Development Log: Horror Game Part 4

Well, as usual, more notes for today.  The theme today is mostly on the order of expanding the scope to accommodate a wider slice of life, and how to incorporate such things properly.

Scraps and Notes and Ideas for Horror Adventure

5/14

What about the seedier aspects of childhood; the kinds of things that aren't "normal" and are much more difficult to overcome?  If the "normal" (white middle-class suburban) stuff is terrifying, what to do about gang violence, sexual abuse, drugs, and things like that that some kids end up in?

Is there, perhaps, a way to make areas of the world that are even WORSE than normal, perhaps where there are fewer safe zones, everything seems more terrifying, perhaps more monsters, and you aren't likely to survive at all?  Perhaps the tonal shift to these areas is steep, so a player knows long before entering that if they go that way, voluntarily, they aren't likely to make it out alive, and there are warning everywhere to try to steer you away, but should you enter anyway, you unleash hell.  Once the door is open, it can't be closed, and the game gets ten times harder.

If a player has a proper amount of fear, they will steer clear of these areas and make it through each year without messing themselves up. A player who is wild and enticed by the prospect of it all, finding, somehow, it to be intriguing, makes things worse.

Or, perhaps, could their be a way to either randomly generate the chances of a player coming across these "opportunities", so one player might experience a less dangerous life than another (hey, just like real life), or perhaps offer difficulty settings at the beginning? I never really liked difficulty settings and have always been a fan of dynamic difficulty adjustment, but I wonder if there is a place for settings.

There must be a better way, surely.

Of course, being that this game is made by me, I can only create what I know, and my experience is on the lighter side of these things. If the complete experience were nothing but a white middle-class suburban experience, how would that effect the player? Considering this entire game is purely metaphorical, would the player ever notice?

Perhaps the best bet is indeed to offer an in-game "hard mode", above, where the player gets warning after warning not to open the gates of hell, so to speak, and they make the decision.

The tough part always is about how to make death and fear mean something.  The hellish option should be one that most players would choose to avoid, yet the desire for exploration is so wrapped around the whole concept of videogames (and even this one, it's a major mechanic), that it becomes tough to warn away players.  If the warnings are too comical and large, they'll think they're ironic/sarcastic/untrue warnings, and that they should be following them as part of the game, and if there isn't enough warning, players may unwitting stumble into those areas and get themselves killed.

So a balance must be struck between subtle but fair warnings.  An average player is likely to see them, and the scary nature of the rest of the world itself makes players not want to open those doors.  Players on the extreme ends of the spectrum will either miss the warnings and mistakenly open the doors, or see the warnings and laugh at them.  There's nothing that can be done about those, because when you fix one end you make the other worse.

So things will just have to be balanced.  It will take a lot of playtesting to see how such a thing turns out, and, of course, players interacting with each other is a wild card.  How to mold players to want to help others? Perhaps as long as most players are that way, the jerks don't have too much influence.

Or, perhaps, like how each "year" gets locked, perhaps there is a way to lock the doors of hell behind a player, so they can't get back?  Maybe, or maybe it depends on what they represent.  I kind of think that's a bad idea, and locking things out is already a little annoying.

Suppose there is no locking of years, while we're at it.  A player who is 16 can still interact with a player who's 10.  But, given the exploratory nature of the game, the player who's 16 is physically far away from a player who's 10, and unlikely to meet again. The player who is 16 is most likely using later safe zones than the 10 year old, and so unless the 16 year old has an oddly looping world, he's not likely to swing by.

And perhaps the rarity of players who DO do that allows me to have my cake and eat it too: SOME older players can meet younger ones, but it's not likely, individually, but guaranteed overall.

But to this hellish extra stuff:

If we take the "normal but upside down" approach that I mentioned last time, where the world is NOT all doom and gloom, just subtly creepy, would these other areas BE more doom and gloom?  Or find a way to make the tonal shift still not so drastic, with perhaps it just giving off a much scarier vibe.  Or offer warnings along the lines of "You can hear screams and shrieks and cries of pain and howling wolves through the door", etc.

Now, would the average player say "Er, yah, let's try door number two instead" or would the average player say "Ooh, sounds dangerous, let's see what's screaming"?  It should be the former, and no matter what you may do to steer away the latter, they are a lost cause.

You can't please everyone.

But heck, if I'm spending time to create that section of the world, I might as well make SOME use out of it, even if I shouldn't.  I won't encourage its use, but if someone falls through the cracks, well, that's life, right?