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View Full Version : Held: A horror adventure game to shake the ages



Goraan
15-09-2009, 09:42 AM
Held

You wake up at your desk, sleeping on a newspaper. Darkness surrounds you except for a beam of moonlight falling onto the open page of the paper. You remember nothing, not where you are, not who you are, not what you were doing before. you read the headline of the paper in front of you. "More Missing Men, Strange sightings increase" You read on and discover that you are in a small town where many strange things have been happening the past few weeks. People have been disappearing seemingly into thin air and strange events have been taking place at random. The whole town is in the grip of sheer terror and the people are very suspicious of one another. Being a normal human being and not a mindless horror movie character you see no reason to stick around. You decide to leave but for some reason you can't get out of your room. There is a small coin inside the lock of the door causing it to be impossible to open without removing the coin. You remove the coin and see the image of a demon moulded in silver on one side and the image of a normal man on the other. Upon touching this coin you are shown images of places more frightening than any human description of the Christian hell. Items that can be found in these places that could make you more powerful than any god. Fears you must face and a darkness in humanity you must overcome or suffer a fate worse than the flames and torture you witness . At this point you black out again. When you awake your adventure will begin. Like two sides of the coin you will be taken into a world more frightening than anything you can imagine as well as the reality you know but don't recall. With each passing between the realms the line that divides them becomes blurred. Can you keep your sanity intact while you search for your past. Can you separate yourself from your need to escape this nightmare while fighting the compulsions to seek out the items the coin showed you? Only you can make these choices. Will you be a holder or will you be the held?

An adventure game idea I'm currently working on. I started in AGS but have since decided to move to XNA and use 3D models. I'm still thinking of releasing a demo in 2D using AGS just to get the story going. ( Currently waiting for my artist to find some more time to help unless you want stick trees and stickmen in your horror adventure game... not very scary tbh)

dammit
15-09-2009, 10:07 AM
So, you'll be half demon half human, like the coin? Good story, but I think you may struggle with the artwork and scenery necessary for the kind of atmosphere you want to create.

I'll look forward to seeing this though :)

dislekcia
15-09-2009, 11:36 AM
Ignore graphics, write the game as a text-adventure and use it to perfect the writing and story. People will play a good text-adventure because of the quality of the writing.

Also, I strongly suggest finding a way out of the amnesia trope. It's an adventure game genre joke by now, if you do it right you could seriously tout it as a feature ;) Make your character remember their past, but then have events in the game make that past mean different things, or don't mention the past at all, but have the character remember information about NPCs and locations that means they've been there/met them before - that could even give you an opportunity for interesting noir narration... Try things like that and find a way to make the character's past a whole character on its own, not something to be discovered but something you can USE.

Fengol
15-09-2009, 12:37 PM
Is there a text game creator tool? I know AGS is pretty awesome but you need graphics.

DukeOFprunes
15-09-2009, 12:42 PM
Agreed, forget about amnesia.

SEE WOT I DID THR?

You -can- tell a riveting story with a perfectly cognizant character, he's just not aware of what's about to happen. In that way, the story's being told to the player and the character at the same time.

Agreed also, don't get too hung up on the graphics. Your concern seems to be that people won't empathise with stickmen but I disagree. Games like Leaving (http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-friday-game-leaving) emboldens that point. Emotional attachment can be tied to anything. Absolutely anything, regardless of what it looks like.
Just keep everything in the same consistent style and nothing will seem out of place.

Goraan
15-09-2009, 02:18 PM
The feedback is awesome thanks.
Dis i think I'll take your advice and do a text adventure first then once the story is working I'll move on with it. I want the final product to rely on story and atmosphere so I want the art to be sophisticated. I only mention stickmen because I can't draw to save my life.
As for the amnesia it seemed like a good idea for my initial idea. I want the player to play through the game twice. Once seeing things in the eyes of a human and the other seeing thing from the point of view of a creature from the other relm. The same story but everything becomes reversed. Roles, Good and Evil, Moral influences. Everything changes according to the prespective and origin of the character. Eventually the lines between them become blurred and you aren't sure as a player or as the character which memories are yours and which belong to the other. A whole lot of mind messing is set to take place during the run of the story. But I'll tell you more about it as i go along.

Thanks again for the feedback guys.