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Game Overview

Mooses2k edited this page Jan 15, 2024 · 38 revisions

2. GAME OVERVIEW

2.1. GAME CONCEPT

It is 1894 in Greenwich, England. A comet not seen for some 500 years has been rediscovered. During its last visit, a piece broke off and struck ground in Yorkshire near Ribblehead, whereupon a church was built. The clergy there dug extensive crypts and tunnels seeking the fragment that struck ground. As they dug deeper, they were gradually changed by what they found. That church lies in ruins today.

As a professional treasure-hunter, grave-robber, and knave, you journey to the church near Ribblehead and descend into darkness to attempt recovery of the shard. This is a first-person roguelite with stealth and combat elements. You must light your way through the underworld and use the environment to your advantage if you hope to succeed.

This game's story and some gameplay elements are based on the Antimemetics Division by qntm of the SCP Foundation mythos. It will initially be single player, though with a Godot 4 rewrite, it will eventually include co-op multiplayer. I hope this game eventually serves as a system for other authors to make their own adventures in the OSR D&D and other fantasy and sci-fi roleplaying genres.

Simulationist dungeon delving - Victorian era, SCP-inspired FPS exploration, stealth, combat roguelite. Initially a single dungeon similar to Infra Arcana, but eventually having randomly generated mansions, caves, trains, ships, etc environments.

Cosmic horror with absolutely no tentacles.

2.2. GENRE

Co-op or singleplayer 3D FPS stealth/combat roguelite immersive sim

2.3. TARGET AUDIENCE

Roguelike gamers, topdown shooter gamers, stealth gamers, Souls gamers, masochistic folks who like their games hard as shit, generally.

2.4. CORE GAMEPLAY LOOP

FPS, enter the procedurally generated underworld and explore, discover secrets. Sneak past foes, fight brutally and realistically when necessary. Fighting uses realistic melee tactics and skills. Long-guns of the 1890s such as the Martini-Henry rifle and double-barreled shotguns will be common. Offhand items can be melee weapons, guns, throwable potions, dynamite, lanterns, and more. Guns optionally use a Receiver-style fiddliness and weightiness. All weapons suitably deadly with one- and two-shots common. Overall, rewards skill and leans towards showing that the player is not Rambo versus the unknown horrors.

Things that lurk can hear noise the player makes, and see spill-over from the player's light-source. They will flank or lay in ambush and run to gather reinforcements. Different factions will move through the level with their own objectives and reactions to other factions.

Foci are combat, exploration, story, and conversation. The game will allow interesting tactics, character development/item-use strategy, exploration strategy. We want to emphasize development of player skill rather than character skill, e.g. numbers going up.

2.6. THEMES

Game is 100% free culture - GPLv3 license

  • The darkness is alive and it hates you
  • The past is not dead, it's not even past
  • We weren't the first, but we may be the last
  • There are other histories where events occur differently; history is malleable in both directions
  • Grit, cunning, & understanding connections and secrets win the day
  • Science is in its infancy, dark corners of the earth are yet unexplored
  • There is no eternal victory, only eternal vigilance; this is a holding action against the abyss
  • Concepts are real things with real power
  • Cognitohazards and basilisk attacks - Burn Before Reading is sometimes the best policy
  • Crab mentality and short-sightedness is a common and persistent threat
  • Teach heuristics and biases
  • Colonialism/independence/racism/sexism; don't idealize nor whitewash the past, it was nasty and we’ve come a long ways
  • Danger of active SETI
  • Danger of super-intelligence - being out-thought and out-planned by an entity dramatically more capable than you

2.7. INSPIRATIONS

Realtime action RPG/roguelite

  • Teleglitch
  • Eldritch
  • Heat Signature
  • Delver
  • Void Bastards
  • Unexplored
  • Hades

Depth of simulation, procedural

  • Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
  • Noita
  • Monstrum
  • SCP: Containment Breach
  • STALKER
  • Dwarf Fortress
  • Caves of Qud
  • Smart Kobold
  • AI Dungeon
  • The Long Dark
  • Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
  • Shadows of Doubt

Meaty, physical, detailed

  • Receiver
  • Hellish Quart
  • Dead Cells
  • Return of the Obra Dinn
  • Control

Style: dark, gritty, weird, Soulsy

  • Pathways Into Darkness
  • Dark Souls
  • Mortal Shell
  • Amnesia
  • Infra Arcana
  • Kairo
  • NaissencE
  • I Can't Escape
  • Blood
  • Hotline Miami
  • Katana Zero
  • Ring of Pain
  • The Forest
  • Rusty Lake
  • Mundaun
  • Lost in Vivo

Variety of locations, time periods, and stories, PC internal monologue

  • Thief
  • Cultist Simulator
  • Nocturne
  • Dark Pictures Anthology
  • Kentucky Route Zero

Co-op

  • Alien Swarm
  • Hunt: Showdown
  • GTFO
  • Left4Dead
  • Vermintide

Table-top RPGs & other fiction

  • SCP Foundation
  • Veins of the Earth
  • Tomb of Horrors
  • Lair of the Lamb
  • Deep Carbon Observatory
  • Death Frost Doom
  • Call of Cthulhu
  • Delta Green
  • Eclipse Phase
  • Mothership
  • Mork Borg
  • Stygian Library
  • Witchburner

Videos

  • Pontypool
  • Kairo
  • Local58
  • Gemini Home Entertainment
  • The Mandela Catalogue
  • Bird Box
  • It Follows
  • YellowBrickRoad

2.8. SOME ADVENTURE IDEAS USING THIS SYSTEM

  • The main one discussed above, involving the the comet
  • Deep Carbon Observatory as a modern-day SCP field containment specialist/MTF game with few other changes (the dwarf is a stout guy with a sniper rifle)
  • Fever Swamp in the matchlock era
  • Death Frost Doom as-is or as a college-kid cabin-in-the-woods schlock horror
  • Neverwinter Nights style Dungeon Master-run topdown thing with some chatbot NPCs
  • 3D first-person Noita meets Magic Carpet & Dome Keeper (& maybe Dungeon Keeper)
  • Coop, realtime, first-person Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead with some server-wide downtime system for crafting etc