A Game Idea I've Had In My Head Thread

I've had some pretty twisted game ideas; considering my favorite genre is "Horror"/"Survival Horror". So, I've had this idea in my head for almost a year now and I really need to know if there would be any interest in something like this, and if my dev team should go through with the idea. We're currently stuck between doing it on the Unreal Engine, or making it a single-player modification for HL2:EP2.

I'll put it in bullet points because I like easier it is to read.
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• Players take the role of Summer Dayton. A 24 year old female who has just started her employment at the Sunnybrook Daycare. After meeting a very strange child, who has extremely pale skin, jet black hair, and an eerie demeanor weird things begin happening around the daycare, and for some reason the daycare cannot be escaped, and the children have all been possessed by some sort of demonic entity. The player must find out why the children have gotten possessed, and escape the "Hellish" daycare alive.
• The main form of enemies will be the possessed children. Yeah, this might be where the game is a tad offensive, and bother people. However, we've killed children in games before. Look at No More Room In Hell, Dead Space, etc. They're no longer human; and the only way to save them is by exterminating the demon inside them...through death.
• The game would focus heavily on melee combat with the player being able to use weapons such as knives, hammers, sticks, and pretty much anything you think you'd find around a day-care. However, since there's the whole "hell" story involved, and to make it a little easier for the players a small amount of fire-arms will be added, but they won't be easy to find.
• Possibly include a co-op campaign where one player plays as a priest named Father Mulroney, and his apprentice/student James Vigar. The co-op campaign will take place during the main story with Summer, but feature different paths, enemies and even weapons. This would most likely be added as a future update, but if there's enough interest in the game, or mod whichever we choose, we'll add the multiplayer component in on release.
• Extremely eerie environments that will set the mood; and hopefully frighten the player. This will also include things to hopefully make the players skin crawl. Since you'll be dealing with "evil children" expect a lot of creepy childish laughter, and everything else that can make children creepy.
• Have a planned story of around 6-8 hours.

There's some other ideas that the team is currently mulling over, and thinking about. Feedback would be awesome, and no we don't hate children.

Shit, posted in the wrong section. Can someone move this to ideas & concepts?

However, we've killed children in games before. Look at No More Room In Hell, Dead Space, etc. They're no longer human; and the only way to save them is by exterminating the demon inside them...through death.??

Melee and Source is a bad idea. Much as I like NMRIH the melee is pretty horrible (at the moment). This daycare center must be huge, if it takes you six hours to escape. No way to blast through a door and leave early?

Why do you have to find out what's happened to the children? What's the motivation? Everybody I know would try to get the hell out of there.

It could easily become cheesy or involuntarily funny if the story isn't 100% tight. The combination of children + horror is almost as old as the genre itself, even though it was done more often in movies than in games. All the best of those stories relied on exceptional acting of the children involved. That's a rare thing in indie games to date.

If you only have children as enemies it could become boring/repetitive soon, if you chose to have other characters/grown ups, it requires an explanation why they are posessed, too.

I think it could be made interesting in a weird and disturbing way. I had to think of "Killer7" when you mentioned the creepy laughter.A game with a quite poor selection of different enemies, which nonetheless had an interesting story and some redeeming moments. Let alone its unique artstyle.

Don't rely on slaying children as your hook. As you say it's been done before and usually for a reason. If that's the most interesting aspect of the game, I'm not thrilled. 6 hours is a long story and you have to fill that story arch with something that keeps me going on in the game. The story should get a lot of attention and work to possibly several different endings and mid-points to raise the replay value.

Edited by: SinKing

Well you have to be a master coder to pull something like that off. The children would have to be VERY good AI that allows them to always attack the player in different ways. Also the melee for source is a bad idea like sinking said. If you do make the game, then i think for motivation of staying in the daycare either be 1, demons outside. Or 2, the player is the mother of a child in the daycare.
If you want to see a really awesome survival horror game that you can get some tips off of game play wise, look up alone in the dark.

My problem with the story is that it's constructed around the player. The only motivation of possessed children seems to be destroying the player.

perhaps this could be made an interesting concept if you are following an amnesia/slender game approach, paired with some paranormal phenomena. Maybe instead of destroying the player, the kids will try to possess him as well, adding thriller-like aspect to the game. I personally wouldn't use weapons, rather make it like so the player has to be inventive to fight of the children.

I agree with b5cully. I think in a real world scenario it would be really hard for someone to kill a child even if it is posessed. Because there's that feeling of them still being exorcised and not completely lost to the demon. It would be nice if instead of making lots of children come to you, you can make a small quantity of unique children, each unique child has its own appearance, behaviour and since each child is a different demon they have their own personality!.

Gameplay mechanics should definitely not be combat. Maybe you can put a thriller aspect to it by escaping or avoiding the children as they chase you. Also you can trick them. Since demons have their own personality maybe not all of them are savages, some may be playful and tricksters, so you have different ways to deal with them while escaping.

I hope this helps! good luck!

@sinking Melee works fine in source look at Age of chiverly they managed to handle it

For the motivation, i think you should change the main character from an employee to a parent picking up their child from the daycare for the first time and noticing they are different. Then the story is to find your child. Sort of silent-hill-ish.