@ Stormynature,

I like your ideas allot, especially the one regarding the game world actually being one "bad dream".

I should point out for prospective (or current) entrants - this idea is in no way restricted -- i.e. if you can use it to come up with a variation or a storyline then go for it. Anything I throw up on the writing forums I consider as being available for general use, stealing, co-opting etc....unless of course I specifically make note to the contrary .

The entire game world is actually the internal landscape of someone's unconscious mind (player, patient or enemy). The puzzles, mazes, enemies etc represent different aspects of the mind and provides insights. The tower complex is the key to escaping the unconscious world but is even more tricksome to get through than the outside. Unconscious by the way with respect to the subconscious, not simply knocked out.

Okay MrDojo here is a variation into the theme of a mindscape as the story behind your game

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In the moment before you die they say your entire life flashes before your eyes. This is not true. In the moment you die every regret you have ever had rises up to embrace you. That is the truth.

Set Piece

The player has no knowledge or understanding of where they are, how they got there, nor even any real knowledge about themselves.

Each location in the game represent's a moment in time of the player. A moment when a poor decision was made. The buildings and locations themselves are symbols representing the outward from a decision for example a rundown industrial plant might represent a failure on the player's attempt to have made something work.

Inside each location there is a mini-story that delineates in vague terms the decision that led to that's locations creation. The mini-stories are not ones of regret but rather the truth of how the decision was made.

The active enemy npc's are a different form of symbology. Ones created from emotional decisions i.e. rage, hate, fear etc.

The tower represents the core persona of the darker side of the player. That which dominates the landscape and has such an effect on everything there.

Each step the player takes unravels the story of the man, until the tower itself is entered and the top room is reached.

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WIll add one or two more variations in the next day or so. And then I might even get around to putting one of them in a literary form

your on to something StormyNature, looking forward to your progress!

@stormynature

I really like the idea of locations representing previous decisions, even memories. Puzzles and clues in the locations could be direct representations of repressed or uncomfortable memories, similar to the dream analysis of Jung and Freud. It's been done before in Silent Hill and elsewhere, but there are always interesting ways of getting the locations to 'fit' with the memories.

What would be more interesting is if you could add an element of further repression within the game itself. For example, finishing a locations '100%' i.e. solving the puzzle correctly, collecting all necessary items, defeating all enemies etc, leads to the protagonist remembering the past event correctly, objectively, truthfully, then dealing with it. Not doing so (or perhaps choosing not to do so) means that the memory is imperfectly recalled or the protagonist flat-out refuses to address the issue. The memories you confront could be interlinked, so that the way you deal with them informs your path through (or up) the tower.

Very Silent Hill, but involving the mind and memory gives you the opportunity for some complex storytelling.

"Time is fluid here.

I waited for days for someone to let me out. I cried and hollered until my throat was raw, until I spat blood.

I should be hungry. I should be dead from thirst. I'm not thirsty.

I might be dead.

There are words written on my arms in marker. On my left arm it says: Try to stay awake. On the right it says: David.

I think David might be my name.

The sound of the bell has kept me down here till now. When it comes I can't help but cower, hide in the shadows. It hurts. It hurts everything.

But there's no-one coming. This door won't open.

The only way out is up."

This would be a cut scene! In first person, we don’t see the character yet, just where they are heading. They are running, heavily breathing. The rain is pounding down around them; the wind is rocking the trees back and forth and stirring up howling noises. The time is dusk, so there is still some light but the air is thick with autumn fog. The camera turns as if the character looks back, we see the looming tower in the distance. The character falls to their knees, all we see are two muddy, skinny white arms and the fact they are carrying a blood stained jumper. The character reaches the house (as seen in your first picture of in game footage), they turn the handle and rush inside. For the first time the character is revealed as the camera pans out. A dark haired twenty something woman, her face cut and her clothes torn. She stands now with her back against the door, catching her breath. She moves quickly to a table and fumbles about with matches and candles trying to light the dark house.

I would love to know more about whether it is going to be a set adventure that the player has to "follow" or whether the protagonist can go to the different locations by choice, sort of free roam so to speak and uncover clues etc as they go along. Also, sorry if you have already said this, but what platforms would this be played on?

Just to clarify...I have never written for a game before, extremely new to this, but if you like my idea I can run with it further!

Thanks,

Louise

Interesting ideas Joshua_lux ; i'll provide some comments later on.

@Loulou15,

The player is free "to a certain extend" to roam the map freely in a way that provides and encourages exploration. Than again we are thinking of splitting the game up in several large areas rather than 1 seamless map (mostly due to technical reasons). By any means we want to make this game feel more open like "Stalker" (rather than corridor after corridor we see in almost every game).

It was the early morning, the sun had just begun to dye the overlying sky a deep rich purple. I wandered through the woods flashlight trained on the deer tracks cut into the snow as they led down a steep embankment and I was met suddenly by a lake, wide and completely frozen over, that in all my years in these woods I had never seen. By dawns first light I saw in the middle of the lake the deer, framed on the shore opposite by a huge wooden obelisk. A wind picked up from the south and I heard the creak of its old timbers. This had not been here the week prior, I was sure. A mist began to spread across the lake and wound its way down a small gully some distance to my left, running the way I had come. The wind switched and everything was quiet again, eerie. I turned and, shouldering my rifle, commenced to scramble up the embankment. I began to walk hurriedly away from the tower without a backward glance. Some spectre or hallucination surely, I feared for my sanity, I would never tell anyone what I had seen. Turns out, I wouldn't be troubled by that. I never had the fortune of seeing anyone to tell. When I got back to town they were all gone, my friends, my family, my wife. All dead or run away or something. Or maybe I'm dead. If not, I will be soon enough i'm certain. The mist is coming, I can see it spreading out of the forest, black shadows rise up out of it and spin away into soft tendrils quick enough that you may not be entirely convinced they were even real. My only hope is that this will allow me to see my dear Joanna soon. They are coming Joanna, they are coming. Are you waiting for me wherever I am bound? Are you waiting?

Hmm, if you want the game to be more 'open' then perhaps the idea of going up the tower is a little limiting. But if the areas are going to be quite open then the tower makes a great visual motif: wherever you are in the landscape you can see it, and it's an ominous shadow on everything you do. Someone has already suggested the enemies reacting to the sound of the tower. If the tower is always visible on the horizon it adds some agency to the sound it makes: the tower is 'controlling' what goes on in the game, it's always at the centre of what happens. It would make an effective 'hub' as well (i.e. you start levels there and always find your way back to it). I think that the more present the tower is, how well and often you can see it etc, the more effective the atmosphere.

I really like the concept of being an old man too. Games that are truly frightening always find a way to add vulnerability to the player. Playing an old man is quite a novel concept, and it makes you slow, old, fragile etc. Stuff is scarier when you can't just run away from it.

This perfectly compliments a story of mine. A group of distant siblings are given the deed to their parent's dead friends' estate.There is a haunting but it's not random. There is no senseless violence but there is a lot of horror. My definition of haunting is being in the dream-like state when you're actually awake and cannot seem to run far enough or hide no matter what. There are personal secrets exposed and enough twists for it to always remain unpredictable.

Once renovation of the property is started in the mansion, the siblings are gathered in the foyer talking. The 100 or so painters and construction workers slowly disappear off the premises and are soon found huddled over something in a field. The workers turn to the mansion with the siblings calling to them from the gateway. The possessed workers charge, the siblings lock themselves in a room in the mansion with the demonized workers trying to find a way in. The first secrets are revealed from two of the oldest siblings which lead to a desperate race to a car where there are mysterious letters they recieved in the mail weeks before. This is where the mysteries of the family's past begin unraveling.

The siblings find themselves scouring the entire estate to uncover secrets of their families past and secrets kept from them by their own parents which ultimately drove them all apart. One thing about the haunting itself is that the possessed always seem to be lurking nearby, so characters are literally always on the run. They can be found in any dark corner no matter how well lit a room is. No matter how far you run from one location to a new one, there is a demon hidden in a dark area somewhere. Before anyone can uncover the reason why they are being haunted, the siblings are forced to uncover their own secrets and determine why their parents lied to them their whole lives.

Some siblings stay together while others are forced to travel alone and some even venture underground. Revelations don't necessarily mean a character is safe. Sometimes it means they could become trapped in a limbo and they are never seen again, which does happen to several of them. There are signs that a character is slipping into limbo but there is no way to stop it.There are no flashlights or cell phones or electricity of any kind and the reason is tied into the story. Other enemy types include alligators, stray dogs, snakes, and at times swarms of birds or stampedes of other wild animals through forests.


I do have a title for it. nbox me to learn more.