So, some of you may remember that I previously had been working on a survival-horror game called Warden. It got pretty far into development, but eventually I decided that it was too weighed down by my own mistakes from early on in the development cycle and I put it to rest. I planned on taking a breather for a few weeks before beginning work on a new project: remaking the project from before Warden, a multiplayer magic-combat-thing called Duel.
Well, I was wrong.
You see, last year I started working on Warden because I wanted to make a horror game for Halloween.
Now Halloween is coming up again.
You can see where this is going.
Barricade is the working title of the new game. It's a spiritual successor to Warden, though the protagonists and enemies are entirely different. In the game, a group of players must fortify a building (different maps are different buildings; churches, ruins, houses, and so on) with limited supplies against a variety of monsters. Each game, only one monster will be pitted against the players, and the players get a hint as to the monster's form at the start of the round.
After a brief time for the protagonists to put up initial barriers, the monster is unleashed (the monster is controlled by one of the players). The other players must try to predict where the monster will attack, divine the manner in which it will attack, and respond accordingly. Only by surviving until sunrise will the protagonists win the game. The monster wins if all of the protagonists die.
So, what do you have done?I took what I learned from Warden and recreated some of the basic systems (with far fewer complications and bugs, fortunately!): server management, scene handling, networked movement, and win conditions are in place right now (in very basic forms, but the framework is there). My goal is to approach it as minimalistically as possible: starting with a single monster, a single map, and only the barest mechanics (making sure the gameplay is actually good before building on hypotheticals).
Why are you posting this?I'd like to talk about monster ideas and gameplay with you guys before diving into the nuts and bolts of the game. I'm trying to avoid jumping in with half-baked ideas, so covered some of the stuff I'm certain about and am leaving the rest blank right now.
The basic gameplay just entails the players having access to various items scattered across each map (movable heavy objects to block doors, salt, iron, silver, and whatever other monster-specific objects might be useful) that they can use to create barriers. That's the core mechanic of the game, and each monster should be approached with that mindset:
The players have no other defenses than what they can make with items.No fighting mechanics, no magic, and only a simple noise-and-shadow-based stealth mechanic. There may be exceptions, but for the most part, that's it.
My current ideas for monsters are pretty generic (which is kinda what I'm aiming for): a werewolf (which can be stopped with physical objects and silver traps), a fae creature (which can be stopped with iron and some physical objects), and a spirit of some sort (which can phase through most physical objects, but can be blocked with salt). The thing is, that only leaves a small number of possible defenses for each monster, which is why map design would be very important (for example, having two possible, yet moderately exclusive routes of attack, which would require deciding about splitting up supplies or focusing on the one they think the monster is coming through). It just needs some more thought.
So, yeah. Any ideas? Suggestions? Criticisms?
EDIT EDIT: Nope, yeah, this is still a thing.
- Server creation
- Basic movement
- Doors
- Inventory
- Barring doors
- Traps
- Monster attacking
- Player models
- Player, monster, and ambient sounds
- Test map
- ? ? ?
- Profit