What kind of tweaks could you make to the dark souls formula to make it into a horror game?
My suggestions
-Health items are finite save for when they can be farmed by rare and strong enemies like stones of ephemeral eyes from giant depraved ones
-Limited inventory slots for items and rings but pick ups automatically go to the bonfire inventory
-Rolling and sprinting cost much more stamina, typically more than a blocked attack
-One large continuous environment like in Dark Souls 1
-Weapons have durability and can only be regenerated if left in the bonfire inventory or by finite repair powders
-Instead of enemies resurrecting once resting at a bonfire, killing enemies will fill a meter that once filled will resurrect enemies thus making it desirable to go around certain enemies or avoid certain fights
-Dying causes enemies to become stronger and attain a randomized buff each time you die.
-Perhaps a day and night cycle to make certain pathways safer/worse? not sure on this one.
-Environment is varied but all one place similar to Dracula's castle in Castlevaina
I know the usual responses will be that my ideas suck and that's ok, I want to stir discussion on how souls mechanics can be repurposed into a horror game. Come on guys let's talk about games for once instead of waifus.
Game Design Discussion
You cannot have a horror game where your control over what happens is as precise as a souls game.
What made games like RE scary was the feeling of helplessness caused by stiff controls and a shitty camera. Helplessness is fundamental for a good horror game.
No matter how atmospheric you make it, a game like dark souls could never be scary if you can dunk the aslyumn demon and kill it in under 15 seconds.
Also the dying idea is terrible as it could lead to an end point in the game where enemies have like 70 buffs on them turning NG enemies into NG+++++. Unless you mean only 1 buff which is also bad because its easier to balance one entity( the players health) rather than all the other entities in the game.
The biggest issue here is that you're framing this discussion around Dark Souls which isn't that suited for a horror genre in my opinion. You'd either cripple the intended action-heavy gameplay or just end up with bland faux-horror since you can competently still fight back to enemies.
Further, making a thread for this is a bit much, you could take this to /dsg/ maybe?
I absolutely disagree about the lack of control being the reason for a horror game being good. Also souls is really not that precise at all with a lot of it's quarks coming from how clunky it is not to mention the awful input buffering. Just want to mention that because I get sick of souls dick suckery.
>I get sick of souls dick suckery
>but makes a thread about souls
Yeah I like the game I just don't think it's god's gift to man like so many of the fans. Plus I needed to point out just how clunky the game is when you mentioned how precise it is which is simply not true.
I think it's control is very tight but not at first. It takes commitment. Its like driving stick.
Also I just want to point out that the best horror franchises of all time are famous for clunky controls.
>RE
>Silent Hill
>Condemned
>Limited inventory slots for items and rings but pick ups automatically go to the bonfire inventory
So it's useless lol. Where's the fear of losing an important item ?
From should focus on more puzzle items and environments instead being bosses most of the time the only check needed to progress in the ""story"". Take resident evil 1, make it a castle with different environments. its not rocket science
perhaps when you die you have to restart from the last save point. Also maybe you can attack enemies to a point where they are fairly crippled so you can more easily move around them but still have to worry about them.
dark souls protag is way too powerful to ever be in horror lmao
>perhaps when you die you have to restart from the last save point
>perhaps
It's not a souls game unless you restart from the beginning of the level, user
>turn an action rpg into a horror game
uh, i wouldn't
Also if its souls like, why would it be incredibly difficult? NOTHING is scary after the 40th time it happens. No one wants to bash their head against a wall redoing the same jump scare segment over and over.
There's a reason why all the guys in my unit went from being terrified of mortar strikes to playing cards during them. Repetition is not scary. Unless its a junji ito manga.
I mean in terms of item progress and puzzle progress.
You're conflating horror with tension.
Then you need to alter the repetition. Bring something new when you start to get used to it.
Alter ennemy placement, environmment, ennemy power.
DeS had the right idea all along and I still don't understand they didn't push it more.
Soul and World tendency are good concepts. Just expand them and make them more interesting.
Your character's actions should matter: did you kill this NPC ? Did you save this one ? Did you give this item or did you use it for yourself ? Then the other NPCs should react upon that, branching quests and stuff.
Killing ennemies, activating items, dying, progressing, should change the world and make you uneasy, keep you on your toes, etc.
I think Bloodborne is about as close to a “horror” game as a souls game could get. They can be infinitely unsettling but a game like that isn’t going to cross into horror territory without removing what makes them souls games.
literally bloodborne you brainlet
I really wish the nightmares in Bloodborne had had actual weird/eldritch warped dreamlike geometry. Like the hallways you fight Micolash in should've been in different arrangements each time or something.
That's the only kind of horror I'd really be into. Survival shit is played out.
>-Health items are finite save for when they can be farmed by rare and strong enemies like stones of ephemeral eyes from giant depraved ones
Stopped reading there. The worse you are, the harder the game gets. How braindead do you have to be to think that this is good design. Don't let the elitist Yea Forums memes overtake your critical thinking.
60fps minimum standard.
every time you die causes framerate to halve
>some places are dark / fogged / otherwise visually obscured
>some enemies are faster than you
>all attack animations for the PC and enemies faster
>enemy AI includes flanking and circling
I feel like it needs to be faster to make you panic, instead of encouraging you to tiptoe everywhere with your shield up
This
You can't be some badass, Dragon killing knight if it's gonna be horror
a shift in sound design, as well as enemy and level design is really all that's needed to make Dark Souls horror.
It's fucking IDIOTIC to base a horror game on Souls formula. Souls can be atmospheric, even make player feel uneasy or oppressed, but the core of Horror is disempowerment, the core of Souls is empowerment. Souls are ultimately all about showing the game that you are the boss, that you rule, and that even what seems "literally impossible" can always be overcome if you are patient and focused enough.
That is PRECISELY THE FUCKING OPPOSITE of the lesson you want to teach in a horror scenario.
Seriously, how the fuck did you even come up with this retarded idea, OP?
>-Rolling and sprinting cost much more stamina, typically more than a blocked attack
No that will just make people never risk a roll.
The idea behind blocking costing more is that it doesn't take skill just to hold the button and wait for attacks
>-Dying causes enemies to become stronger and attain a randomized buff each time you die.
DS2 did it pretty well with 5% HP lost every death, but a horror game should go all the way to zero and if you don't have an item to reset HP to full like an effigy, your save gets deleted.
Nothing will keep someone more tense than losing all progress.
Enemy spawns are semi-random as are patrols. Sometimes an extra mob can be in an area. Sometimes enemies will walk further than you expect.
Bonfires aren't safe. There's no gold aura when you're leveling up. Enemies can wander into range and aggro on you. You can't just sprint to a bonfire to despawn enemies. Only certain places where you can shut a door behind you or hop over a gap are safe.
Remove dodge i-frames. If your dodge can be used offensively, it's not survival horror.
90% of enemies don't respawn. The 10% that do come back crimsonhead style.
Lots of Bloodborne style screeches. Thinking you're safe only to hear something scream offscreen is good shit.
Good survival horror should let you create temporary areas of safety that get taken away the further you get in the game and enemies retake them. Not having power doesn't make things scary, the constant threat of running out of power does. You should always be on the edge of running out of weapon swings, arrows, and bombs. By the end of the game you should feel strong, but everything should still be very threatening.
If it's based on DS2 very rigid stamin regen, with low damage weapons that constantly need repair power then there's no way the player will feel empowered.
Every fight will feel like that first time playing a souls game where you barely get by 2-3 enemies with one or no heals left and just want to run back to a bonfire and redo it.
Under a specific threshold of HP you enter a bleeding state. You HP doesn't go down but you leave a trail of blood. Enemies you might otherwise not encounter pick up on the blood and begin following the trail. Healing back to full stops the bleeding.
Are you genuinely fucking retarded? I mean clinically diagnosed yet? Because you fucking need to. It's a game about fucking MASTERING. Even the "you want to run to a bonfire to redo it" is a prefect fucking example of something that goes COMPLETELY AGAINST THE IDEA OF A HORROR YOU GOD DAMN PIECE OF TRASH.
Seriously. You probably should check with a doctor, there might be a nice welfare check and a new friendly assistant in it for you.
With video games it's really impossible to make true horror because you can just LOL RELOAD so you have to go for tense moments when the player lacks combat or health resources and has to run/hide.
>Every fight will feel like that first time playing
No. The first time playing people struggle because it's new and unfamiliar. Gimping people through mechanics doesn't replicate that feel, it simply generates frustration with the game.
I hope you never make a video game.
>Gimping people through mechanics doesn't replicate that feel
RE2 and the old SH games disagree.
If you could push zombies to the ground and stomp them in RE2, then you'd rarely even bother with guns or running away, only using them for bigger groups.
Please read my post again and this time try to actually understand the point I made.
You first.
you seem mad
With the exception of 3 which turned into "durr epic" shounenshit, a big part of what makes the Souls games compelling is that both your character, and the enemies you encounter, are all basically pathetic and irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, not motivated by anything but desperation. It's the sensation of disempowerment that shifts the focus away from yourself and more toward taking in the world and figuring out where you stand in it. You aren't supposed to feel like a powerful badass for getting past a major boss, because in nearly every case they're already in a crippled, dying state compared to their original magnificence. There's just the relief that you survived. The world is decaying, everything's fucked, and you're just some nobody picking over the ruins.
Only turbo autists try to discuss game design like it will actually fucking do anything. You'll never make anything. Quit pretending.
>Bonfires aren't safe. Enemies can wander into range and aggro on you.
DS2 vanilla had this in some places and it just felt broken and annoying.
>Enemy spawns are semi-random as are patrols. Sometimes an extra mob can be in an area.
>90% of enemies don't respawn. The 10% that do come back crimsonhead style.
I like these ones. Could maybe take something from the Rain World approach of having all enemies inhabit the world persistently with random spawn points and movements. Though it might be more unsettling if you just had little things occasionally off rather than total procedural chaos.
Also mechanics not always doing what you think they should do. By far the most memorable moment in Bloodborne was being one-shotted and abducted to the Unseen Village rather than respawning.