Creating a Horror Game in Victorian England

In this episode of The Gaming Blender, Matt and Scott discuss the recent release of Star Wars Outlaws and the challenges faced by big-name game developers. They then proceed to create a hypothetical horror game set in Victorian England, where players take on the role of a detective investigating supernatural events. The game incorporates point-and-click gameplay and a choice-based system, with the goal of solving mysteries while avoiding danger. 

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to The Gaming Blender, your hypothetical gaming podcast where we create brand new hypothetical video games every episode. I'm here with not an as usual play - well, usual hiding spot, Scott. Hello, hello, yes, now I'm going to... quick apologies. I am away at the moment and I'm having to use my laptop and I found out today that the microphone I brought with me has broken and so I'm using the inbuilt laptop microphone. So, listeners, if my voice is not sounding as wonderful as it usually is, I can only apologise and will ensure to make sure I take care of my equipment a little bit better in future. for me because if no one if people are listening to this and they go it's not very good but then we've admitted it and it's fine it's not very good if people are listening to this and going my god i can't tell the difference then that's all remember that i edited the episode so i've managed to save this Yes, no, that's quite right. It's quite right. But yes, no, we are here, listeners, as always, to deliver unto you a glorious gaming-blender -ness. Is that the right word? That's the next stage in our development. I was about to say we make it a verb to blend. It's like, that's already a verb. It's not particularly a big step in the right direction. what we do, ladies and gentlemen, is we make a brand new hypothetical video game every episode with randomized genre, mechanics, and plot. And we will blend them all together to make something wonderful at the other side. If you are a returning listener, thank you for coming back. We really do appreciate your return. feel free to drop us a review and I'm decided to do a thing where the best reviews will be read out on the show because I really want to do that. I want to encourage, yeah, I think we should encourage it. And if you can maybe put some jokes or challenges in the reviews, again, we would love it. Just go on to your local podcast provider, preferably iTunes, because I can find that one and put in a fun review and I will read it on the next episode if it pops up. But thank you very much for returning. Scott, have you been gaming of late? Have you been video gaming? Have you been the verb to game? Yes, so I recently purchased Star Wars Outlaws for myself because I'm a massive Star Wars fan, even though I knew, yes, there was going to be some some Ubisoft -ness to deal with and there is. It's not as, it's not, delve into the Ubisoftness now? we go into the big debate now that's been on the list? Right. So Scott is aware of this because we briefly touched base on this, to give you all the rough vibe of what's going on, Star Wars Outlaws was not a commercial success. The day it released, or the day or the week, I'm sorry, Ubisoft stock dropped by about 10%, fairly alarmingly. They have since cut their sales expectations from 7 million to 5 million. which is a decent drop off. And also to top it all off, if you access the game early access, you actually had a game breaking patch which would block progress in your save so people had to restart. So people were not happy about that. along with everything, it has been a fairly choppy launch to what everybody has described as a perfectly decent game, I think is a good summary. Yeah, so I, I've funny listeners who haven't, who haven't played it yet or are thinking about it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the game. It is, it is, well, you know, there's a few glitches here and there, but there's nothing, nothing anymore that seems to be game breaking. I would say it's a solid seven, seven and a half out of 10, which I think, I think that there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a theme developing in the gaming industry at the moment. when it comes to if we come across a game, we get introduced to a game that is not a nine or a 10 out of 10, a nine or a 10 out of 10, we sort of lambasted a bit. Whereas actually, I think we forget the seven and eights are perfectly acceptable. And this is a good seven. I'm enjoying it. Ubisoft have sort of a bit of Ubisoft out of it. It's not so, I don't open the map and go, God, help me. which I think most people do. That hasn't happened. They've scaled it back a little bit. There are some bits that could be improved. mean, what I would say, Matt, I think this is one of those things that I remember No Man's Sky and Yes, yes, I do remember that. The only thing I would say to that is that, and I'm going to jump on the No Man's Sky bandwagon because I'm more a No Man's Sky man, you're more of an Outlaws man, but No Man's Sky had the ability for someone to restart it and experience in a whole new world. The only problem with a narrative game when you get this, sometimes you've missed the boat by the time you fixed it. I think the bigger argument here is what obviously Star Wars did many years ago when EA were loot boxing the world. Hmm. EA, they decided to separate, can't remember which way around it was listening, so I apologize. I can't remember if EA decided to break the agreement or Disney decided to break their agreement. But either way, that agreement broke up and they split obviously over various different developers. EA still got it. Obviously, Jedi Survivor is done through Respawn, which are owned by EA, I believe. But then you've got other companies like Ubisoft taking on. Now, does a company as big as Ubisoft that has Assassin's Creed coming out this year? look at Star Wars Outlaws, which might still be a commercial success, but does it look at it and go, is it worth taking on that big finance? Because I'm imagining they're paying 50 % of all this money to Disney. So do they just go, do I want this or do I want a nice new original game or keep working on Assassin's Creed? That's the sort of sad thing about it. So the thing I would say, and the thing I would, I don't know, throw into the mix is that it is Star Wars. Star Wars already has, if you take Assassin's Creed on one side, Star Wars on the other side, Star Wars will always have a greater following and a greater gravitas to it because it's Star Wars. Well done, yes, well done. So. I don't know. if you, I would look at it and say, we can make, Star Wars Outlaws has come out, it's got about seven out of 10 for most people. If we can improve it and make it a nine or an eight and a half, how many, you know, that game will sell and more than it currently has. this is the question then in terms of the wider gaming industry question. You've just said you miss the days where we just had a good old seven out of 10. And then by nature, you've gone back on it and said, but we need to make this a nine to make it financially viable. This is the circle that we're caught in. We are caught in a circle of big name brands need a certain level of game to sell. And also your general consumer. in is much more savvy and goes, you know what, I'm not bothered by seven anymore. Gone are the days of PS2. We'd wander into a shop and go, I'll have five of these and I'll try each one because they're affordable. but now you've got an $80 or $100 game some places I need to sink time into it. I don't really want a seven. want to I want to 10 and you're a massive Star Wars fan. You will play this and love it. If it was a Lord of the Rings game, I'd play a seven out of 10 and love it. Your general consumer is looking for something to really drag them in and take out the time. Particularly, this is not the only Star Wars thing that's been released this year. If you're a Star Wars, like, I love Star Wars, shall I watch the TV show on my Disney Plus? Or shall I jump into this 100 hour game that's kind of a seven out of 10? This is the, you're now fighting for attention across so many mediums. It's so difficult to stand out. no, this is true. No, I concede all of the points that you're making. I have no rebuttals. I wish I did. I love verbally sparring with you, but unfortunately I have nothing. I have nothing. You've got me. would you do? you in the on a serious note? Obviously, you've had now a few big budget Star Wars games in a year and this is is coming back. I think it's a similar argument to what you had with the films. Would you rather see 10 Star Wars games in the next five years that are smaller in scope and doing various different things or one massive Star Wars game in three years time that is a nine out of 10 and everybody loves and is a classic? I would lean more towards the 10. because I feel like then you get a good buffet spread of different things and different ideas that everyone can dip into. But that is the type that doesn't feel affordable in the modern industry. So if I go back to the last time that they did lots of Star Wars games, there are some, we're talking late 2000s, early teens, there were a plethora of smaller but excellent, excellent Star Wars games. You had the Force Unleashed games, you had the Empire at War games. on. Force Unleash 1, Force Unleash 2 is not a game. That is a DLC. Yes, yes, for listeners, Sunleaf took me about five hours, Four Sunleaf 2 took me five hours to finish. You told me about it, you went out and bought it in, right, okay, sorry for any teachers that are listening that used to teach us. Scott skived off school in the morning to go buy it, was back in school by the afternoon because he'd finished it. I don't know to what you're referring. I didn't lie, this happened. But, you know, and there was like, was Jedi Academy, there was Jedi Outcast, there was Clone Commando. That was an unbelievable game. First person FPS. And so I think actually I would lean towards small, small scale Star Wars games that are made really well, that are given the time to sort of bubble away because people still buy those games now. Yeah, that's the thing that already mastered them. and buy those games and they get remastered. really, rather than the grand spectacle, rather than making a game... I don't get me wrong, I love the Forgotten Order games. I love those Jedi games. And they should keep making those. But you can't just have massive games. I think the small games in the thing. If you divvy it up between big studios, every big studio sees them as being the big game. So I'm sure that Respawn thought we're making the game of the ages, which arguably they did, but then Ubisoft would be like, this is the Star Wars game of the ages. This is the Star Wars game of ages. If you have a one studio running it, although you may struggle with the sort of, maybe a dearth of ideas, at least they have that wide view of guys we can't compete with each other. You'd hope anyway EA have a famous story of putting Titanfall 2 out against Battlefield, but then again, we digress. We've digressed a lot when we've got to see how we're on Star Wars. This has been a good 10 minutes of digression. So I think we need to make a game, don't you? Agreed. Right. So the way this would work, I was about to say viewers, I always make that mistake because I'm looking at a picture of myself. It's not viewers, listeners. Your wonderful ears approach this wonderful podcast. So the way this works is I have rolled some dice, the dice have selected a number and the number would dictate the genre. Then two more dice will dictate the mechanics. Then one final die. Die, dice, die, die, die, die. That's just rude. Will dictate the plot. a bit of a narrative. So, Scott, what are you feeling today? What would you want? What would you not want? What is singing to you? What's not singing to you? What's making noises? What are you looking at and saying would you mind leaving? mean, the thing that's making noises currently is you. That was a very, fast sentence. I think we haven't had anything that's of generic in a while. We haven't had anything that's quite open -ended with say, know, like action adventure and open world. haven't had one of those in a while. Most of the ones we've done have been quite tight, quite tight and niche. So I think we'd do something generic, but I'm sure I will get rhythm game now. Yes, of course, that is the way it works. However, I can confirm it is not a rhythm game. It was also not action adventure. And it will also take me a long time to go through the ones it is not. So I'm just going to say what it is. So you have got number 13, unlucky for some. Now, what would you think number 13 is? I mean, I don't know. is your role in this. You tell me. know, but I realised this earlier that number 13 is horror, which is incredibly appropriate, which I didn't realise. Yes, good good. I like a horror game listeners. Matthew doesn't one note you had. I wrote my dissertation on monsters, but I am a scaredy cat. love the concept of fear and fear intrigues me. However, I'm a scaredy cat and I think it's why. Matthew, how many times have I asked you to play a co -op horror game with me and how many times have you told me no? Sorry, you're the one that got terrified at lethal company and kept running away from me. Yes, you were. Right, let's move on before we get into a fight about this. the next, that is horror is your genre. You have two mechanics. Your mechanics are a choice based system. Okay. and point and click gameplay. So what you have here for reference listeners, see I it right that time. What you have here for reference listeners is point and click is quite as it sounds. You have on the screen very old fashioned video games use this process where you clicked on elements and they revealed things. So quite lots of traditional gameplay like Monkey Island, these followed point and click adventure. Choice based system generally means, and there are different ways of doing this until Dawn does this, but lots of games do the intent essentially. You make choices throughout the game which dictate the path that you take throughout the game or the ending. There are lots of ways of interpreting that. That is quite loose. Scott, how are you feeling? So that to me sounds like the Telltale Walking Dead games. It was very obviously Walking Dead horror, it was very, very choice based and most of the gameplay, there was a little bit of moving around, but it was mostly set scenes with point and click, which I loved. way doing it. think there's a, with point and click, I always think the thing that took you out of it, and this is less the Walking Dead games, this is more old fashioned games, is when you had a character and they'd walk into the corner of a room and they'd stand there looking at the room and then your pointer would take control and you would click on things and your character sort of stood there and waited for you to click on corresponding things. That was quite in, un -interactive. It didn't feel like it was pushing the battery. I feel like there's a meta way or a way of introducing point and click, which is clever and feels natural, more natural. Yes, and I'm trying to... I tell you while I think of... you think of how to do that bit, because clearly you've got an idea, when it comes to horror and choice based, obviously you don't just want to rehash the Tales of our games as awesome as they are, horror I think... there's so many different ways to do horror, and I think in... to me... in video game, are two, one of the main choices when it comes to horror games is do you make it first person or do you make it third person? Because both, both are scary, but for different reasons when you play horror game. If you're playing in first person, you obviously, you don't have any peripheral vision. So your vision is already less than it would be if it was real life. So you can't, you have to keep turning around constantly and checking. But if you're, if you're in third person, then you end up seeing a lot more of the stuff that's going on around you and therefore you get more scared when things start moving of their own accord or whatever or you see something flash past a corridor or something like that. So I think for those is, I feel like the first person horror is more natural. Horror, you are scared, you are seeing it, you're quite literally living the characters. But I think that third person works, and this is not necessarily hard and fast rules, so people don't shout at me, but the third person works quite well in survival horror because you get more sense of what's around you. And because you can sense what's around you, you're reacting more and saying, my God, there's a thing over that way, it's gonna come attack me, I know, I've got no bullets. That's what I feel like the horror is slightly different. I do have an idea as well. So there was a Skyrim mod that I played called Clockwork and there was a horror part of it and it genuinely terrified me because I play Skyrim in third person and it genuinely terrified me because there's a bit where someone drifts towards you but then other stuff happens around you at the same time and I think because I could see everything else that made it more scary to say I'm just thinking if you're running away from something, if you're in third person, let's say that the walls around you are doing something creepy. Like you can see that when you're in third person, but you can't necessarily see it first. What's coming into my head is maybe some sort of more like a psychological horror where you're investigating something a little bit like, well Shatter Island is more of a thriller, but you know that sort of like where you're... gonna get really strict on you in terms of genre, I'm not gonna turn around and go, how dare you, that was a romcom. No, no, no, but you know what mean, like, I think something like, and this is what I'm picturing, is Victorian England, and I'm picturing some sort of like supernatural detective, do know what mean? Like where you go and investigate supernatural events. What was the name of the game is escaping me, but they did a mystery game where you played as a detective who had died. Either detective who had died or someone who communicated with ghosts. can't, yes, something along those lines. Yeah. Sorry. I don't think I ever played it, but I heard it was quite good. But... So I think you could do something, and it doesn't have to be one single plot. You could do this in a set of almost like short miniseries that maybe don't even link to one another, where you actually... you go to different sites, investigate different things, and they're not actually linked together. They're only linked together by maybe if you survive, maybe if you're not killed by whatever it is that you're investigating, you get to go to the next one. Could you do something like that? Yeah, I had this idea of, and I don't know how it might take some sort of crowbarring into you. I like the Victorian England setting. I like that, but that's point and click. So for some reason, the first thing I pictured is I pictured quite literal in terms of when you're pointing and clicking, it's the equivalent of picking something up, right? That is the equivalent. You're moving your hand in a grabbing motion. So first of all, I pictured, you know, on a mechanical robot line where they're building things. I envisage one of those claws going down, pressing. And then I thought, how about you play a robot like that whose job is to do that, who becomes sort of sentient because then you're sort of having to go up. You only know how to touch things and you're going up to things because you want to touch them. Now, what you could do is if you made your world slightly more steampunkish, you could be something that kind of comes to life and you're trying to work out maybe why you exist, why you are suddenly become sentient in this world where robots are, are these steampunk-esque robots. are putting working the factory lines and stuff. And maybe you end up leading a revolution against these humans or whatever. So you're trying to work out this this mystery of why you why you exist. And you can have a survival horror element to it as well, because you run on coal. So you've got to make sure you have enough coal to keep moving. Yes, I see we're going with that. Is that, that sounds like you bolted horror onto it rather than horror is the, is this of the overarching part of it? I look for something with the point and click adventure. what I'm seeing, not so, I'm saying the survival horror bit of it is the coal. No, the actual thing is I imagine your robot being absolutely tiny and can be literally crushed by the humans or attacked. And you live in this world with mad humans who for whatever reason have gone sort of, you know, obviously with the English revolution where machines took over, you have that sort of world in that world. the humans are almost torturing the robots into working for them because they've created this society of they're just making robots work and work and work and you're this one little robot that got away. It's a little steam pumpkin case thing and you're trying to work out firstly why you were allowed to escape. But secondly, you're trying to avoid these humans that when they find you, they will destroy you and rip you to pieces because you're not strong. Okay, where is the choice based? yes, now what I've done there is forgotten a mechanic. Yes. Yes you have. You've gone robots and then flown away on the robot rhyme. Robots! I wanted to do It's like you and Trey. do if you're in this factory, this is going to get more and more, you have to sneak around and what you have to do is activate parts of the factory. And by activating parts of the factory, you're essentially setting up your end game of your attack on the human. you're sort of like, if I disabled the bit that pours down the hot coals, the hot coals will overflow and create this sort of trap over there later on. And so what it becomes is becomes a sort of cat and mouse game where you're building a giant mouse trap to take on these the people that would destroy you. So, the only thing was, it's not a bad idea, the only thing I will say is, I'm not sure, and I'm putting myself in the shoes, if I was playing the robot, if I'm playing a robot, I'm not sure I would be that scared because I'm playing a robot. If I'm playing a person, and also the fact that my enemies are humans. I don't, human beings, human beings can be scary. But human beings, as a general rule, aren't that scary? Do see what I mean? So there's a little bit of... The thing that I understand about horror is people get more scared when they can imagine themselves in that situation. That's to me why people get so scared by horror, because they think, holy bad word. You see, I caught myself there. you know, I can imagine myself in this situation and that's absolutely terrifying. And if you make it something that is more real world based with a slight hint of sort of like, you know, supernatural elements, which some people genuinely believe and have every right to that supernatural stuff exists in the world, it becomes much easier to scare people, which I think is the point of horror. Do know what mean? Yeah, no, I'm getting where you're meaning. I'm just trying to now work out how to introduce that point and click mechanic of the slightly wanting to touch things and wanting to maneuver things. Maybe. if you make it a game where you are trying to find something out, you are detecting, being a detective. Detective's work is very item -based, it's very surface -based, it's very clue -based. And so if you want something that is a bit more tactile and a bit more focused on touching things, then there's no reason you can't do that when it comes to a detective story. because you make the nature of the detective is that he works stuff out by following the clues and the clues are tactile things that he can touch and look at and inspect. you can, maybe the part of the point and click is that you're able to point. So let's say you're investigating a house where the parents were mysteriously murdered and the child goes missing. And then it could be, yeah, okay. something happened with the kid or something happened with the parents, whatever it is. And you go into the kid's bedroom, obviously it's a Victorian child's bedroom, which is already terrifying. And there's no one in the house. You go around, you're inspecting like the, you know, her hair brushes on her dressing table. You're inspecting, you know, like her pillowcase and things like that, know, things that are, you know, tactile and could have like, could feed clues into that thing. And then sort of... supernatural stuff starts to happen very, slowly at first and you could feed it in... I'm going to say third person and you can feed this in with visuals at first and then you start feeding in audio but it happens so, so, so quickly and so slightly that you wouldn't even know... they're almost like Easter eggs You wouldn't even notice them until, and then it starts to build and it builds from there and builds from there until you get to a point where the guy could act, you could actually be physically running away from something. So I have an idea based on that to link it to point and click. If you have it, so the more stuff you investigate, the more angry the spirit gets. So essentially the more things you click on, so it becomes a bit meta. So you essentially, you have to start making choices about, I know that's important, but there's like the thing's going nuts in the house. I don't know whether I want to disturb the spirit anymore. Okay, I'm quickly gonna check that because I know I can run off and hide in this place. So from this, bear in mind that technically we've only got five minutes to sort this out and the narrative. But in the good news, I'm just gonna tell you now, the narrative role, you ended up with mystery plot. So we're already miles ahead, but point and click, sorry, not point and click, you've done point and click. Choice base. Yes. So I think that has to be based around and I think the way you can... I think when you set out, you investigate these different mysteries, okay? And there are three ways that your investigation of this... let's say this house that I spoke about, there's three ways it finishes. You either escape finding out what happened... you either escape not knowing what happened or you are killed. And those are the three ways that each mystery can end. And I think where you bring the point and click in is just linking to what you said. The more you look at, the more you investigate, the angrier the spirit gets or whatever. doesn't have to be a spirit. It could be that nothing supernatural happened and actually there's actually a murderer in the house. It doesn't have to be. But, Kevin, Kevin has murdered people. But, you only have a short, you only have a limited amount of time, not necessarily time, maybe clicks. You won't know, you won't know, but you only have a limited amount of time slash clicks to figure out what's gone on, piece together what happened. And that means that you have to focus on going to specific rooms, looking to specific rooms. Maybe you get a brief at the beginning. of roughly what happened, okay, and there will be clues within there that maybe the sharper amongst us might pick up on. And you think, okay, I need to go and check the billiard room, or, okay, I need to go and check the tree house, or, you know, whatever it is. But some people might not pick up on that, in which case they'll just go to, I don't know, the master bedroom, and they might find stuff that's, yeah, 100%. Of course you could. this is sounding a bit like phasmophobia, but not as spirit. focused and not as sort of modern world because phasmophobia is a lot like that and it's a lot and you know the more you longer you stay in the house the more the spirit gets annoyed so i think that would work and i think let's say let's say it's part of the meta behind the game that you never the metadata behind the game you'll never know it could it could be the specific how let's say let's say this house you've got 30 clicks for example before before you get to a point where it's gonna start hunting you because it knows you're getting close. Or maybe you focus it in on specific items. So specific items have a certain value, okay, depending on how closely linked they are, on how closely linked they are to the investigation. So let's say the hairbrush, for example, let's say the hairbrush gives you a really big clue and that's a 10 pointer, okay, and the threshold is 50, for example. Maybe you do it like that. that could be quite an interesting way of skinning it. But I think, so in terms of setting, I think Victorian England to me is the scariest time setting. It's because it's just awful. If you think like, in black was the woman in black Victorian? I think it was. Woman in black like scares the absolute bejesus out of me. And so I'm firmly gonna go Victorian England. I'm struggling to think of a name right now. Well, let me do my sum up. Let me do my sum up while you think of a name. So we have, ladies and gentlemen, we have a horror game set in Victorian England in an old house. There could be multiple houses, multiple levels. I failed to tell Scott that that was another idea I had, but I cracked on anyway. Multiple house, multiple levels. We play detective that goes into the house and you go around clicking based on certain items. And the choice you make, the choice base you make is how many items do you click on? Because the clicks are gonna cause the spirit to get angry and angry. And once the spirit comes out, you can run for it, you can keep investigating, but you've got to run and hide and you're in danger and that can affect whether you actually solve the mystery or not. That is the end game as it were. And then obviously there'll be other houses and other things and you can come in and play as co -op. You can get your friends in and you can get some idiot will come in and it'll click on everything and you'll go, what are you doing, Steve? And they'll go, I'm a good detective. And there's a spirit on a Steve. I don't know what Steve's done wrong, but this game will be called... As usual, I actually don't have anything. I, no, I was too busy. So normally I think of some as we're going along and I was too busy talking about the game that I forgot to actually think of any, has anything jumped out for you? night people the night people, as in the night people or night people. like the idea of it like everything that happens at night this this happened or that's name of a TV show actually well I was about to say it happened at night or something like that so that and I think that's it happened or that well that makes it sound like it is a spirit based I like that I want something I want something there's got to be something that's sort of just got because as you said it could be a normal murder it could be a spirit I like the idea terrors? I like Night Terrors, but again, is it slightly sort of more spiritual? I really want something that's really... no, people suffer from night terrors. Night terrors is another word for nightmares. You could have night terror. true night terror. Night terror is quite good. I think Night Terrors because it's different stories. Okay. And yes, I agree, it should always be Saturday night because in my mind, Victorian England is always in utter darkness. out for like a good 80 years. Queen Victoria, she came to the throne and she actually had a massive curtain, which was her skirt, and she used it to cover the sun. And then they said, the night terrors will be here. And they shall publish a game about this coming out on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. And this has been the Gaming Blender Podcast. Very good. That was a nice transition there. I like that. It was a beautiful transition. That was Night Terrors. If you enjoyed this podcast, please check out the other episodes and feel free to leave us a review. As I said, I will read out any reviews on the next episode just for funsies and also it's lovely to hear from you all. In the meantime, I have been Matt. And I have been Scott. It's been absolutely lovely having you. But if you could show yourself out. Thank you so much. It's my new, it's my new leaving thing. Yeah. Thank you all. Have a wonderful week and keep blending. Bye bye. Bye bye.