Sound of Silence - a horror game that plays on the phobias of the player

[Marnetmar]

[Nomad]

Basically a dynamic Penumbra game. They're probably already working on that.

[Planky]

The sound of silence is awfully noisy

[Marnetmar]

Planky said:

The sound of silence is awfully noisy

I just think the concept of a game that observes the player's actions and determines what they're afraid of is really cool.

[flubbernugget]

The game's going to need a lot of creative ways to find the player's fears without being to obvious about it. That'll be tough to pull off. Really, everything about this concept can very easily suck unless a product is created with an extreme amount of time, care, and a really good hunch for what will work.

[Nomad]

flubbernugget said:

The game's going to need a lot of creative ways to find the player's fears without being to obvious about it. That'll be tough to pull off. Really, everything about this concept can very easily suck unless a product is created with an extreme amount of time, care, and a really good hunch for what will work.

Yeah, it seems to me that some players may simply be more practical than "scared" and make choices based on what makes the most sense in the situation than based on their individual fears or whatever.

[Vaporizer]

.

[The Lag]

i'm all for the attempt.
as one of those ultra-sensitive types and also as one of those maniacs who is addicted to fear.
i've been looking forever for something to scare me more.

[StevieWolfe]

Its worth a shot, however, some people do have pretty abstract fears. With that in mind, this game can't exactly cater to everyone out there lol.

[DoomUK]

Vaporizer said:

Also, some people, including me, aren't effected by their real life phobias in a game.

I feel the same way to a degree, except my arachnophobia was always triggered by the spiders in the Resident Evil remake (1:55). Maybe because they actually looked like enormous tarantulas instead of "fantasy spiders" typically found in other games, and the technology of the time permitted them a level of realism that wasn't afforded by the original Playstation version.

[Dragonsbrethren]

StevieCybernetik said:

Its worth a shot, however, some people do have pretty abstract fears.

Escalators. I'm, pathetically, 100% serious about that. Can't say I've ever felt any fear over using an escalator in a video game, though. I mean, we fight demons from hell and nazis and cyborgs and stereotypical brown people and all sorts of other things on a daily basis and don't feel a damn thing because it's not real. I don't see this game being any different, and "focus on puzzles over combat" is just another way of saying "boring" to me.

[darknation]

Dynamically textured mexicans coming to steal my job and rape my women? terrifying.

[fraggle]

Looks like a vague gimmicky idea that probably isn't workable.

The video says "the game will observe the players' actions, perhaps by looking at the routes they choose, the strategies they use [...] Once the game has acquired enough information, the game will alter itself accordingly". So the game is supposed to somehow infer specific fears of the player - the examples given are "darkness, loneliness, spiders". But it's not at all clear how this is supposed to be achieved. I don't buy the idea at all that you can somehow infer that someone is scared of spiders based on the way they play a computer game.

That's supposed to be the interesting / unique part of this proposed game, and there's no explanation of how it is supposed to work, just some brief footage of a generic "creepy house".

[Xaser]

Heh, indeed. My first thought upon reading about this was "I bet I can break the system." Neat idea, but it'll still only work on specific types of people, making it overall not that much different from "traditional" horror games if that's the case.

[Radon]

I maybe lame for admitting this, but once the 'player' turned around from glancing at the dark fall and the white face popped out - I got chills man, deep chills.

[PRIMEVAL]

Definitely on my To Play list now. Looks pretty cool, always in for a good scary game.