Instinct - Making a Physical Horror Game

In this episode Scott and Matt try and create a physics based horror game. Will the results be horrifying? Well yes, in so many ways...

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Chapters

• 0:00 30 Second Intro
• 0:30 Main
• 3:00 30 Second Outro

Transcript

0:02

great, last minute itch there we go hello hello and welcome back to the gaming blender podcast the podcast of hypothetical games I'm your host today Scott and I'm here with Matt, Matt how are you? I'm very well, Scott, and I'm delighted to be here. uh I didn't do it. I'm innocent. Wait, am I on the right thing? no, I'm not. I'm not, sorry. Okay. that for later, say that for later. For returning listeners, welcome back. new listeners, welcome to, as I said, the podcast of Hypothetical Games. Every week, Matthew and I will take a random genre and a couple of random game mechanics and in half an hour, well actually in 20 minutes, we usually have a preamble of about five minutes or so. This is the preamble. But we mash all of these together and create a theoretical video game out of some genres and mechanics that perhaps you wouldn't necessarily see together. But we'll come to that later because I've already rolled those for that. I have a question for you. In light of the rather successful remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater, which I did play when I was... I know, it's a great soundtrack. which I did play when I was younger and I absolutely loved it, it was my favourite one. In light of that, are there any games that you are hoping from your childhood will be remade? Is there anything that you play that you're like, I wish that just please remake it? So we're going to go down the em fantasy route shortly. The great road to Mordor, it were. Before I have just finished watching Back to Battle of the Rings, and I spent the entire time sat there remembering, you remember the original games used the cutscenes where there were actually clips from the film and then it faded into the game engine. So I was sat there going, I really wish they'd remake that. Obviously, I know it's a rights issue. The one game though that I was like, I really want them to remake it would be the em third age one, the turn-based one. Yeah, I played that, I liked it, it was good. you could break it really early on because the way you broke it was there was the female elf and I can't remember her name, apologies to her if she's listening. um But she had a spell which meant if your character dies, they can be, they get regenerated. And she casts that unlimited from memory or something along those lines. And also you can start learning it once you know it's available, you can start learning it from the very first level. So the moment you got that spell, the game was a doddle because every time it became a turn, you just cast it on someone else, made sure they didn't die, done, made sure they didn't die, done. do remember finishing it once and I remember because the story for that game is basically that you play as almost like a fellowship that's after the fellowship. Yeah, it's a fellowship chasing the fellowship. And then at the end you fight Sauron. Like you're on top of Barad-dur fighting the eye. It's really weird, you're like, why am I here? Hang on, how did I get here? Yeah. Yeah, it's quite random. have a soft spot for that. think in terms of actual games, remakes, I'd like remade. I'm just thinking back through all of my games I absolutely love. Quite a lot of them have been done actually, interestingly. So Rome would win one, I would said, but they redid that and they took it and they ran with it. I personally would have, Rome Total War, Spartan Total Warrior, that's one. that was such a good game! That was... That was creative... It was creative assemblies foray into can we do a hack and slash and... Yeah. It was really good! They did a really good job! a wonderful moment where you were charging across the battlefield to the opposing sides and both sides. You kind of hit at the same point and it it felt incredibly cinematic. So. I remember that, there's a bit, it's... because you're fighting Romans, aren't you, and you charge at each other, and then there's that, like you said, there's that, it's very meaty sort of coming together. Oh, I've forgotten about that game, that was a brilliant game. It was, yeah, I don't know why, maybe it just didn't sell very well. I don't think it sold amazingly and I think it was more effort than they thought it would be to make. Yeah, maybe. I think that would have quite a good series there if they'd kept making Total Warriors. I like that. For me, I was a big Final Fantasy player when I was a kid. I stopped at about 12. I didn't really play any the ones past 12. But I really want them to remake Final Fantasy IX. So obviously they're doing VII at the moment, but the most recent VII hasn't been very well received because they're doing it in like four parts. Rebirth. they've what they've done is they've they've changed a load of stuff and I think that one of the one of the things I've had a problem with is there's a character called red 13 who's kind of like a like an amphibian morph and he's not a dog but he's a bit the creature that's sort of very similar to a dog and and but they've given him this really really stupid voice whereas obviously in in the original in the original he doesn't have a voice it's all just text and they've given him this he sounds like You wanna go for a ride? No, he sounds like a 12 year old. He sounds like a whiny American 12 year old. And everyone's like, why have they made you like that? There's a few other things, like they've it quite goofy. um But for me... always goofy though? I imagine now I'm gonna get a million correspondents just shooting me in the face, but... So think it's gotten goofier as it's gone through and it's no longer turn-based and I think a lot of people want it to go back to being turn-based. hybrid, haven't they? Between turn-based and... which I'm intrigued to try, just for the sake of it, but I just can't be bothered with the story. I'm sorry, I can appreciate it might be the greatest game of all time. I'm just on the bat burner for it, I think. I really wanted to make Final Fantasy IX because IX was more of a medieval setting. was more fantasy. 616 is a medieval setting as well, isn't it? 16, the one that came out recently? I haven't actually played 16, yeah I'm pretty sure 16 is a more swords and magic but it's 9 is swords and sorcery and it's got a very good story and the characters are endearing and enduring and I really wanted to remake that because I've got it they re-released it on PlayStation 5 or it have been PS4 actually and I've got it and it was just with that and they brushed stuff up and they kind of just made it look a little bit nicer still with the original graphics and I absolutely... it was so good, it was so good. But I think what for me, what I don't get is that there are some companies that refuse to do remakes, apparently EA aren't very hot on the idea of doing remakes. to do with the amount. And it is a load of things like where the code is, how much work it takes to get a hold of that. And then is it worth the update to kind of think, do they sell well? There is quite a lot of back and forth. um heard of a few uh sort of old games that were brilliant back in the day that people have gone to their parent companies and can we remake this? And the parent company's gone, yeah, now, we don't believe in remakes. And it's kind of like, it's not free money, it's not free money, but it's quite close to being free money, because there's a lot of stuff that you don't have to do, there's a lot of things that you don't have to put time and effort into because it's already been done. Have you heard the story about the Silent Hill remake? Because that was the reason I, so Silent Hill remake HD, I think it came out, have been about 15 years ago now, which has made me feel very old. Um, it was the HD remake. Now it was a very troubled development. Look it up. I'm going to be, I'm saying the very abridged Firstly, they weren't given access to all of the original code. They didn't know, I think they didn't know where it was or something that was a storage issue. They didn't have access to it. So firstly, that's first problem. Second. What do you think is the most famous thing about Silent Hill, the city, with the exception of Pyramid Head? Just in terms of vibe and setting, what would you say immediately comes to mind? other than the fact that it's a dreadful horror game. don't mean dreadful, I mean dreadful in terms of quality, terms of like, it's scary. in terms of the town itself, picture Silent Hill, what do you picture? on a hill. Go on. Right, yeah. It's the fog. So the town is covered in fog. Now the reason they originally did this is because in the original game, they couldn't do the draw distances for the, for the, the software couldn't handle it. So they placed fog around everywhere. So, but it added to the creepy allure, the town. When they did the HD remake, they went great, we can do the draw distances. And they made the whole thing so you could see the other side and went, uh-oh. okay, well, that's taken away one of the most horror things of the game. It's like, it comes back to that phrase of necessity is the mother of invention. They couldn't do it. So they made something really interesting. And then someone found out they could do something else and went, we'll do that instead. It's not worth Yeah, it's kind of like, if you don't have the tools available at the time then you make best of what you got. And actually, I'm not sure how they didn't clock that the fog was one of the big things. How would they not have gone? making a horror game, do not think the atmosphere has something to do with Anyway, Hill is coming back to make the new movie of it by the original director. All good. If you're a Silent Hill fan... Yeah, Piranha will return... with the Avengers. will jump into you designing a game now, Matthew. So, we've reached that point in the podcast. Are you feeling confident today with what I've drawn for you? No. Yeah, I don't know what to add to that. There's nothing funny to add. I just don't feel confident. It's late on a Sunday evening. I was up late last night. I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say and I'm gonna edit it how I'm gonna edit it. I've got nothing interesting to say. you have horror as your genre. Ironically, after you've just spoken about Silent Hill. However, as a bit of a twist, your mechanics are squad manager and physics. Right, a fizz- a horror game with squad manager so foot manager for example is a good example of a squad management game uh and physics go this is a difficult one this is a genuinely difficult one uh What's horrific about physics apart from the GCSE paper that I took? You did the same paper. You were in my group. We were rubbish. We were rubbish at sciences. C in physics. It was only C I got. was terrible. Absolutely dreadful. Anyway. know why that tickle me so much. right. Horror physics. Squad manager. So I'm feeling with squad manager, you have this ability to send people into scary areas. Okay. Maybe you- maybe it's you and a group of survivors. maybe you and a group of survivors, and you are maybe an operator. And so what you do is you have to essentially guide your people through um like some sort of scary environment by arranging the physics puzzles and keep them alive. So that's the basics. Now, how do I make that scary or interesting or fun to play or anything? I know you don't like it when I set games to space. say in space, I'm going to stab you. But think of this way, gravity, no gravity, physics. but I feel like you could do that, you could have excuses for that, could just say, this is a room with no gravity, this is a room, so if you do it on room basis, and it, well, it's a horror game, you have anti-gravity rooms on Earth currently. No you don't. Yes you do. How do you think astronauts train? They go up and down in a plane. Do they? Yes! Have you never seen the vomit comet before? They go in a plane... Right, okay, sorry, quick tangent. They go in a plane, the plane goes straight up in the air. When it's going straight up in the air, okay, it then gets to a certain point and goes straight back down again, as if it's going to crash. That gives them zero gravity because at the same speed that they are going down, they're also falling, so they float in midair. Did you honestly think that NASA had invented anti-gravity rooms? See, when you say it like that, I don't sound particularly bright. Do we need to a discussion after this about... I think you need to go back to school. You need to go back and redo your physics GCSE. yeah, the irony after all this is you're the one who got bragged about how sh-sh-sh-sh- I just stopped myself swearing there. ah How sugarific you are at physics. Anyway, so moving on from the anti-gravity rooms, so wine-picturing is uh like a horror version of Portal. Yes, no, no, that's kind of what I had in my mind as well. I still like the idea if you're to do squad management, what do think of the idea of sending off squads and then relying on the AI to get themselves through the. So think maybe not squads but individual, you can maybe set them in small groups but not like big groups of, do you know what mean? Like maybe you have ten people and what I had in my mind was a little bit like, what's it called? What's that horror game that is set in space on spaceships? Dead something. Dead space, thank you. a bit like Dead Space but rather than playing one individual character you have a squad that you can send out to scout ahead or to figure out puzzles and whatever and there's some bad shit on whether it's ship or a space station or whatever it is. sorry. I don't even know if doing it sometimes. There is some bad stuff. Bad stuff. negative things. Right, okay. So let's just rewind, a step back. Let's say I'm gonna bend the knee and say it's in space, just because my, I feel like our go-to is space because I feel like it means that we have more of a playground. So I have the imagination, the one thing that's always scared me is relentless enemies. And by that I mean enemies that are constantly moving, constantly chasing you. So maybe you have, oh, okay, I've got it, think I've got it. Your spaceship has been destroyed. You knocking you and members of the crew out into space, into the black void of space, on the edge of your planet. You are free floating, the ship has gone. You have picked up loads of machinery, so you're essentially floating around. You then float into an asteroid field, and there's loads of asteroids covering the whole area. You know for a fact on the other side of this asteroid field, there is a spaceship with machines you can get home, you just need to get there. What you then do and the fundamental basics of the game are you send your people forward based on your lines. So say you have someone that drills, have someone that bends the holes, you have someone that can blast, all this stuff to essentially clear a path for you to move your little, let's say you've got some sort of base thing that you drag around with you and you've got to be able to get that through to this other spaceship. you man... maybe part of your ship, a very very small part of your ship has survived. But it's not particularly pilotable. manage telling your people what's like send off the demolition, let's loosen it up, then send someone to make a hole, then et cetera, et cetera. Now, as you've crashed into the asteroid bell, some horrible, horrible monster has been awoken from within the asteroid field and it's behind you. And it can't move very quickly because it's jumping from asteroid to asteroid, but it's coming for you very slowly and it will just keep catching up with you. unless you keep moving. So it's essentially a mixture between horror and a ticking clock mechanism. could you have... but so there's horror behind you, there is more horror ahead of you. feel like there's little versions of it you might come across, but I the main horrors behind, I think the little versions mostly just slow you down to make you lunch. How are you envisioning these little... How are you envisioning these monstrosities that are coming for you? monster it was a how they're gonna attack you mean or do they look like Well, kind of both. kind of top my head I see some sort of slinky you know this is always slightly creeped me out you know flying squirrels but they have the um the sides of their the sides so that they have the skin that comes out so they can fly Flying squirrels freak you out. No, just the skin bit, the way the skin comes out to the side is a bit you. So, yeah, so you know that I sort of imagine these sort of black goo-like creatures that are almost the essence of each meteorite that you blow up, each asteroid. And as you blow them up, you wake them out and they come out and they're just sort of, you know, I'm gonna keep referencing existing things, partly because I can't keep describing things on this podcast. But you know, the things used to throw a window and it like could crawl its way down because it came down. I have visited them like that. And then when they come at you, they pull their sides out to create wings and glide down to hit you. And then the monster behind you is a, it's a snake like entity that slowly drifts its way through space. It's like a snake eel. It's a snakey space seal. And, and, and, and because it's so think it's just, it's big, but sort of we're talking anacondaresque size. We're not talking enormous yormgandaresque size from God of War. I do think there's a thing with monsters that if the monster is so big, it's not scary because it's not a personal fight anymore. It just eats you. It's like being plankton and being attacked by a sperm whale. That's not scary. Really? I don't like... I get quite... not scared, I get quite uneasy in games when the enemies are absolutely massive. I don't know why, I don't know why, I just... I just do. bigger, but not too big that you feel like they couldn't be really intimately attacking you. Where I feel like if you just got crushed by something massive, it's just something else. You're just a small prick in their foot. I don't know, I think being squashed by something massive is pretty terrifying. Well, we agree to disagree, but I have this image of not an enormous snake, a sort of space snake thing, but big enough that it could easily take out your crew. And that is constantly catching up with you, but it is taking its sweet time. And if you turn around, sometimes you can see its eyes flashing in the distance, depending on how close to you it is. I do hope Godzilla doesn't attack London because you're gonna look like a right fool when Godzilla attacks. You're not gonna be scared of Godzilla when he attacks London. I've seen those films. Well, I haven't seen Godzilla minus one. I've seen Godzilla times Kong. And it was one of the stupidest films I've ever watched. I mean, I enjoyed it, but it was one the stupidest films I ever watched. I have seen it and I enjoyed it but yeah, it's a bit like how I enjoy the Fast and Furious franchise. They're absurd but I love them. No. going, I don't know what's happening. My brain is melting. Yes. So that's what I had in mind. And maybe the way it develops when you're getting attacked, you find out there's ways to start jumping more from asteroid to asteroid or lock it in. So each time you destroy an asteroid, doesn't mean that lots of little critters come out or even you repair the asteroids as you go through them. your snake, snaky pal has to go around the asteroid this time, not through it. And suppose if you've got smaller monsters ahead, when you're sending people forward, they will sometimes get killed, but you won't know they've been killed, their comms will just cut. that's good. I like that. I like that. And I think there'll be some occasions where they cry out for help and then, bleh. But then there'll be some where they just, there's just, just... You get nothing. And then you have to make the decision of, do I go and... You maybe get like a last known coordinate. You're like, do I go and find them? Or do I just think, no they're dead, there's something bad over there, I'm going to go, we're gonna go somewhere else. Okay. Okay. But what you have to do is you so you could in theory, take all the kit off someone to go check someone with safety like you're not taking your drill or anything useful with you because I'm pretty sure there's something nasty over there. And I don't want to have to go and clean up after you get splattered. So if you get splattered with no kit on you, I'm happy. Could you include a resource management element to this as well? Could you add that in as you've got a very shallow time limit to get this done? let's say... Are we saying that when your ship is destroyed, is it destroyed by the big monster? Yes. yay, because you could maybe have, if we're saying it's not massive, we could have this kind of creepy opening where you're wandering down halls and you're just, the monster is there and it's following you. I'm imagining, I'm imagining something. It's a similar setup to Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets. what was in the basilisk. the basilisk going around through the pipes, you find out that this monster was going around through the pipes of the ship and then it's sort of, it's destroyed all the technology that way. So yeah, so maybe it starts a little bit like Alien, where it's on the ship and you have to escape the ship. The first thing is you and your friends escaping the ship. Maybe we say that you are able to say, jettison the habitation module or something of the ship. It's not pilotable. It's not part of the ship you can move, but say you can land it on an asteroid and then you can move the asteroid or whatever it is. imagine as well, have a moment where, lesser moment, you have uh a second at the start to pick which crew members you save based on their abilities. And if we make this quite a short game, you can essentially replay it. But with see which people you can take on the second go perhaps. Okay, and then yeah, maybe have like a resource management part of it where you only got a certain number of tools, only got a certain amount of food, you gotta keep morale up and all that sort of stuff over a short period of time. Okay, could you do this in real time? I think you could, I definitely think you could. I think the whole thing's real time. And you have like, it becomes a three, four hour experience maybe. Four hour, five hour. Nah, you can make it bigger than that. Well, either way, either way, I feel like you can make it in real time. You can make it an episode of 24, it's 24 hours. It takes 24 hours for you to finish the game. Jack Farrar is here to save it. Now, we're gonna have to do a narrative now because we're running short of time. So, this is gonna be difficult for you to shoehorn in. I'm gonna warn you. It's not forbidden love. It's temptation. Right, I've got it. on. So the ship you're on is mining this black goo from the asteroid belt. And you're mining it, which turns out to be the alien. So it's mining this black goo. And because this black goo is thought to be incredibly valuable. you, as the original captain of the ship, have a sort of... What usually happens in this, and the very cliche thing to do, is it's the overarching, the big company, are to blame. Mm. So maybe we try and flip that slightly on its head. And actually this is some chances and you're the captain of the ship who went, we're to make you a really flawed protagonist. And this captain, Susan decided that she was going to um go and try and take this black goo despite all the warnings, cause she knew how valuable it was in the black market. However, this causes this massive explosion-esque thing. And By doing that, then when you get dressed into the ship, your character realizes we just need to survive and get out. And it becomes a bit of a hero's journey where you see moments where you can pick to... Maybe right at the start, there's a cut scene and your character goes to try and save the Black Goo instead of the crew. that, maybe that's what happens. You know, when I said you could pick what crew members you save, you like go... You send the crew members you send to go and get the black goo at the start, you're given a choice and you say, you lot go and get the black goo, you lot come with me. The ones you send to go and get the black goo, never come back. So, because we need the whole story to be temptation, could you say that throughout the whole thing as you're trying to escape, you get opportunities perhaps to still make sure you leave with something. So while you're going through it's like, boss, we've discovered a big vein of the black goo over here, should we take some? And then you have the choice of, oh god do I. to do, think maybe we take away choice from this one. We say it's actually a narrative thing and like make a really concrete narrative. Because we can say that you go after the vein and when you go after the vein, and it's a plot thing, so you don't feel bad as a person, this snake thing comes back and does kill, or you lose people, you consistently lose people as you're trying to juggle both hats. And then you have a character defining moment sort of mid to end. where you make an active choice, we're getting out of here and you end up throwing the black goo off maybe to, you have one these moments of throwing the black goo off to the side because something's chasing it and it distracts something long enough. So you end up sacrificing what you're being tempted by. And that's the hero's journey. Okay. I like it. I like it. I think, I think, I don't think we need to add anything to that. I kind of like it. I kind of like it. And I think I like the idea of flipping on its head and being a group of pirates that are more sort of pirates and engineers who are just down the luck and just want to take a shot. government have made it very very plain. Do not touch the black goo. We're not going to tell you why We're not going to tell you why just don't touch the black goo and they went we're touching the black goo They've heard that it's it's worth a lot of money. I know I like that scene of it shows, and because this creature is attracted to the black goo, maybe, okay, this is how it works. The black goo is the pre-evolved form of those littler aliens. It's essentially the larvae, larvae, larvae. So, and the big snake beast is the mother. So it will always follow the larvae. And right at the end of the game, the very last shot is one of your crew has snuck on. uh suitcase full of whatever the black goo and that's the last shot so it shows that it will be coming for you again. It's like at end of Alien vs Predator where the Predator alien bursts out of the Predator. You haven't seen Alien... You've missed a classic. seen any of the Alien films or Predacers. You haven't seen Alien? Anyway, it's not a film podcast. Yes, didn't write about Alien, clearly. Right. You come up with some names and I will summarise. So, listeners, what we have there, in the span of about 20 minutes, is a horror game set in space with a squad uh manager, uh sort of mechanic theme throughout, with the physics of space. the story you play a uh smuggler, pirate ship type captain while traversing the system you are in you come across an asteroid belt within which you find this mysterious black goo that you know there are government warning signs, there's ticker tape all over it it says do not mine the black goo it's very specific, you don't know why but you know this stuff is very expensive on the black market, can make a lot of money out of it and so your captain goes, hmmm, we're to have some of that however as it turns out the black goo is the larvae form of a giant black space eel and it's children and as you are mining it let's just say that the slightly more, what's that, slightly older versions of this larvae come to life, including the eel itself the game will open with you running through the ship evading the alien as it destroys your ship you manage to jettison away some of your crew and then you have to make your way within the void of space across to the other side of the asteroid belt to find your link up ship, your second ship however, throughout the game the monster is going to chase you and you as the captain, your job is to direct your crew or the squad manager to find a path through the asteroid belt. Throughout you will be given, you will have opportunities uh to continue with the attempted mining of the Black Goo, at which point of course you'll probably discover that that's not the best idea and your job is to simply escape. And this game, if you do reach the end, This game is going to be called... So I've got four, but I feel like, I'm not saying they're bad. I'm saying that they're four that if they don't vibe with you, you're not going to like them at all. in, don't think there's a way of recuperating them. if they vibe with you, you'll love them. So I'm gonna start with the worst one, I think, first, which was Heartless. Which, I wasn't quite sure about that. So that's why I've got four. what's the next one? classic yep the next one was the belt, as in Asteroid Belt. And the final one I kind of liked, it was the first one I wrote down, it was called Instinct. Because I liked it because it was more narrative based, it was the instinct and how you react under the situations. Okay, I wrote down, don't touch the goo. Well, the first one I wrote down was, goo are you? Goo goo, goo goo. We'll go with instinct, I like instinct. This very much feels like a console PC game. um Coming to you soon when this podcast gets hired to do story beats for video games, which will be any day now. use the, use the contact details in the podcast description to send us challenges, uh send us, send us letters, send us, send us things, whatever. Hi, how are you? You've opened us up there, don't say send us things. No, no. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed this latest episode of the Gaming Blender and we look forward to, well, not seeing you, but speaking to you next time. I know, I know. In the meantime, I have been Scott. And I have been Matt. please do keep on blending. Speak to later. Bye bye. speak to you later. I like that, it's a new one. Bye!