let's come up with a simple indie horror game. i will code, model, and compose. what you got?
suggestions: >New York-like subway horror sim where you're trying to get home while trying to avoid murder hobos. features having to get off to find a transfer, stoppages, delays, cars losing electricity, strange announcements, flickering lights. (lynchian)
>horror management game set in a car. think the movie duel. you're being chased by someone. they are trying to force you into a moving train, bump you off a cliff, etc. when not chased, random stuff like wildlife will run across the road. then shit starts to get weird. can tune in to weird radio stations. have to get out and fix a tire once in a while and do other repairs.
>you're a miner who uncovers a mcguffin and blackouts. wake up and everyone is gone. you encounter yourself that attacks you. other you always returns with deformities from weapons you used on him in previous encounters. have to escape by fixing lifts, bypassing safety procedures, move vehicles. clone appears during these. by end of the game other you is hard to kill because it's a malformed horror.
you're on a ship heading somewhere in the middle of a pacific ocean. crazy storm outside. suddenly your crewmen start to turn into monsters. you set out to find out what's causing this. tank controls with fixed camera angles.
You're a pirate on the high seas, making your way to whatever shithole island to lay low from whatever the fucking sea police were, English royal army or whatever the fuck. You just fought off a mutiny of your own crew and are the only man left on your ship. It's a stormy night, you must manage the sails, steering, and all the other shit that's on a pirate ship, but that's not all. As well as fending off and fleeing from whatever British navy is trying to take your ass in, there are also heaps of sea creatures (giant crabs, sirens, sea serpent, giant whales, krakens, sea zombies) stopping you from making it to your destination. There are small outposts that let you re-up on a couple of key supplies but they always seem to run out faster than you get them. Base difficulty modes, ship configurations and sea captain loadouts change the dynamic, frequency, and defensive options to fend off your foes. There's a base game with predetermined outpost islands but there's also a procgen version with seeds for replayability.
Josiah Brooks
you swim around a blood ocean in a tiny submarine for an hour and then a fish eats you
Liam Myers
sounds like iron lung
Bentley Bell
you're a criminal and break into the house of a psychopath and get ambushed and locked up. You have to escape the house by finding keys and items, the usual survival horror setup with a psycho or psychos stalking you. Think The People Under the Stairs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Clock Tower as inspiration. The killer gets a gun at one point and you have to use line of sight and crawlspaces to move around the house to avoid getting 2 shot. Derivative but I like these types of games.
Connor Stewart
You're on a long haul coach trip and fall asleep. You wake up to find everyone else dead and once you open the coach windows curtains it's clear the whole coach is buried underground. Search the coach, luggage and passengers for something you can use to escape before the air runs out.
Christian Hughes
I'll just ripoff Silent Hill 4. Instant hit.
Wyatt Brown
this is hello neighbor
Julian Diaz
it is, its plenty of games but I'd like it to be realistic and gruesome and modeled off of true crime situations where murderers kidnap and torture their victims. Hello neighbor is not fear inducing and is more like playing hide and seek.
William Lopez
not bad but feels like it would have to be a mansion and not a plain house to make escaping interesting.
Alexander Howard
>You pass out drunk while out clubbing, in the morning you awake chained to the bed in an unfamiliar house >creepy stalker type is holding you against your will misery style >you have to eat all the eggs
Cameron Sanchez
Do you one better. You're drugged, it's a regular house that seems to go on forever but it's all the drugs.
Cameron Howard
yea definitely needs a large house, 3 story with a basement and the owner needs to have bolted all the windows and doors.
Parker Roberts
Pretty cool ideas. Duel game could be simple and comfy.
Thomas Reed
>You're a grown man living in your home with your family >It's nighttime and youre all sleeping >Some big guy breaks in and kills your entire family brutally (you see this happen) knocks you unconscious >You wake up in some RE7 style room/cell >Each level is like some meet n fuck style game but it's high detail full 3d fps style and you have to find out what each disgusting man wants or they fucking kill you >Have gross gay smelly sweaty sex with overweight men, blow em, let em play with you, rim em >Multiple endings dependent on which items you get during which chapters to make a grand escape and finally kill your captive >Leverage this as an avant garde statement about rape or how women feel in a patriarchal society or why America needs to invade every country and further expand the MIC or some shit
Dylan Adams
Something like Papers Please but Horror themed. You play as some schizo shut in who is convinced some nameless entity is after him. Rather than checking paper work there are tools to see if the person knocking at your door is real or it's some kind of trick. Maybe cameras, sensors, audio cues, etc . The humans are delivery men with valuable resources you need to continue. Maybe fucking up once shouldn't kill you but drain you of sanity or resources. Less sanity makes it harder to tell what's real and make the right call.
Ian Sullivan
Most of those don't sound scary to me. You need two things. You need a sense of isolation and you need for the player to feel helpless. So this does two things. It makes the player feel like there's nowhere they can run and that their situation is potentially inevitable. Your New York murder hobo scenario isn't scary because you know you're going to be alright when you get home. You know there's a way out so there's a sense of hope. You don't want hope in a horror game. Same thing with your car game. As long as you do x, you'll be fine. Your last scenario is a lot better because no matter what you do, your doppelganger just keeps coming after you no matter where you go or what you do. This makes the player paranoid knowing that their copy is just going to keep coming after them.
