Research

Over January I have been working on getting ideas together for a new game design based on my previous research over semester 1.


While the majority of my research was completed in semester 1, its still important for me to have a look at current and recent themes in the world today.


One thing I went over again was the mechanics of recent horror games and what made them stand out exactly. Left4Dead centering its mechanics all around multiplayer, mechanics such as being able to pick up an injured team mate, or the design of the special creatures that would force team mates to come to each others rescue.

Amnesia while not being an action orientated horror, played more on trying to make it feel real, with lots of camera effects and interaction with the world, which helped bring the player more into the immersion of the world.

By looking at these types of games it also allowed me to understand how I could base my mechanics on the style of horror I am going for, as well as making me think of a new type of mechanic I could bring into my game to ensure it stands out.

However while looking at games, I was also aware that I needed to look into the way horror films have been progressing in other industries such as film. I took note of several things that I thought were interesting as I looked as a whole variety of films.

1. How trust is something that is difficult to portray in games, The game "The Thing" based off the movie tried creating a similar style mechanic with a trust meter which could be earned by giving weapons and health to each other to show you were a good guy, while making rash decisions will turn them against you. This was only a single player though and was fairly simple.

2. There are a lot of films coming out using hand held camera film footage. While this has been used a lot in general for reality TV, it was also making it into horror style films and had been used for several films such as: "The Blair Witch Project" some years ago, "Cloverfield", Rec/Quarantine and "Diary of the Dead" though this has never been used within games, and got me wondering how this could be possible.

3. Home invasion was another scenario I had seen a lot of, some films were based completely around it, while others used it for some terrifying scenes. A persons home is usually a place of safety and it was a scary aspect to have someone invading your home.

These three main things stuck in my head more than anything else and I tried to center some idea's around these if possible.