Just read through the archives of a really old blog I used to have. Apparently, I was much funnier two years ago. Comments I made which are still funny – “Did someone dial a rapist?”, “My piss is Lucozade orange right now”, and my current fave, “some sheep racing show”. Out of context, they’re awesome if I do type so myself.
Anyways, there’s one entry which I’d forgotten about, but it’s still pretty smart I guess. Putting it here in case I forget it (hence the title of this blog). Mental note – don’t type like a ponce in future.
Right.
An idea for a game. Kind of. Sort of.
It’s a horror game about grief. But it’s not really a game. I have no idea where I’m going with this description, bear with me.
Told from first-person, because that’s as immersive as games currently get.
Guy lives with his wife in a small apartment. Game starts out, you walk in his shoes – wake up next to her, go to work, go home, and find your wife has been murdered. A guy in a red balaclava is outside the window – you open it, he’s gone. The police turn up.
The guy get interrogated, then cleared. The guy go home. Has nightmares, broken sleep. Things get a bit weird.
The city you live in looks a bit bigger. Subtly done, hopefully enough to put the player off a bit. You know, “something’s wrong with this, but I can’t put my finger on it” kinda thing. Your character goes to his wife’s funeral. Whenever the player moves the mouse, indistinct flashes of the same red as the balaclava should be sporadically shown between the other mourners, like the killer is there. Suggestion to the player is key.
As the player goes about their normal life, these flashes of red should be shown in amongst the people on the streets. Eventually, the player will see the red balaclava.
The point of this is that it is up to the player to react or not, right from the funeral onwards. If they do, then the other mourners get worried about the player’s character. When walking the streets, if the player decides to go hunting for the flashes of red they see in the crowds, they get odd looks and verbals from the people. If they decide to go after the red balaclava, let them catch up with them, and use the mouse buttons to hit the guy in the balaclava (don’t have any on-screen prompt that the player can do this, let them figure this out for themselves). Once the player hits the red balaclava guy, show that the balaclava wasn’t really there, and that the player has just hit a random member of the public.
As the player goes on, make it worse.
And then, once the game detects the player’s mouse movements are erratic enough, have the red balaclava guy jump out at them. The real red balaclava guy.
That is my idea. Not a good one, but it’s a start.
Tags: Idea
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