My Ideas: At Least It Wasn't Moulin Rouge

This week will be another of my ideas, but while I briefly considered doing another of the Big 16 or one of my newest ideas; the ones that are so recent they don't even fit into the original lineup. But instead, I'll cover a game that always came thiiis close to becoming a fully written and designed game concept, but it just never reached that level.

The game in question has been dubbed The Dying of the Light. The game came from "Do Not Go Into That Good Night," a poem by Dylan Thomas. I actually learned these details two minutes ago, which shows why it's taken so long for me to write of this game.

The game, if I had to use the earlier system, would probably be either a Genre or Conceptual game. I believe I first started thinking about the idea after watching The Others, the horror movie starring Nicole Kidman from several years back. So it was sort of a "me too" idea, but one that came from a movie instead of another game or game genre. I already had the genre in mind, though. My concept would be a perfect survival horror.

The movie had tons of elements about ghosts, Sixth Sense rip-offs, and other supernatural elements, but those didn't affect me. What interested me was the disease the protagonist's children had. According to her, the two had an acute vulnerability to sunlight, to the point where it would kill them if it even shone on them. So the entire mansion that served as the movie's setting had shuttered windows and locked doors, which must be re-locked whenever somebody used one. It made the light into a form of enemy itself, as if it flowed into rooms to endanger people. I decided to use this concept, but the concept would be reversed. It would be darkness, not light, that flowed into rooms to endanger its inhabitants. Combine that with some elements of the classic horror move the Haunting (the original, yes,) and you had a premise.

The game takes place in an Others-like mansion isolated from society at large. A few dozen survivors, explorers, or other inhabitants of the manor learn about a horrible curse upon the area. In the darkness, a malevolence lurks. It is virtually omnipresent, but it can only be in areas of darkness. Anyone outside when night falls is thus dead instantly. At this point, the survivors have no vehicles fast enough to get back to civilization fast enough before night falls, forcing them to stay in the mansion every night just to survive.

Given this concept, the game uses a dual-timing system based on night and day. In daylight, the enemy is mostly gone, so the surviving characters have to ignore the "horror" of the title and worry about the "survival." This means exploring the mansion, getting access into previously inaccessible parts of the mansion, researching the nature of the malevolence, and finding a way to either stop it or find another way out of the area that's faster or safer. But they can't advance too quickly, because they have to scavenge resources. Windows and doors must be barricaded, light sources and fuel must be found and arranged in every room, and defenses must be set up.

And then, night falls. At this point, the game becomes a very dangerous siege. The concept is that not only is the outside world dangerous at night, but any room previously infected by the malevolence immediately descends into darkness as well! So the survivors have to guard any remaining uninfected rooms and ensure the lights are strong. Furthermore, the malevolence attacks the uninfected rooms, trying to force its way in. This is reminiscent of the Haunting mentioned above, where unseen ghostly forces pounded on the walls and doors. In the game, though, the pounding is dangerous, and as it continues, it slowly damages any locks, doors, and barricades set up. If the barricades are destroyed, the darkness seeps in, instantly killing anyone in the room. Even worse, if the player didn't barricade the doors between safe rooms, the darkness almost instantly enters these adjacent rooms, causing a potential chain reaction. During the night, the player has to order survivors to fix barricades or push against the forced ones, reducing the damage, but doing so also increases the potential casualties should the darkness force its way in.

When morning rises, the malevolence vanishes, but not completely. Any room that was infected last night or any one prior to that morning still has lingering effects of the malevolence, so monsters spawn in those rooms every few times someone enters it. This provides some of the usual action expected in survival horror games, but in practice they serve as another reason to protect rooms and a drain on resources. Canny players can kill or evade the monsters, but otherwise they drain medical supplies, ammunition, and time every time the survivors must deal with the monster.

The idea intrigues me, but I never could figure out the meta-elements of how the game works. For starters, is this just a single narrative, like Resident Evil and other survival horrors? In that case, the mansion is the same each time, so once the player figures it out, it would make beating the game easier. The problem is that this system brings the expectation that the game is deep enough to last 10-20 hours. However, limited resources means that if enough rooms or survivors are lost due to a dumb mistake in the first few hours, it makes the game impossible by the end. The second option is to make the mansion randomized, along with the survivors and possibly even the timeframe of the game's setting. This means the game should take 3-5 hours to beat, at the most, but it means that the depth of each game decreases.

I suspect this last option was the one I would have chosen, but that also probably explains why I didn't make it a regular part of my design collection. I'm a narrative fan, as I said two days ago, so while one could cobble together a great number of characters and story elements, it still won't be as deep as your average Silent Hill or Eternal Darkness. Still, the game works great as an indie or low-budget title. Ideas like this, where a big sweeping story and world-spanning journey aren't needed, work great for that level, and I need to start thinking about games of this sort as I look into careers in the industry again. After all, you don't need the prettiest graphics to scare the crap out of you.