Hello, BOILS and GHOULS!!! It’s the last Weekly Video Games Thread before Halloween, and if I know anything, it’s the existential despair at the death of international leftist politics the Avocado’s love of Halloween! I share that love, and in that spirit we’ll be doing a more creative sort of prompt.
Namely, give me an idea for a horror game. Just one, unless you’d like to make more! Naturally, as one of the three people who make these thang dings, I’ve got to come up with a few to kick off things.
- Survival horror often pushes you into combat to get resources or sticks you on a timer where you have to keep up your diminishing supply of air or food or Temptations LPs. Of course, you also have an issue of building too much of a backlog of what you need, which can diminish the tension. What if we combined the two for a vampire game where you A) have to regularly drink blood to survive, B) do so in a way that endangers you (like you have to be in an unsafe space or limit your abilities), and, most importantly, C) you’re punished for drinking too much by, let’s say, losing control of the character. Like when GTA instantly calls the fuzz when you drink and drive. I know a bunch of games have done some of these things, but altogether, it could be a good spin on the reverse horror genre.
- Speaking of reverse horror, Carrion was very fun with how your Eldritch monstrosity grew new powers. But what if you had a roguelike where your permanent transformations were entirely random? It would probably have to be pretty short, but each one could have dynamic strengths and weaknesses that alter the way you use your character.
- Okay, one final idea. So there’s this text adventure called Vampire’s Castle that I only know about ’cause Strong Bad Let’s Play’d it. The game starts at 9:00PM, you die at midnight, and every single action—even looking at the time—costs a minute. Dredge, which I loved, has a mechanic where time only moves when you move (making it impossible to wait out the night). I’d like a horror game where everything, absolutely everything, costs something. It’s in space, and your suit’s battery pack has only so much energy for your air, your headlamp, your ability to move, your ability to fight, and even stuff beyond immediate gameplay like operating the menus or an in-game HUD! A person better at counting bullets than I could take off the ability to see your ammo and that’d give you a bit of extra energy.
And, naturally, how was gaming for you this weekend?