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Actually, if I were in a zombie apocalypse scenario, I would avoid cities altogether: lots of zombies and lots of closed quarters.

Reminds me of the pathetic attempt at that FPS zombie game. It was ruined by giving you more guns than what an entire squad would normally carry and the fact that the zombies were slower than you.

You're a redneck hick that fought off a zombie wave at his home and has been dutifully shooting anything that moves slowly enough on his farm. Eventually he runs out of food and where does he go? The big city, where he narrowly escapes from zombies. Several blood times.

I know being a nerd makes you more knowledgeable in such matters, but what kind of fucking logic compels you to go the Zombiopolis when you can go to Redneck-town, where the local NRA convention assured that nobody dead can come within three hundred metres over its borders?

Well, the sandbox can only be SO big and at the end of the day, it being a game, it has to be entertaining on some level. As for why you would be there: Maybe you just woke up from coma in a hospital and maybe the cities exits are blocked off preventing escape?

Zixinus wrote:Actually, if I were in a zombie apocalypse scenario, I would avoid cities altogether: lots of zombies and lots of closed quarters.

Reminds me of the pathetic attempt at that FPS zombie game. It was ruined by giving you more guns than what an entire squad would normally carry and the fact that the zombies were slower than you.

You're a redneck hick that fought off a zombie wave at his home and has been dutifully shooting anything that moves slowly enough on his farm. Eventually he runs out of food and where does he go? The big city, where he narrowly escapes from zombies. Several blood times.

I know being a nerd makes you more knowledgeable in such matters, but what kind of fucking logic compels you to go the Zombiopolis when you can go to Redneck-town, where the local NRA convention assured that nobody dead can come within three hundred metres over its borders?

Because the crazy NRA gun nuts are the types you would would want to avoid even more than the zeds.
In fact, unless you completely trust them, fuck people altogether. Zombie apocalypse shelters always seem to be undone by the psychotic, or moronic. Whether it's the distrustful redneck who shoots you on site or turns you away, the person who tries to "save" someone they love in a crowd of zeds, or just the people who completely crack.

In a game like Acadamia Nut suggested, along with the chemicals for crafting, how about basic construction? Say it's a type where you start all alone and ran into a house to hide. You have no weapons, and the house has only a little food left. You could shove some furniture to block the doors and windows temporarily (Let's go with just a zombie invasion), find a backpack to fill with food, and you open up the gun closet.....nothing. You look in the garage and find some tools, nails, tape, etc. You take a broom, snap off the brush end, and hammer some nails into the broken end to give it some extra power. Or carve the end to a point for a spear.

On a similar subject, you could modify your weapons and equipment to suit your needs. You could tape extra magazines to the butt of a rifle, tape a knife blade-down to the side of a pistol's butt to make a close-combat weapon when you run out of ammo or get in too close to effectively shoot. If you can't find a proper scope or one that's incompatible with your current gun, you could tape it on anyway. Depending on how much tape you used, it could be a blessing or a curse. Use too much tape to secure magazines to your weapon and they'll be hard to get out quickly. Use too little on an improvised scope and it could get knocked off if you drop it or hit someone with the top end.

Academia Nut's ideas has inspired me to do some horrible sketches of the kinds of enemies you find in a ruined city (images perhaps NSFW):

Minions - The swarming cannon fodder and worker drones you should be afraid of in large groups. They're moderately weak and can be killed comparatively easily, yet there are tons upon tons of them and their AI is sophisticated enough to cause serious problems amongst a group of survivors.

Flying Minions - They fulfil the same role as regular Minions, except they can fly and can provide an eye in the sky above the ruined landscape for the invaders.

Big Nasty - A giant thing you should stay the fuck away from for much of the game, there is only a few them, and they have full the run of the play area and can wipe out your settlement in one go in most cases (unless you've set up a very potent trap).

The Hive - A big hub area for the monster invaders and captured people are taken there by the drones to be converted into more drones. Throughout the course of the game it gets bigger and bigger, with other smaller hive outposts springing up in other parts of the play area. When the invaders leave, space craft break out of the Hive's shell like walls.

I really wonder how can an entire city be blocked off.

Because the crazy NRA gun nuts are the types you would would want to avoid even more than the zeds.
In fact, unless you completely trust them, fuck people altogether. Zombie apocalypse shelters always seem to be undone by the psychotic, or moronic. Whether it's the distrustful redneck who shoots you on site or turns you away, the person who tries to "save" someone they love in a crowd of zeds, or just the people who completely crack.

Maybe, but I am not talking about rednecks towns in general, I am talking that in case of a zombie apocalypse, the country is safer then in the city. Unless you are trapped, you should get out of the city as soon as possible.

In an open area, you can simply run away from zombies. In the open, zombies are at a several severe disadvantages:
- terrain: unless zombies gain better agility than you, steep hills are going to be a problem for them. Swamps will make them sink, forest will make them trip regularly, deserts will dry them out, snow will slow them down further, etc.
- elements: rain, sun and mere damp weather can destroy a corpse faster, walking or stiff. These are likely to at least severely weaken a zombie, as undead or no, rotten muscles and weakened bones are unlikely to strengthen it.
- animals: there is the factor of animals, assuming that they are somehow not affected by the same thing that the zombies are. Hyenas will suddenly find allot of food and a pack is quite likely to take down any zombie. Wolves might become interested as well along with big cats. The undead might still wiggle if a wolf takes them down, but once they remove their jawbones, they are just as good prey as the next. Bears, well, don't even have to be explained. For the living, animals could be scared away with mere fire.
- food: you can forage and scavenge for food in the woods. In a city, you will have to fight off hordes every time you would want to go to the grocery store. Granted, a city is likely to have a bigger stockpile of food.
- vehicles: if you gain some kind of vehicle, they are less likely to become useless, especially if you get some kind of all-terrain type. Even if not, in the open you still have alternatives to leaving the vehicle, like going around a roadbock. In a city, if the street it blocked, your only possibility is to take another.

If I'm not mistaken, the Xbox game Dead Rising presents somewhat of a sandbox survival game. Haven't played much of it, but what I've seen seems nice.

There's also Urban Dead, and some others of its kind.

An upcoming survival horror game with zombies is Left 4 Dead. It has super-enemies known as Witches, that are very, very lethal, yet can left alone if you don't fire a gun or even shine a torch in their direction.

It amuses me that the thread has gone from 'use mood better and maybe some dynamic scripting' to 'fully functional chemistry and physics systems from the galaxy of totally unrealistic expectations'. You can make a good 'survival horror' game RIGHT NOW, using nothing that hasn't ALREADY BEEN DONE, breaking NO NEW GROUND AT ALL. Next to this, revolutionising games with entirely new systems is a waste of time and a giant pipe-dream.

Stark, have you ever played Scratches or Darkness Within?

Both games scared me shitless, and do you know what's funny? These were your regular fixed-image adventure games where you didn't expect to die.

How? Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere and loneliness. You were given a subtle impression that something was terribly, terribly wrong yet everything seemed fine. In Scratches, you just got a new house! The only thing scary about the house is that its previous owners were mysterious and rumoured to do scary things. There belongings are scattered all over the house. That's it. That's what made me expect a dead women or worse jump out or just appear there.

I've not played those specific games, but I've played many 'primitvie' games that handle mood far better than super-sexual 3D games. It's really not surprising that these elemtns aren't used more often - they require totally different skills than coding or marketing, and 80% of the market would be just as happy with RE76 or Doom'09.

In a similar vein to the game you mention, I've started replaying Penumbra. It's a primitive 3d game, and uses some char feedback and text to communicate mood and fantastic audio system to keep the tension high. There's a sequence where you go into caves, see spiderwebs, think back to the scrawl on a wall with 'spiders = : ( '(literally, sad face) and think 'holy shit' and find a journal about a starving trapped guy who ended up living by EATING THE SPIDERS TAHT CRAWL ON HIM WHEN HE'S SLEEPING, and it's tense as fuck, you can kinda hear them, and the journal tells you they like the dark and come out if you don't move.

THERE ARE NO SPIDERS. It's all in your head, and it totally works. The character even gets tense, is breathing hard, and reacts to looking at scary things by trying to look away and freaking out. If you're hiding, looking at a wolf/monster/whatever makes him freak the fuck out, and just being in tight places tends to do the same thing. Sure, you can probably stay down there indefinately without consequence, but it's sold so well you're not thinking about it in a game-like way.

I can also assert that Darkness Within does a good job making atmosphere even though, really, you are nearly never in any danger. It does do something really clever by breaking the standard adventure game model occasionally and letting monsters come at you. You can't walk freeform--you're stuck walking Myst-style, but the badguys can still come at you 3D style. Kinda clever!

I also really liked the Darkness Within system of making you read all the text and go at it with the highlighter to highlight clues, and a few of the puzzles were actually so intuitive that I was able to unlock that one briefcase without the clues to tell me how! They got universally panned by critics though, which makes it hard for me to decide what it is that the reviewers would like to see out of an adventure game.

It's interesting to see the difference here. Most of the mainstream survival horror games play more like first person shooters with a spooky scene and less like a horror game with extra survival elements. I wonder what it would be like to create a game around a standard horror model, but throw in enough enhanced danger that you were often doing your best to keep it from eating you. Sounds like Penumbra and Alone in the Dark 1 are as close to that as we've seen, and they do tend to get the scares.

To Stark and others who mentioned it, my most heartfelt thanks. I just picked Penumbra, and I'm in love.

Of course, I'm also wondering if I'll have the courage to see it through.

Covenant wrote:It's interesting to see the difference here. Most of the mainstream survival horror games play more like first person shooters with a spooky scene and less like a horror game with extra survival elements. I wonder what it would be like to create a game around a standard horror model, but throw in enough enhanced danger that you were often doing your best to keep it from eating you.

It'd probably be like a more free form Silent Hill game with a better combat system (like, so that it doesn't handle totally wonky, and so that you can tell if a weapon you're using is worth while...hell it'd be AWESOME if they did that but kept the damage done the same because it'd seem a lot more like you weren't doing any damage when the scary abomination that looks like it's trying to eat your face is obviously getting hit by you, but is not noticeably harmed, simultaneously, it'd be fucking scary if the thing that looks like it's trying to eat your face actually looked like it was hurting you). Also possibly some kind of resting mechanic (like, to get your health back you have to find a safe place to hide, some food, and something to block the entrance with, and then you can rest and heal and probably save). Ideally with less "find these seven random items and clues to press the keys on the piano in that room on the third floor and fix the grandfather clock on the other side of the building in foggy Silent Hill then [use] the roasted dog key on the hole in the wall in room 13-A and enter the hole in the floor" and more "OH SHIT evil...living wall...things...well crap, guess I do have to find a way through that really fucking creepy looking 'exit' door...crap didn't that really gross thing I saw hanging in the lobby have something key-like attached to it...great..."

Here is something: you are a regular guy or gal set in the top period of the Inquisition, in Spain or Italy or some such place. Point is, people have became aware of the very-much alive monsters of the land: werewolves, vampires, ghouls, sorcerers, etc.

Been done before, right?

Well, here's a bit of a twist: YOU are the monster.

And not some super-powered badass monster either. Say, you are a law-abiding, god-fearing apprentice or servant girl. One night, while attending your duties before going to sleep, you find a a guy hiding from the mob. You're alone with him and there is blood on his mouth, a vampire obviously. Because of the mob is nearby and you had a few drinks, you feel brave enough to talk to the man. Unwittingly or not-so-unwittingly, you taunt the guy with supernatural powers and strength. He grabs you, muffles you and begins to drink your blood. You black out.

So, you wake up as a hungry vampire. The guy you pissed off tells you that he did so out of mockery and has no intention of helping you or raising you to help him. He did it out of spite of how foolishly cocky or stupid you are, so you would feel what's it like in his shoes. He hopes you die (permanently) and leaves. Then comes another apprentice/maid/generic victim whom you feed upon, despite your wish.

So, there you are, a young, regular guy or gal turned into a vampire in a land where everyone is looking for vampires and wants to kill them. If you have any super-wanking vampire powers, you don't know about them or you need to be taught about them.

You however, are very clear on some of the vampire weaknesses: sun burns you, garlic makes you allergic or worse, you are blinded and burned by holy items, animals are very unfriendly towards you, etc. Fire you are far more sensitive to and several times more flammable. Obviously a stake trough the heart will also kill you. You regenerate fast and technically cannot be killed by mere wounds, however you are not used to pain. Give too much pain, and you'll get blurred vision or even black out for a time. Damage or wounds caused by holy items regenerate more slowly.

There is a shiton of vampire hunters out there that are just looking for you, both professionals and amateurs. Your average peasants hangs garlic brunches over their doors, clergymen walk the night searching for demons and armed with holy water. At a drop of a hat, mobs form and kill anything that's even slightly suspicious.

To add to the mix, being a vampire is apparently not enough to gain you membership in the Forces of Darkness club. Or more simply put, there is no Forces of Darkness club. A werewolf views you as competition or just prey, if not worse. Spirits of the forest view you as a dark thing that is trespassing on their territory. Demons want to make you their bitch. Ghouls will will attack you and try to rip you to pieces on principle. Witches and wizards will want to take away some parts of you for their spells if not make you their bitch. Other vampires will either make you their bitch or their scapegoat, turning on you at the most convenient moment.

The game from thereon is non-linear and dynamic as far as you can pull it off. It's a sandbox in a way, just instead of being afraid of scary monsters that want to kill you, you are afraid of the friendly clergymen that wants to burn you. Then the monsters will want to kill you too. It may not be Penumbra-stlye psychologically-engineered pants wetting, but the idea is to encourage a sense of paranoia and fear in the player. You don't fear darkness, you fear things that might give light in the darkness or worse, other things that dwell in the darkness.

You have only one objective in the game: survive. Your ultimate objective is to find some kind of sanctuary for vampires. That can mean going to the colonies, where the Inquisition has little or no footing. That can mean joining some kind of dark brotherhood, whom you must prove your worth to or die. That can also mean becoming the servant of a demon whom will protect you. Or even going as far as going to the Antartic or something, where its night for a long, long time. Hell, even risk getting yourself burned by holy water and the like, to join a sisterhood of vampire nuns.

You are not trained in any kind of fights beyond the most primitive of street fighting. You are not a trained fighter, you have no knowledge beyond the most basic of superstitions of magic, you are unaware or unable to tap into any of your vampire abilities. Of course, you can pick up a sword and fling it around, even figure out some good moves for it. You might even be able to tap into some of your vampire powers.

Of course, there is the angle of drinking blood. You have an urge to drink blood. Not drinking blood will sometimes makes you lose control and drink blood without you wanting to. Don't drink blood long enough and you'll become pale or even dead-looking. Also, it will effect your movement.
Drinking blood will revitalise you and make you look more alive. However, the act itself is very risky. Bite someone in public and you will be either burned or have a steak trough your heart before you can say "kidding!". A lone person seeing you bite another will gather you a mob from which you must escape from.
Then there is the issue of the victim itself. Kill someone important and you'll have a hunt on your ass. Even if you kill someone unimportant, vampire hunters might still catch wind of you and start looking for you. You can mitigate this, by doing two things: hiding the body or not sucking someone dry. The first is complicated and you might have to go as far as doing an impromptu burial. The second is risky, as the victim may remember you.

To add an effect, there are different qualities of blood. Some will give you powers, allow you to tap into your vampire self deeper. Drinking werewolf blood (when the werewolf is human of course) will make you stronger, faster and more resistant to the elements and may even awaken some of your special abilities. Some will stave your thirst for a long time. Others will have the opposite effect: pro vampire hunters have built up an immunity to a poison that's deadly to vampires. Sick people will weaken you, the elderly will barely quench your thirst and drunks will make you drunk also.

There is also the element of disguise and suspicion. You can obviously disguise yourself, pretending to be a bar wench to allude a mob, pretending to be a beggar to allude the clergymen, pretending to be a delicate noblewoman to allude the peasantry. Of course, such disguises will have weaknesses. Act unlike your disguise or just overuse it and you'll become suspicious. Obviously coming into an inn with torn clothes bearing enormous claw marks will also arise suspicion. Become suspicious and people will start asking questions, start looking at you more closely, start looking at your quirks a little differently. You will have to survive daytime hours as well, trying to find one suspicion to another. People will piece together clues sooner or later and demand tests from you. You can counteract these tests, try to clarify yourself or make counter-accusations. However, that will work only so much. You might stave off a confrontation and people will become more suspicious of you.

Reputation will factor in. The more people will hear of you, the more they will look for you or recognise you. Obviously, there cannot be any magical metres of whether there is a manhunt on you or whether someone likes you. Gestures or signs have to do, while listening to rumours (FINALLY making use of the facial expression system of some games, as opposed to it being some other useless graphical feature you won't ever bother with). Someone smiling at you is unlikely to be suspicious of you. Or they might have already set a trap for you. Of course, this might be done with mere text, who knows.

Of course not everyone may want to kill you. Some will just want to take advantage of you, which might be even worse. A coachman might be willing to give you a ride in his ermm curtained coach for a large fee so you may cover your time by night. Of course, he might just stop his coach in the middle of sunny road and demand more money. Then there is some derogatory activities involved in your disguises or deals. A lord might shelter you if you are willing to do his dirty work, like assassination. Being a street prostitute might not be the most dignified disguises, but no one look too closely at the already sinful. Of course, you will have to watch as your beloved character whom you identify with will be treated like shit, plus your character will also become angry that might trigger bloodlust.

In a way, this is a mockery of all that fucking vampires-are-cool wankage. You are turned into a vampire and instead of fighting bad monsters or kicking ass, you have to put everything you have just to survive. You don't want to go out and kill monsters for the good of the people. Fuck no, the people can fuck themselves, you can barely stave off the monsters that want to kill you. You are truly alone, yet surrounded by people that want you dead on princible.

Hate to tell you, but this is really a retread of that V:tM game except for the story, but story is mostly irrelevent to the survival horror factor of it. Unless the story itself is enough to terrify someone (which I find to be rare and subjective to the point of unimportance) all it does is serve as a vehicle for the game's SoD. Games like Penumbra would be scary without the story.

I also think that by changing your perspective from a person to the monster you remove the feeling of empathy that is helpful to the scare factor. Monstrosity is a level of abstraction between you and the character, which makes it less likely to evoke the same fear, and more likely to make people play out their role as Monster on the normal humans. There's lots of fun in being a monster, but for a survival horror game I think it removes any of the survival horror elements and makes it closer to a forced-stealth game starring Sir Sucky the Vampire. You may as well just make it a Thief-style game.

Resident Evil was originally a good example of a survival horror game, but has since drifted farther from it into Goldeneye with Zombies. In the same vein, making Zombie Gear Solid wouldn't really make it a survival horror game either. It should be atmospheric and horrifying first, and survival second. If survival is more pominent than horror, you just get a shooter, a stealth game, or an RPG.

Vampire the Masquare was an RPG. This is a sandbox survival game. Hardly comparable.
Furthermore, in that, you were turned because you were considered potentially useful (if I remember correctly). In this, you were turned out of spite and expected to die.

The idea is for you to become a fugitive that everyone wants to kill. Not very horrific, I know but the idea here is to focus on sheer paranoia rather than on "OMG OMG OMG what was that?!?". You can't and won't trust anyone, which can be scary on its won.

The player would become fearful of normal things, like clergyman, silver, mirrors as any single one would risk discovery.

Not my best idea by far. Well, especially for a horror game.

Okay, mock it.

fuck zombies

how about we put you as an innocent young lady in a world from old european and arabesque folk tales. We have wolves, men, djinn, stone statues that come to life, currupt barons, did I mention wolves and men, and purhaps men who are wolves....

basically while traveling through eastern europe bad things happen you get lost in spooky woods and you find yourself back during the Turkish invasion, now good luck with that 20th century brain.

I'd like a survival horror game based on a Supernatural type setting. Relatively high action, but still with a lot of threat, varied enemies and the need to correctly apply techniques to kill them.

I'm thinking something like Sunshine/Event Horizon set up could be really cool. You and the other few main characters are on a mission or in a situation that's counting down to the critical point (launching the bomb, help coming, etc). The horror could be randomly generated from a large list of scripted events, you've got to repair the ship/building, send main characters to their death, convince other characters to agree to killing another character so you'll have enough air to get to the goal, etc. I think something like the oblivion interaction system maybe, but it creates motivation for actions instead of just trading values, like it could motivate jealousy so that character is more likely to steal from or even kill the person they're jealous of, they could hold grudges, panic or try to mutiny with their friend npcs based on the priority they hold most dear.

I think a Condemned-style melee system would be cool, too. I liked the lack of guns in that game, it made it far more tense. The Silent Hill radio remains to this day my favourite tension-builder. You can't see very far, but the radio lets you know something is in its radius. Then you can play hot and cold with it.

Here is another idea: take your average twat and make him go cross-country to visit his mom or some shit. Point is, he's going cross-country and being the twat he is, he gets lost. Instead of two-star tourist resort, he finds an old, half-abandoned mining town. The inhabitants obviously have very little contact with outside world, like dressing in clothes that are several decades out of common use, nevermind fashion or using horses to plow the field instead of a tractor. The phone has to be dialed manually, donnu how those spinning things are called. Several of the inhabitants are asking who are you talking to while you are on your cellphone. Stuff like that. Also some creepy stuff like kids chewing on bits of raw meat, finding some weird symbols here and there. Overhearing conversations mentioning you and your interference, a ritual, "underworlders", etc.

So, you find that you are waaaaaay off your target and decide that after 12 hours of driving, you call it a day.

You wake up with nightmares by a very loud noise and scratching on the door. Perhaps a voice might tell you to run or hang something on your door.

Either way, you can't go back to sleep. So, you decide to go out on the street. Empty streets, with houses with open doors and empty beds. With a dead body here or there, evidence that the town is fucked up.

As you explore, you find that your car has been sabotaged and that weirdly, your cellphone has no signal. Neither does your GPS or even your car radio.

As you go out you find more bodies, more rituals and more disturbing shit.

Than you find out where the inhabitants are, or more specifically, an inhabitant that was stupid enough to lock himself in.

What do you find?

They're fucking werewolves.

You're goal: SURVIVE!

Additional circumstances:
- the town has been thrown into perpetual night by the ritual the villagers mentioned. You can't stop the ritual.
- the werewolves do not truly hate you: they just want you out of their way. However, some may be more pissed than others and are not hesitant to kill you.
- if a werewolf or worse chases you, hiding may not always be your best option. If you pissed them off enough, they will smash trough anything they can reach, sometimes just to blow off steam.
- this being a town that has been inhabited by werewolves for centuries, there is no silver or any such weapon that would be truly effective against a werewolf.
- there may or may not be a native indian shaman trying to help you. Sometimes.
- guns are useless against your enemies. They might weaken them or even kill lesser enemies.

The plot: there is some mayor supernatural shit going on. Various forces are converging. You find other creatures besides werewolves. Vampires, zombies, demons, witches, fishman, goddamn Cthulhu (or at least someone wanked as him), the usual shit. You don't understand half of it, just that you better get out because the whole thing doesn't involve humanity and you can only find death here, if not a worse fate.

Your goal: survive and find a way to get out of the town's influence.

You have no supernatural abilities and will gain none, aside ones given by using certain items. Guns you can carry and use, but are unreliable in both reliability (to shot) and in effectiveness. In some cases, they might even be counter-productive. Only your wits and your improvisation can help you.

Two design princibles:
1. Never allow the player to truly feel safe, even if there is little or no true treat after him.
2. Never allow the player to ever feel completely in control.

If you're going to have a survival horror game, it needs the fear of the unknown. You don't know what's around the next bend. There might be enemies. There might be monsters. There might be a big deep pit into the abyss, or there could even be candy. You don't know. Like Stark was saying, you hear a sound and go, "What the hell was that?"

You don't even need overtly scary things like zombies. Your character wakes up in a room with no memory of who they are, no idea how they got there, no backstory, nothing, and then add a little atmosphere and you fend for yourself. That's my idea. Sure, scary stuff will happen since it's a horror game, but you won't know why the birds randomly attack you some times but not others, or why parts of this empty and disturbingly saccharine town are burned while neighboring areas seem untouched, or where those screams are coming from. There's your sandbox. You can try to figure out the mysteries of this place, or try to escape, or whatever.

Mayabird wrote:If you're going to have a survival horror game, it needs the fear of the unknown. You don't know what's around the next bend. There might be enemies. There might be monsters. There might be a big deep pit into the abyss, or there could even be candy. You don't know. Like Stark was saying, you hear a sound and go, "What the hell was that?"

A little girl singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", as the room slowly goes dark.

I would also try a new Haunted House style game, maybe you can base it loosely on the Haunting of Hill House, incorporating elements from Rose Red and House of Leaves.

A group of paranormal researchers/enthusiasts get together in generic haunted house. They are interested in finding measurable data of paranormal activity. The house, on the other hand, is interested in trapping the characters in its spiritworld, or killing them in order to keep the spiritworlf free of invaders. House starts off as a dormant entity, very quiet, very still. Nothing unusual for our guests as they begin to experience the mansion. Player can choose to manage the party - when people sleep, when people eat, how people spend their time in the mansion, or they can choose to simply be a member of the party and make the decisions for one character. As the characters spread out in the mansion, the mansion starts to 'wake up'. Doors start opening and closing, whispers start being heard, lights blink on and off.

Players will make decisions about how 'open' the character is to the paranormal experiences - when presented with a slamming door, the player can choose to look for a scientific explanation or simply believe there's an essence at work. These decisions will become critical, because each character has a certain level of 'house affinity' set - the more a character believes in the ghosts, the more the character becomes aware of the spritual activities in the house and becomes attuned to them. As the character gets more attuned with the house, the house draws strength and can unleash stronger paranormal manifistations, visual manifistations, objects thrown across the room, physical contact with character, and such. As the paranormal manifistations grow stronger and more intense, characters have a much more difficult time looking for a scientific explanation as the level of 'cognitive dissonance' increases. If the dissonance level or the affinity with the house gets too high, the character can go insane and 'become' the house. However, players who have a greater affinity with the house unlock secrets about how the house functions and the house's history.

As characters grow more attuned with the house, they start to lose their connection with the party and become aware of rooms in the house that aren't initially available, and gradually become more and more aware of the activities in the house. Eventually, the house will gather strength to the point where it can seal the party indoors, and start shifting its layout, building new rooms and cooridors, walling off old ones, basically the place becomes a shifting maze. The players focus then shifts from scientific discovery to unlocking the house's mysteries and escaping before the house outright kills them.

Players who reach insanity can decide to commit suicide, or become a spirit in the house. As a spirit, the player can essentially become the house's malvolence towards the remaining characters, and the player can choose ways to either kill the invaders or incorporate them into the house's spiritworld.

Coalition wrote:

Mayabird wrote:If you're going to have a survival horror game, it needs the fear of the unknown. You don't know what's around the next bend. There might be enemies. There might be monsters. There might be a big deep pit into the abyss, or there could even be candy. You don't know. Like Stark was saying, you hear a sound and go, "What the hell was that?"

A little girl singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", as the room slowly goes dark.

That is so creepy, man. I like it!
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