Utterly Mad

Alright I'm not going to shut up about this ever again, because I need to make this. I will kill, steal, anything I need to do to fund this idea.

I'm so goddamn sick of these horror games with the spoopy jumpscares and the "RUN AWAY! YOU CAN'T FIGHT BECAUSE YOU'RE A LITTLE BITCH BISCUIT!"; remember when they used to be scary instead of Hotline Miami 2 levels of frustrating. The actual feeling of helplessness because you ran out of 9mm bullets and these clunky ass tank controls make melee a fucking chore.

Well I want to remake that game, and Call of Cthulhu (and CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth) have really been getting me inspired as of late.

So onto this game.

I'm going to spoil half of my story in the process but fuck it, I don't care. I gotta tell someone, something my idea before I lose it.

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Alright you get assigned to an Antarctic Outpost under the guise of 'training' by some unknown branch of (The Foundation/The Military/PMC/Research), little does the player/reader know that the Outpost is actually just a small part of a larger whole. You see, the Outpost is a sectioned off bit of ship that happened to surface around the time the protagonist came into the picture. And since this ship contains vital info for one of the factions, they want to keep this under wraps and have their test subject trainee discover more of the ship which would eventually lead to the recovery of both the ship and her documents/objects/etc...


So everything goes smoothly for the first few in-game days or weeks it depends if you want a short/decent/long game cycle which pretty much determines how long your "training" is until Evac arrives to take you home. Anyway, about the 2nd Week on Tuesday while on a scheduled patrol (this is optional but goes towards a secret final grade, if they choose not to patrol...); they start taking fire from an unknown assailant.

This will be the first combat section that will 'teach' players how to fight, use weapons, and the first aid tutorial will come after even if they aren't hurt (basically you try to heal the guy you gunned down for questioning). After the conflict you arrest your combatant and take him inside the outpost, he dies once you start asking questions about what his goal and what he's doing.

Now if the player didn't go on patrol they'll be ambushed on the ship and have to go throughout the "outpost" to try and take this dude out. So there's tension and buildup about how dangerous it is to not do your duties while playing the game.

So after he's dead, you decide to bury him under the ice and use his gun as an unmarked grave stone with his dog tags hanging off the trigger. After that things get a whole lot stranger:

The Victim: This is the guy you killed, you took his life and now he wants vengeance. After going through his belongings you'll get a journal entry update describing how this soldier was apart of a special 'psychic' unit that is able to raise the dead and manipulate the minds of the living. Well turns out one night you see his dead body hovering in the middle of your quarters, like a puppet being raised above the ground, he twitches violently the closer you get. And your mind will start to break the longer you look at him (note: This WILL NOT EQUAL BLURRY VISION LIKE AMNESIA).

The good thing is, is that he isn't an actual ghost. He's still using his corpse to float around, what this basically means is that you can fight his spirit. Using guns, melee, or other means, you can damage the host body he's infested... but it comes at a cost. Similarly to how those Red Zombies in the Resident Evil RE:Remake function, the more you kill him, the stronger he becomes, and there is no permanent way of killing him... like at all.

This brings me to the fear of decision making, The Victim is a problem no matter what route you take. If you don't harm him, he still haunts you but is "weaker", but if you continually harm him he becomes a more long term problem, becoming more powerful and violent. On top of that, if you sever any limbs off the host body, he'll grow another more evil looking limb to replace it that is formed out of the remains of the blasted off limb.

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Insanity: This is going to be fun, since I'm going to tie it in with a needs system. Think of the RPG Insanity Table from Call of Cthulhu or Quirks from Darkest Dungeon. Yeah, that's what I want to do with it. The more fucked up shit you see, the more fucked up the game becomes. Your character could just stop eating and lose their appetite (Basically the hunger notification or any hints towards being hungry are gone), your character may become a hypochondriac (when you get wounded the medical UI precedes it as an infected or broken limb, and you'll end up using more drugs as a result which can cause you to OD; also when exposed to the cold you cough and sneeze more, and the last part is when your character uses the restroom, you'll start pissing "blood" which is bound to freak out some fool who plays this).

I want the Insanity to actually fuck with the player like it does in Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth or like in Amnesia; or better yet like Eternal Darkness! I want the Kojima/ED MGS2 level of insanity where the game mechanics start to degrade and reveal themselves, or the game tries to trick you into fucking up. I want the mouse sensitivity to appear on maximum if the player has gone mad enough, but it really isn't. I want the game to say, "Are you sure you want to quit without saving" And then have both options be "Yes".

Needs: It'll be just like The Ship or The Sims, why? Because I feel that the more needs you have, the more vulnerable you feel. This is especially true for The Ship, since you can be hunted down at all times, even when you're taking a shower. So I thought about more of the RNG spoopfests taking place during these moments, and I'm talking really relateable moments.

Things like: You're eating breakfast and you're situated at the table, you swear you just saw something dash out of the corner of your eye. Or you're in the shower and you're seeing the shadows of someone outside the curtain, or the lights suddenly start to flicker. You wake up in the middle of the night and feel something peering back at you (SPOILERS: If you look at another bunk there normally is someone there in the game). Or you're sitting on the toilet, dicking around on your phone and suddenly the door begins to rattle or you hear something moving outside.

Which leads me to my next point.

This shit is like Clock Tower: Sometimes these events will actually lead into The Victim or something else... into appearing. So maybe you'll get out of the shower and Floaty McChuckleFuck is actually in the bathroom. So you run naked out of the room in a desparete attempt to get firearms or a weapon with your breasts and/or willy flopping around while you do so, which can cause you to freeze and get sick. So you'll have this constant cat&mouse game where you're actually the cat trying to enjoy your milk, but the mouse has a Tec-9 and demands your blood.


Is there crafting?: No, and fuck you for asking that. (I say to myself) Honestly I'm getting fucking tired of crafting in everything, you either find it or you fucking don't. You repair your shit with tools and parts you find, and you can write on paper to make art; there's your fucking crafting system.

Whats the goal?: Play a better game! Similar to FNAAAFFFFFF its simple, just survive your time in the shitshow and then you get to go home a worse off person both mentally and physically. But unlike Freaky Nights At Fred's; you'll be graded on it, with a A-F ranking system that all yield different rewards, cheat codes, and endings. The major thing that'll improve your rank is finding some damn audio logs or documents where all the story is at.

ShipAI Destruction: So since most of the ship has been walled off, there will be a mechanic to where you can knock down portions of both 'fake' or 'real' walls to open up newer parts of the ship. But with that it pretty much equates to allowing more Cthulhu into your life, the more you discover the worse off your character will be (LIKE MOST LOVECRAFT STORIES). Also if you hit the real hull and tear away at it, you'll end up flooding a portion of the ship.... which might just end with an instant death.


That's pretty much all I got so far, I'm probably going to be stuck using Unity and whatever cheapy software I can find until I get a better computer and/or software. But I'm hoping that I have the LUCK and (hopefully) team to actually make this. Feel free to interject any comments, opinions, and critiques below. (Also the full on needs system is staying, because messing with people when they're vulnerable is funny. It makes them feel how a Sim feels at the hands of a punk who deletes pool ladders and toilets.)

Ohhhhhhh, this is interesting. What kind of aesthetic are you going for here? Cause I can model kinda chunky ps1/2 esq graphics ok, and would be willing to help. Also, one of the insanity things should just be having the message "Who are you, who knows not who you are?" appear on a wall, mocking the fact that I'm assuming you won't know much about your character going in. There was a simalar scare on FEAR, which spooked me so bad I had to stop playing. I'm really exited for any horror game that isn't reliant on jumpscares, because I have had to stop playing several horror games (Cry Of Fear, FNAF) because I don't like jumpscares. Good examples of scary games that do no jumpscares are FEAR and Bioshock/System Shock 2. Hyped man, I'm hyped.

I was thinking more realistic, but I think the PS1 aesthetic (like 3D characters on prerendered backgrounds, or a fully 3D world like old Silent Hill) might help call back to the more old school style of play that is in the game. Maybe in a similar style to that one game Babysitter Bloodbath which had the old PS1 aesthetic going for it.

But I wouldn't mind helping you model the game, I've used Blender and took a class on 3D modeling. I could probably make some of the characters or item pickups.

I can wrote lore and shit.

I'm sorry I'm so useless AJ ;-;

*cries in corner*

i make good guns. ill make guns.

I wish you could explain basically your mental image of the game here. You described the lore, but let's go technical. How you see it? So i can see how much i can help!

I can see it being a cross between the viewpoint style of Silent Hill 1

http://www.emuparadise.me/fup/up/53247-Silent_Hill_%28J%29-1.jpg

With the aesthetic of a ship or that one lab section in Resident Evil 1. The characters would look human but with the PS1 restrictions set they'd be more poliginal or blocky like Resi 1 or Silent Hill. The art design that I'm shooting for is 'realistic' I want the enviroments (even with the self-imposed limit) to look like what they're supposed to, a high tech 'mid-00's' Antarctic Research base that was secretly built inside of a large cargo ship.

Think tight shiny hallways, heavy watertight compartment doors, claustrophobic rooms. While the rest of the Cargo Ship is partially flooded, dark to where you need a flashlight to see (or your vision adjusts to the dark), rusted doors and hallways, and some areas that look well preserved when the power flickers back on.

I want The Victim monster to look similar to the player character, but spazes out and floats around like a puppet on strings, I want the sounds it makes to be very human (AKA: blood filled breathing, coughing, beginning for death, incoherent mutter, and sometimes distorted radio chatter like in PT). I want the player character to be somewhat customizable, I want the clothes they wear to dehumanize them (heavy coats, balaclava, etc..), and I want their voice to only come out when they go insane, (See: "They're watching... *wimpers* w-why are they always watching!?").

I want the guns to look like something a special task force would use, highly customized AK-47s, MP5s, and M4s. To give the player some false sense of, "I have great weapons, nothing can stop me!" But quickly realize that even with, what is for the time, highly advanced weaponry known to kill in seconds; but is actually like shooting foam darts at a pissed off gorilla.

But at the same time I don't want very many, maybe two of each weapon category. One New and One Old for each weapon type: (OLD)AK-47 (NEW)M4, (OLD)Tommy Gun (NEW)MP5, (OLD)Double-Barrel Shotgun (NEW)Pump-action SPAS-12, (OLD)357. Revolver (NEW)Glock-17, etc....

I want the majority of the outpost section to look like it came out of a apocalypse bunker, everything is clean, organized... better analogy: Think of Vault 101 from Fallout but designed for four people (there won't be multiplayer, but the hint that there would be more probably furthers the isolation).

That's currently all I can put into words.