey the estate - but only after signing off numerous legal waivers absolving any interested parties of responsibility.

 

Filled with idealistic fury that she'll find some wilfully abandoned and sad collection of victims forgotten by a pressured medical service and a political climate of financial cuts and hostility to working class squalor, Dr. Woolrich acquires the keys to the ramshackle fence demarcating the entrance to the undisclosed location in [REDACTED]. Amazed by the sheer dereliction and obvious ineffectiveness of the apparent "social containment" (as the forms so callously called it) Dr. Woolrich can't help but wonder at the undeniable fact that none of the inhabitants of the estate have left the location or sought any kind of outside interaction. She soon happens upon the collection of houses in an utterly decrepit state, aged beyond their apparent years (the architecture she guesses is late 70's, at most) and outwardly damaged into near obsoletion. Having brought the individual case files of [REDACTED]'s thirty-one occupants and families, she immediately sets off to contact any member of the community who is willing to talk to her.

She'll soon find them, and some of them will be all too willing to talk, and share with her human experience at it's most abject and untenable...

 

The gameplay itself would be very open-ended, much of the narrative and events and contacting of the thirty-one cases occurs partially random and in a non-linear way. One of the more eerie and bizarre elements of the case files in Dr. Woolrich's possession is the redaction of the estate inhabitants first names and very sparse historical/biographical notes for each individual. And for reasons that are unclear initially, each individual has been given an abstract title, vague but descriptive and typically along the lines of "The Ventriloquist", "The Coat", "The Performer", "The Swimmer", "The Mouth", etc. It's only upon researching through each families and individuals homes, living spaces and personal artifacts do you start to build a picture of the hideous and harrowing transformation (mentally, spiritually, physically) each person has undergone. Much of inhabitants lives and inner turmoils are captured on a sizeable collection of videotapes, either kept as new media journals by some of the more articulate inhabitants, or else taken by some unknown figure. However the real meat of the game involves distressing and life-threatening "contacts" with the householders.

 

Whilst fleeing and panicked "fight or flight" actions are possible and occasionally necessarily, your only real chance against the thirty-one is to establish some kind of communication with each individual, tailoring your approach according to the intelligence and behavioural tropes of each case. Some of the thirty-one are akin to deranged and disarticulate animals, and may require unorthodox and non-verbal strategies in allaying their violent tendencies. Some of them, as the story intro implied, are more than capable of speaking English and have an almost overbearing need to unburden themselves of their trauma, though they are no less dangerous or terrifying opponents. In this game it pays to take your time and really analyse the enemies motives and relationships to one another - it may be the only thing that saves your life.

[Selfsurprise]

Some small and not entirely fleshed out ideas I've had recently.

 

• I
  
• Have you ever read the novel Greybeard by Brian Aldiss? It's a great story that hovers uneasily between being an elegy of mankind in it's current incarnation and a somewhat fretful optimistic account of what it might become. It's essentially a post-apocalyptic tale in which the overwhelming majority of the human race was accidently sterilised after atmospheric nuclear bomb tests. Told mainly through the perspective of the titular character Greybeard (real name Algernon Timberlane) and his wife Martha, the plot shifts between the past in which the disaster unfolded and the many social and political ramifications of it are detailed, and the future "present" in which the planets aged population live in anarchic and eccentric communities, rife with rumours of strange fairy-like creatures glimpsed in the wilderness, and a tiny number of mildly deformed children that are treated as venerated prisoners by those in possession of them. I think a post-apocalyptic setting filled with mutant children and an aging and dwindling population of "true humans" would make for an interesting premise, you could really play on the moral greyness of the hostility and tension between the new generation of youthful abhumans and their homo sapien forebears, especially if the game had a strong emphasis on survival and dialogue instead of high-octane action and combat.
  
• II
  
• This is a bit of a weird idea, so I hope you'll indulge me. Have you ever seen those wildlife documentaries with a particular emphasis on insects, arachnids and other invertebrates. Spiders and scorpions have elaborate courting and mating rituals, things that would defy your imagination unless you actually saw them. As if often the case with invertebrates, the males are often smaller and often cannibalistically predated by the larger females, and so male spiders have to choose their potential partners carefully and conduct strange gestural movements and signals in order to even approach females. I don't know if I'm being perverted or not, but some sort of game that included mechanics in the vein of spider/scorpion courting dances would be very interesting, it could be fantasy/sci fi orientated and actually needn't be sexual in nature - it may simply be the manner in which you defeat enemies or acquire allies. I guess the genre would be "stealth mate em' up"...
  
• III
  
• Yet another niche first-spooky "omg2spookeh" survival horror idea, I'm sorry I keep veering towards these themes. Have you ever heard of a Japanese yokai spirit called the Nuribotoke? The name roughly translates into "coated Buddha" or "black-skinned monk" and refers to its hideous appearance; resembling a black-fleshed bloated corpse with dangling eyeballs, a psychotic grin and occasionally a catfish's tail. According to legend they are said manifest in family shrines that are neglected or otherwise abandoned, one interpretation citing that the Nuribotoke is a grotesque and spiteful corruption of a previously benevolent household spirit. I think some sort of investigation game set in modern times which involves the player entering into Nuribotoke-haunted premises and appeasing the creatures would be awesome.

[Selfsurprise]

I think it's about time this thread made a comeback. INTERNET NECROMANCY ACTIVATE.

 

• I
  
• I've been reading an excellent novel titled The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by the author Becky Chambers. She's extremely good at conjuring up a vastly intergalactic multispecies setting, but then drawing the plot and narrative focus onto the intimate relationships and cultural complexities of the various alien characters in a way that sates both my exobiological curiosity and imbues it with profoundly humane drama. I'd love to play some sort of story-intensive sci-fi game taking place on a mercenary/wormhole navigating/asteroid mining/medical/multipurpose spaceship where the the emphasis is less "save the universe from cataclysmic doom" and more "try to get by with your job and get along with everybody". Having played No Man's Sky and unlike many actually quite enjoyed it, despite it's tragic shallowness and overreaching ambition, I think a game with a much more inward-looking scope of a small multispecies crew onboard a ship could have a lot of potential. There could be tension, threats and overarching dangers along the way but your best means of survival has less to do with shooting everything ala-Doomguy and more to do with your ability to bring the best out of your crewmates with their many talents - and flaws. The game would be a lore addicts wet dream, with details aplenty about the numerous species, settlements, planets and organizations that exist out there to be visited. The real meat of the game would be more dialogue intensive though, with the entire crew of between five or twelve individuals being playable, your open-ended aim being the forming of friendships and dealing with the fallout of disagreements and personality clashes despite cultural and personal differences.
  
• II
  
• Speaking of INTERNET NECROMANCY, I sometimes enjoy perusing those so-called Geocities resarch Tumblr blogs that dredge those old bits of the internet you thought were dead. I like the idea of a horror game that mimics the visual and display aesthetics of those earlier website creators, but takes place is some horrific disembodied dystopia where the damned attempt to emerge and express themselves via internet aesthetics and somewhat outmoded digital imagery.
  
• III
  
• Some kind of open world grave-digging RPG, essentially Skyrim set in a planetwide necropolis, with a dungeon synth Burzum-esque soundtrack and with a heavier emphasis on avoiding a direct fight with enemies. I'm quite keen on the idea of fantasy settings where human beings are either in decline or otherwise a less dominant force in their world. Humans, like all "unentropic" life in this world, have a fraught and complicated relationship with the "ecology of atropal life" that high-form undead intellectualism utilizes to distinguish themselves from the diaspora of living sapients that share their environment. It's a relationship that has sometimes resulted in oppression and abandonment of the unentropics by the atropal (i.e. effectively undead by human standards) races that largely influence the cultural and geopolitical landscape of this necrocosm (Necrocosm or Vekqocosm [for the more etymologically arcane spelling] would make an excellent title for the game, come to think of it) but in the contemporary aspect of the game the relationship between the unetropics and atropals resembles a highly contentious and uneven "first and third world" spectrum, in which the majority of living races suffer major social problems, lack of organization and poverty whilst the high-form undead races have the overwhelming access to wealth, resources, equality and are thus tend to be more cosmopolitan than the unentropics. There is still more morally ambiguous and diverse contact between living races and the almost equally denigrated low-form atropals, who battle against the stubborn hierarchies of unliving order.

[longliveprose]

I'm working right now on a Half-Life mod where, well, I'll just give you the readme summary.

 

  Quote

The mod starts on a train to a crowded university campus at night. You are Claude Leopold Atkins, an 18 year old filmmaking student attending Freeman University, a beacon of activity and new life in an otherwise run down, ramshackle Tennessee university town of 17,000. The town's inhabitants are very diverse, everyone has something to tell. Maybe too much. There are rumours among the more superstitious students that the town folk aren't exactly 100% . . . human. The rumour comes to you, and you decide to investigate, bringing along the friend who told you, Rodney Douglas. But you soon find out things you should never have, get into the thick of a familial struggle, and it becomes a fight to survive as the townsfolk turn on you, calling in the local police and even the military. You must fight to survive, get out, and tell whoever you can what you find before it's too late.

By the way, "Freeman University" is coincidental and refers to Morgan Freeman, since, you know, films.

 

There's not going to be as much gunplay as in Half-Life, it's more like Strife. But still, there will be a couple weapons: revolver, MP5 (modified so that it has a 30 round magazine and shoots in bursts), and shotgun. Plus, your friend Rodney will be a permanent ally (at least, as long as you don't let him die, and trust me he can die) and will have the ability to upgrade himself with most weapons left on the ground.

 

I'm still working on the other game as well, but I've moved laptop recently and lost a lot of the files. Still, I wasn't that far into development, so it should be pretty easy to catch up.

[Selfsurprise]

  longliveprose said:

I'm working right now on a Half-Life mod where, well, I'll just give you the readme summary.

 

  Quote

The mod starts on a train to a crowded university campus at night. You are Claude Leopold Atkins, an 18 year old filmmaking student attending Freeman University, a beacon of activity and new life in an otherwise run down, ramshackle Tennessee university town of 17,000. The town's inhabitants are very diverse, everyone has something to tell. Maybe too much. There are rumours among the more superstitious students that the town folk aren't exactly 100% . . . human. The rumour comes to you, and you decide to investigate, bringing along the friend who told you, Rodney Douglas. But you soon find out things you should never have, get into the thick of a familial struggle, and it becomes a fight to survive as the townsfolk turn on you, calling in the local police and even the military. You must fight to survive, get out, and tell whoever you can what you find before it's too late.

By the way, "Freeman University" is coincidental and refers to Morgan Freeman, since, you know, films.

 

There's not going to be as much gunplay as in Half-Life, it's more like Strife. But still, there will be a couple weapons: revolver, MP5 (modified so that it has a 30 round magazine and shoots in bursts), and shotgun. Plus, your friend Rodney will be a permanent ally (at least, as long as you don't let him die, and trust me he can die) and will have the ability to upgrade himself with most weapons left on the ground.

 

I'm still working on the other game as well, but I've moved laptop recently and lost a lot of the files. Still, I wasn't that far into development, so it should be pretty easy to catch up.

I do hope you keep us updated about this Mr. -liveprose, but at the same time I know how these projects are, no so pressure! Your synopsis definitely hints at some sort of Shadow Over Innsmouth vibe.

[longliveprose]

  Selfsurprise said:

  longliveprose said:

I do hope you keep us updated about this Mr. -liveprose, but at the same time I know how these projects are, no so pressure! Your synopsis definitely hints at some sort of Shadow Over Innsmouth vibe.

Update #1: dead laptop. Not much to cry over, it was a Lenovo. Still, a major hindrance.

[Selfsurprise]

  longliveprose said:

  Selfsurprise said:

  longliveprose said:

I do hope you keep us updated about this Mr. -liveprose, but at the same time I know how these projects are, no so pressure! Your synopsis definitely hints at some sort of Shadow Over Innsmouth vibe.

Update #1: dead laptop. Not much to cry over, it was a Lenovo. Still, a major hindrance.

That's less of an update and more of a snag, but I appreciate the comitment to your audience.

[longliveprose]

  Selfsurprise said:

That's less of an update and more of a snag, but I appreciate the comitment to your audience.

I thought it would be something of note.

[longliveprose]

Update #2:Project 1's source is still lost, but I know it's somewhere in my Google Drive. Project 2's development has started again since I've dug out a ThinkCentre desktop. While it is unfortunately also made by Lenovo, it does have major backing by IBM, so it should pan out better. I've made the first couple assets, like textures and sounds, and I'll start code first thing tomorrow. I'd say I'm 1% done, and it'll release sometime in 2019 if I don't hit another snag, or worse, get another ex-computer.

 

Edit: iPod touch 4.

[Selfsurprise]

I wasn't going to do this (because I didn't want to seem pushy, obsessive or weird) but about a week ago I posted a thread about adapting books into games which unfortunately hasn't garnered a great deal of interest. I didn't want my swivel-eyed ramblings on the ten books I wrote to be a total waste of effort, so I sincerely hope nobody minds if I repost this here where someone might enjoy reading it. If there are any mods reading who don't approve of my actions please feel free to delete or edit this post as you see fit.

 

Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Proposed Genre: Open world sci-fi RPG with strong dialogue/social dynamics

 

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I recently finished Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and I reckon I might of found the sort of exocentric and subtly profound sci-fi I've craved for a while now - I'm certainly hoping there are other books in set in Chambersverse. The title in question is a full-fat space opera set in a loosely defined far flung future, where post-earth diaspora humans exist as minor members of a vast multi-species coalition alongside a diverse array of alien races. What separates this novel from the innumerable quantities of heroic epics involving forces of evil hell bent on the annihilation of the universe is that while the setting is galactically vast, the narrative focus of this story is drawn down to a more individually humane (sapient is a better term) level, focused as it is on the everyday life of a wormhole engineering crew and their efforts to bore an interstellar pathway to a planet negotiating with the aforementioned coalition.

 

These lore details aren't really the substantial aspect of the novel, it strikes me that Becky Chambers is far more interested and extremely accomplished at creating individuals - human, near-human or otherwise - with personal strengths and flaws, dark secrets in their origins, and the way in which they relate, negotiate and tolerate their differences. She effectively writes the kind of quality drama you normally see set in contemporary or historic reality, only it happens to be set in the future and more intelligent beings are involved.

 

I'd love to see some kind of open world adventure/spaceship management set in the Chambersverse, assuming the game wasn't simply a more accurate reinterpretation of the the Wayfarer and it's crew described in the book. The emphasis would be on handling the needs and relationships of your multi-species crew, dealing with drama and threats when they arise with a variety of approaches, accepting commissions and jobs, learning more about the coalition and its member species (Chambers is also very imaginative when conceiving the societies and cultures in her universe) and ultimately find some sort meaning and kinship with your coworkers.

 

 

Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror

Proposed Genre: Survival horror where you take on the role of the antagonist

 

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Often cited as an epiphanic influence by the surrealists, the vampire story Maldoror - or Les Chants de Maldoror ("The Songs of Maldoror") - by Uruguayan-born French writer Isidore Ducasse (written under the Byronic pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont) is one of the most appallingly weird, uncomfortably taboo, yet somehow luridly romantic (in the mysteriously fey gothic literature sense) books I've read in a while, perhaps only remotely comparable to Thomas De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater or Thomas Nashe's Terrors of the Night. No wonder Ducasse took a fictional character's name as an alias for publishing.

 

Maldoror reads more like a delirious poem, originally consisting of six books or "cantos" that traditionally segment poems into manageable parts. It concerns the sadistic roamings of the titular characters, a monstrous individual tormented by his own unrestrained capacity for evil, an extraordinary vampiric murderer who commits (or imagines) appalling acts of violence against other people, relates and communicates to lowly verminous animals, and undergoes series of hallucinatory symbolic experiences in which he encounter terrifyingly strange entities. At first I struggled with how the books format could be translated into some manner of bloodthirsty yet atmospheric survival horror, being as it is the unhinged inner monologue of a self-aware self-recognizing villain.

 

However given that there is a Friday the 13th game set to be released in 2017, in which you play as the slasher franchise's antagonist Jason Voorhees, I honestly think there is room in the market for a far darker and richly eldritch game in which you flee from the forces of light and wallow in depravity.

 

 

H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space

Proposed Genre: First person walking simulator/investigative horror

 

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Though technically speaking not an actual book if you don't count later anthologies of Lovecraft's work due to it originally being published in the American sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories, his masterful short story The Colour Out of Space is arguably the one major Lovecraft work that isn't as inundated with various media interpretations as, say, At the Mountains of Madness or The Shadow Out of Time have been subject to - maybe because one could argue that it isn't strictly or irrefutably within the "mythos" canon of his other stories. Many apologists and scholars of Lovecraftian writings cite it as his best work due to sheer alien ambiguity of the Colour's alien motives.

 

Playing and falling in love with the game SOMA several months back, recently replaying one of the most accomplished mythos-inspired point n' click games ever created Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder and waiting for the release of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard with bated breath got me thinking about The Colour Out of Space and how that particular story could be reimagined as a survival horror/first-person exploration type game. Given that the largely anonymous protagonist of that story arrives in Arkham to investigate the rumours of the accursed farm (< lollylops) shunned by the locals due to unspeakable conjecture, the unnaturally deformed flora and fauna of the area, and the lunacy that took hold of the heaths previous landowners. I think even back when I originally read this story as a moody elitist teenager I reckoned it could be an excellent adventure game. My more contemporary experience with latterday gaming fare and my anticipation with whats looming on the mediums horizon only cements my conviction that someone ought to develop a video game of this horror story.

 

 

Alain Mabanckou, Memoirs of a Porcupine

Proposed Genre: Fantasy RPG with a gameplay emphasis on ritual and magic

 

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One of my absolute novels of all time, so much so I’ve read it four times. Memoirs of a Porcupine by the Congo-born French author Alain Mabanckou is a magic-realist story that reads like the reminiscence of a spirit animal - in this case the titular Porcupine. The Porcupine who narrates this fictional biography explains that he is the animal “spirit double” of a man named Kibandi, a man who dabbles with magic and earns the ire of his community for it. Whilst Mabanckou draws from a wellspring of his African folkloric heritage, he imbues the tale with a very self-aware and modern (I.e extremely French) tone of alienation, irony and black comedy.

 

My inclusion of this particular book was more emotive than well-rationed, I think it works so well as a piece of monologue literature that it‘s difficult to imagine this as a movie adaptation, let alone a computer game in the mainstream sense! That being said I'd personally love to see a magic-realist fantasy setting, somewhere set in contemporary Africa or it‘s fictive equivalent, with all it‘s irreconcilable and undeniable contradictions. An adventure RPG in which you play as dabbler in the black arts and witchcraft, whilst averting or embracing local and national politics, allying yourself with ghosts and spirits whilst fending off hostile entities and you superstitious kinfolk alike.

 

 

Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup

Proposed Genre: QTE adventure/interactive story-driven game

 

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Better known for his cult novel The Audition which later became a notoriously cult film, Japanese author Ryu Murakami’s sadistic yet profoundly noir worldview harks to traditions in his home nation's modern tradition of nihilistic storytelling that rightly calls the erstwhile Ryunosuke Akutagawa it’s flagship writer. In my very personal and very humble opinion In the Miso Soup is his best novel.

Effectively an account of a meeting between two very different individuals, the story revolves around a guide named Kenji who specializes in showing the sleazier underbelly of Tokyo to interested visitors, and an obese American tourist named Frank whose incongruous appearance and behaviour fills Kenji with creeping unease and dread. The real mastery of this novel is in how little genuinely horrifying content there is, it’s all supposition, displaced humour and teasing suggestion that culminates in one spectacularly violent scene and a closing revelation about the disguised complexity and “otherness” of Frank.

 

I‘m not entirely certain how a game adaptation of In the Miso Soup would work, in fact it might work better as a film if I‘m painfully honest. I'm leaning towards a QTE style story-led adventure in the vein of Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy on the PS2 or the more recent Until Dawn on the PS4, but with far less overt Hollywood action and button-bashing gimmicks which would instead invest more heavily in dialogue and moral decisions in a way the marvellously extranormal Oxenfree did. Don’t get me wrong, I love the first two games I cited despite their glaring flaws, but try to imagine a Murakami video game as less of Matrix-wannabe and more of an answer to Brad Anderson's effectively skin crawling movie The Machinist.

 

 

Katie Skelly, Operation Margarine

Proposed Genre: Indie beat em' up/miscellaneous

 

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I love Katie Skelly‘s comics. Her unique visual flair and overt penchant for a kind of retro aesthetic sexiness appeals to me on an artistically erudite AND simplistically ape-like capacity. Operation Margarine is a short but sweet tale of two women on the wrong side of the law, one a runaway anorexic debutante, the other a kickass tomboy wanted for undisclosed crimes. That being said a game that featured all of her zany stories, or otherwise just featured her particular illustrative style wouldn't be unwelcome. After all if Grickle can have a game made in his zany eldritch spirit and his unmistakable stylistic rendering, why not Skelly?

 

I was thinking that the game of the comic in contention could be equally short and sweet, like a lot of the best indie titles, at least in the single player main story mode. Each panel or page of Operation Margarine could be a different challenge that might lovingly parody a specific genres tropes, turning the game into a fast paced genre-hopping and unpretentious adventure. Perhaps some sort of survival mode with unlockable content could give an otherwise short title some wings. Given that the comics duo have stolen bikes I'm reminded of one isometric racing/collect em’ up game I once saw called Shapeshifter Biker, but largely for it's lovingly twee soundtrack. In all honesty I’m starting to wonder if the best bet for a Skellyverse game would be some kind of old school Skullgirls-esque beat em’ up.

 

 

Paul Stonehill & Philip Mantle, Russia's USO Secrets: Unidentified Submersible Objects in Russian and International Waters

Proposed Genre: Atmospheric first-person walking simulator/point n' click game

 

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A bit of a weird one for the more Fortean among you only, but recently I impulse brought a book titled Russia's USO Secrets: Unidentified Submersible Objects in Russian and International Waters by two researchers named Paul Stonehill and Philip Mantle. Whatever you think of the field of ufology and paranormal studies, this book conjures up a sinister yet fascinating world of anomalies and unexplained events culled largely from the archives and accounts of Russian military and scientific outposts, which are only just being unearthed and published in the west for the first time - most of the anecdotes and files presented in this book have apparently not been reproduced outside of Russian, Ukrainian and Baltic borders until this book arrived on the market.

 

The reports from a very diverse cast of Russians, Eastern-Europeans and the occasional Eurasian, Japanese and in one body of international water Arabic witnesses are numerous and unfailingly weird. There were investigations conducted the Soviet Navy into strange underwater sounds nicknamed kvakeri (“croakers”) and immense gelatinous objects detected by submersible radars that were impossibly mobile. There is a brief chapter regarding the tale of a small party of hydrologists in a motorboat who approached a bizarre metallic floating ovaloid whose presence seemed to kill their vessels engine, who all later died in mysterious circumstances. Another longer chapter talks about divers experiences in Lake Baikal of confronting eerily human-like fish, and the corresponding local myths regarding an underwater city.

Imagine a big, ambitious walking simulator/first-person investigation type game in the vein of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, but with much more involved problem solving and interactivity in the vein of the excellent detective point n’ click game Dead Secret. The protagonist is an independent agent assigned to ascertain the veracity of these claims in remote and often aquatic fragments of Russia‘s landscape, locating fragmentary evidence whilst having to avoid dangerous phenomena out in the field.

 

 

Dylan Trigg, The Thing: A Phenomenology of Horror

Proposed Genre: Survival horror with a strong literary emphasis

 

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I chose this modestly sized non-fiction philosophy and literary/film criticism book largely because I find the concepts within it so compelling and rife with survival horror potential, it‘s obviously not a narrative that could be directly adapted into a video game's plot - think of my recommendation as being more like the influence of Ayn Rand and objectivist philosophy on games like Bioshock or the so-called “philosophical zombie” in SOMA.

 

The Thing: A Phenomenology of Horror by Dylan Trigg utilizes examples found in literature, French philosophy, film and scientific inquiry to demonstrate that the human body is still contested ground in regards to our self-awareness. I’m slightly oversimplifying the themes of the book for the sake of brevity, but essentially over the course of four chapters he presents the argument that the overriding reason we find the alien and non-human so frightening is because we recognise a ruptured reflection of ourselves within it. Whether it’s an instinctive repulsion of base nature or a response to a fictional creature, the alien confronts us with our own semi-realized alienation with bodily existence, or as Merleau-Ponty surmised it; a prepersonal “world more ancient than thought”.

 

A World More Ancient Than Thought might be a pretty rad title for a horror game featuring this book's themes, though there's numerous quotations within that could make equally suitable names for the game. I'll leave the reader to decide on the kind of game engine or historical franchises would influence the mechanics of a phenomenological horror game and instead concentrate on the potential in-game environments and enemies.

 

Each of the books four thematic chapters, plus the introduction and concluding analysis of John Carpenter's 1987 film The Thing, could correspond to six broadly encompassing worlds within the game. These environments would both visually and atmospherically imbue the overarching themes of the chapters whilst presenting some hybrid Silent Hill-esque-cum-Resident Evil/Deadspace-ish biological hazard inflicting itself on an otherwise recognizably human space. The enemies in turn would violently abstracted and yet perversely recognizably anthropomorphic. In one chapter they might look like human beings but with their flesh replaced by some invertebrate equivalent, in another they might resemble shadowy reflections of people contorted and manipulated by another intelligence. In this book there’s a lot to work for any aspiring survival horror developer.

 

 

Various Authors (edited Heather J. Wood), Gods, Memes and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary

Proposed Genre: Irreverent but thoughtful point n' click game

 

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Gods, Memes and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary is not a solo novel at all but an eccentric A-Z of short stories, fiction-surpassing prose and even a couple of smart essays by a large number of different authors and writers that was compiled and edited by Heather J. Wood. The book is conceived as a sort of ironic and sometimes introspective bestiary of contemporary monsters and supernatural beings, describing how they’ve adapted to modern life, contemporary culture and in particular the niches they fulfil in that most virginal or virgin territories - the internet. Some of these modern day monsters are recognizable survivals such as the Griffin, Gorgon and Satyr. Others such as the Urbantelope, Memetic Parasites and the Weredad are more recent iterations in the realms of the teratological.

As you might imagine from such a large and diverse crowd of writers the collection is very hit n’ miss, not everything will be to your taste and the desire to be noteworthy and different will wear on some readers sensibilities. I still reckon it’s worthwhile and I’ve enjoyed it’s contents immeasurably.

 

So why am I suggesting a collection of stories for a single game? Namely because the conceptual premise is awesome - I really like the idea of a fantasy setting set in a noticeably contemporaneous world that might be an alternative present Earth or something comparable to it. How would non-humans and mythical beasts adapt and cope in a society with our strange values and belief systems? I can think of at least three ways a Gods, Memes and Monsters could be rendered into the threads topical medium.

Firstly is a kind of traditional but visually stunning point n‘ click game in which the protagonist aides and confronts the various monsters and their needs, expect jarring yet exciting shifts in thematic tone and atmosphere. Secondly is something more akin to The Witcher games with a noticeably humorous and irreverent quality that one tends to find in anachronism. Thirdly, a maybe the one suggestion that could be legitimately attempted, is a mod for an open world game like Fallout 4 or Skyrim that simply adds a series of bizarre quests relating to the collections individual stories, modestly adapted to the respective game's setting and lore of course

 

 

Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology

Proposed Genre: Myst-style first-person puzzle game

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology collects together a series of fascinating transcribed lectures given by Marie-Louise von Franz (a friend and associate of Carl Jung) in an attempt to “demystify“ and explain the Jungian infatuation with mystical and archetypal imagery and ideas - and why Jung capitalised on the similarity between the alchemists search for truth and the then emerging field of analytical psychology. She demonstrates how and why Jung was influenced by alchemical traditions in attempting to explain the nature of physical matter and consciousness, how modern scientific and religious modes of thinking complement and mirror one another, how dreams are “edited” and interpreted by the dreamers cultural context, and how we are all ultimately subject to creating conceptual models for perceiving reality.

 

Without any shadow of a doubt I’m thinking of a first-person puzzle game in the tradition of Myst or Of Light and Darkness, or if you want something more technically accomplished and recent then think of The Talos Principle or Quern. As well as solving the more traditional object and logic puzzles of those games, the real substantial game play elements involves riddles around psychological tropes and archetypal figures and symbols. It’s not as if any developers would be short of any copyright-free occult imagery to appropriate into level and location design - this books full of illustrations ranging from 16th to 17th century diagrams of chymyst experimentation, allegorical portraits of hermaphroditic beings, Ancient Greek and Egyptian symbolism, etc. Jung’s anthropomorphized archetypes could even show up the game to either benefit or antagonize the player; i.e. The Wounded Healer or the ubiquitous Trickster Spirit.

 

[Glue Man]

An RPG with minimal attacks/damage spells where all combat is based around status effects

 

Of course, status effects in that game would be considerably more painful than the average RPG

[Reverend_UshankaCat_]

I had the idea of a Half-Life remake in an open world, so after the disaster you would have to find your own way outside, while also taking care of a few "side quests" (like launching the sattelite, or maybe saving some scientists). Black Mesa is really huge, and I think it would be pretty cool to be able to explore the entire facility, although it might get a little maze-like.

[longliveprose]

[off topic] Ushanka, that would be awesome.

[teleportal]

Ever since playing the Batman: Arkham series, I've wanted more superhero games done in that style, albeit with changes to the combat system.

 

Particularly, I want a game about The Question, aka Vic Sage, aka Charles Victor Szazs. Although it likely won't happen due to his mostly unknown status (though his appearance on Justice League Unlimited back in the day helped with this), I think it has a lot of potential.

 

Some of the problems I have with the Freeflow combat system from the Arkham series are that Batman can fly around the entire room to attack thugs. This reduces the realism of Batman (considering he isn't supposed to be the superhuman), and makes Batarangs less useful. I would alter this system so that there's a much bigger limit on attacking enemies the further they get from your current location, thus making gadgets more useful and adding a little more realism.

 

However, The Question doesn't really have any gadgets, so to speak - his only real one is his belt buckle, which releases gas that makes his mask adhere to his face and his suit (and hair) change color. Therefore, I'd make improvised weapons a more useful part of gameplay. In Arkham Knight, Batman can pick up blunt objects like baseball bats or pipes, and smack enemies down with them. They were useful as they ignored the defenses thugs could acquire (such as stun batons and riot shields), but they broke after a few attacks. They would no longer break, and Hub City would be far more littered with them, making such weapons more available for both Vic and thugs. He'd also gain the option to just throw anything he picks up, to fill the niche of attacking enemies moving to a longer range.

 

One of the key aspects (if I remember correctly) of The Question is that the mask isn't what defines Vic - it merely frees him to do things that he wouldn't in his civilian identity. Because of this, I'd add the option to allow Vic to swap into his civilian identity, assuming there is no one else in the area. This would do two things - firstly, the corrupt Hub City police and regular thugs wouldn't attack Vic on sight - they'd either ignore him or attempt to mug him. Secondly, it'd change Vic's fighting style to a more undisciplined, less martial-artsy style. Think of a person that doesn't really partake in hand-to-hand combat, but can fight regardless.

 

Finally (at least from what I can think of now), Vic Sage doesn't have the resources Batman does. Therefore, he's not going to have detective vision (which I found stupid anyways). He will pick up and find clues the old fashioned way - think of a system similar to L.A. Noire's clue-investigation sequences, except perhaps without audio cues. The removal of detection vision additionally ensures that should there be any stealth sections in the game, Vic Sage doesn't get free wallhacks.

 

The Question is a neat character. However, thanks to his status as a C-List hero (or possibly even below that), the possibility of this game happening is extremely low unless he gains a sudden surge in popularity. Oh, and I have no idea what the story would be - whether it'd follow his Dennis O'Neil run, or something more original, I don't know. Regardless, I'd be happy to see the game made at all, unless it completely destroys Vic's character.

 

Man, I sure hope he shows up in Injustice 2 and isn't garbage.

[Selfsurprise]

  teleportal said:

Ever since playing the Batman: Arkham series, I've wanted more superhero games done in that style, albeit with changes to the combat system.

 

Particularly, I want a game about The Question, aka Vic Sage, aka Charles Victor Szazs. Although it likely won't happen due to his mostly unknown status (though his appearance on Justice League Unlimited back in the day helped with this), I think it has a lot of potential.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Some of the problems I have with the Freeflow combat system from the Arkham series are that Batman can fly around the entire room to attack thugs. This reduces the realism of Batman (considering he isn't supposed to be the superhuman), and makes Batarangs less useful. I would alter this system so that there's a much bigger limit on attacking enemies the further they get from your current location, thus making gadgets more useful and adding a little more realism.

 

However, The Question doesn't really have any gadgets, so to speak - his only real one is his belt buckle, which releases gas that makes his mask adhere to his face and his suit (and hair) change color. Therefore, I'd make improvised weapons a more useful part of gameplay. In Arkham Knight, Batman can pick up blunt objects like baseball bats or pipes, and smack enemies down with them. They were useful as they ignored the defenses thugs could acquire (such as stun batons and riot shields), but they broke after a few attacks. They would no longer break, and Hub City would be far more littered with them, making such weapons more available for both Vic and thugs. He'd also gain the option to just throw anything he picks up, to fill the niche of attacking enemies moving to a longer range.

 

One of the key aspects (if I remember correctly) of The Question is that the mask isn't what defines Vic - it merely frees him to do things that he wouldn't in his civilian identity. Because of this, I'd add the option to allow Vic to swap into his civilian identity, assuming there is no one else in the area. This would do two things - firstly, the corrupt Hub City police and regular thugs wouldn't attack Vic on sight - they'd either ignore him or attempt to mug him. Secondly, it'd change Vic's fighting style to a more undisciplined, less martial-artsy style. Think of a person that doesn't really partake in hand-to-hand combat, but can fight regardless.

 

Finally (at least from what I can think of now), Vic Sage doesn't have the resources Batman does. Therefore, he's not going to have detective vision (which I found stupid anyways). He will pick up and find clues the old fashioned way - think of a system similar to L.A. Noire's clue-investigation sequences, except perhaps without audio cues. The removal of detection vision additionally ensures that should there be any stealth sections in the game, Vic Sage doesn't get free wallhacks.

 

The Question is a neat character. However, thanks to his status as a C-List hero (or possibly even below that), the possibility of this game happening is extremely low unless he gains a sudden surge in popularity. Oh, and I have no idea what the story would be - whether it'd follow his Dennis O'Neil run, or something more original, I don't know. Regardless, I'd be happy to see the game made at all, unless it completely destroys Vic's character.

 

Man, I sure hope he shows up in Injustice 2 and isn't garbage.

 

I had to look up who The Question was (I'm pretty clueless about comics) but I like the cut of this ideas jib teleportal :3 So long as one gets the narrative vs. gameplay balance right, I could imagine a game adaptation of this character being extremely fun, with the pace and tension of investigative and combat scenes playing off one another nicely.

[Reverend_UshankaCat_]

  longliveprose said:

[off topic] Ushanka, that would be awesome.

Thanks mate!

 

I'm actually planning to make this mod now. I won't make it a Half-Life remake though, the Black Mesa mod already satisfied everyone's remake needs.

So instead, it will be a giant spaceship that's come under attack by hostile aliens! I'm still not past the brainstorming phase for story and gameplay elements and I haven't even started on the ship design yet. So if anyone has any good ideas and would like to help, gimme a message! (It will likely be a mod for HL2 Episode 2)

[Meelis13]

One type of game i'd love to make is horror game.. sorta. See, that game- at least not on surface- wouldnt look like horror game. It would be a game that you could actually play trough without being jumpscared or seeing monsters or such. In fact, it would be best if in first playtrough you would think its entirely different game than it actually is (got few ideas for that), but you constantly get this uneasy feeling that you just cannot shake, that something is wrong, that you are missing something and/or being watched.

There are 2 problems with that though- 1. i dont know how to make games

2. It would take some really fancy writing to pull it off as i intend to. Now, i do have general plot ready (well, enough anyways), but i have to practice my writing skills a lot before even nearly pulling this off

[longliveprose]

I've already posted, like, two projects of mine here, so naturally I figured I don't have enough on my plate when you take into account school and YouTube. I was watching some God of War gameplay, and had a spark of inspiration. Now that I think of it, it resembles Nightmare Creatures. You're a man from the American West, 1876. You're mysteriously transplanted from your simple farming life to a small house in a dark forest. You don't know where you are or what's going on, just that the house is abandoned and filled to the brim with supplies, arms, and money. You stock up on technology more advanced than anything you could dream of. . .but to them, it's ancient history. You hear a knock on the door, and there's a human-sized thing. Whether it be a monster or demon, you don't know, all you know is it's dead now. And the others are pissed.

When you leave the house for the forest, you see a gargantuan version of the creature. That was just a baby, and you're fucked unless you can get to a shop to upgrade yourself.

The horde comes at you, and you're in a big mansion now with ample open space. You wage war on the things and get out just in time.

As you go through, you can access shops to switch out what weapons you own on the fly, spanning from 1890s relics to lasers, submachine guns, and double-cylindered chainguns.

You won't have a partner AI, just you and your gun against the hordes of monsters you need to kill. And they're tough, too, having weapons that outmatch yours. You'll need to have better accuracy and tactics than them if you want to outlast your foes.

 

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At the end of the game, it's revealed that no John, you are the demons, and you killed a quarter of the souls in Heaven, and you're sent to the most torturous level of Hell. If you want, follow it up with Halfquake.

 

Ideas? Thoughts? Shut the hell up?

[Selfsurprise]

I'm really thrilled that my own photobucket account chose to stop allowing me to hotlink my own images, mainly in regards to my post about books that would make good games.

 

CAN'T YOU TELL HOW PLEASED I AM

ECSTATIC