The Cosmic Horrors Jam starts in four days. Let’s prep.
What is it?
- Make a game from scratch in two weeks
- Cosmic/Lovecraftian horror genre
- Smaller jam (currently ~150 joined)
Why join?
- I love the genre
- My previous jam experience was amazing
- Learn to create an atmosphere
- The timing works
- Try a smaller jam (I guess all jams are smaller than GMTK but)
Ritual by Dead Rock Games really stood out to me at the GMTK game jam. It was such a beautiful, otherworldly experience and just so engaging. It felt … profound. And it really made me want to learn how to give players that feeling.
Another game from that jam, Death of the Flower by Cabycat, had a haunting atmosphere. The artwork, poetry, sound, and the subject matter all worked together to create a disturbing environment. There were no enemies but there was a feeling of danger.
I’m also really inspired by the atmosphere in cosmic horror movies like Annihilation, Color Out of Space, and Sunshine. The fear is psychological.
Coming from a programming background, I’m really uncertain whether I can craft an atmosphere at all but I’m excited to try.
Goals for the jam:
- Ship a small game I can be proud of
- Create a haunting atmosphere
- Explore cosmic horror themes
Ideas #
I’ve been considering joining the jam for a few days and I’ve written out a bunch of ideas.
Cosmic horror focuses less on physical violence, gore and shock and more on stoking psychological fears.
- Fear of the unknown or incomprehensible
- The realization of our smallness in a vast, uncaring universe
- Forbidden knowledge (occult)
- Dangers of scientific exploration / experimentation
- Existential dread
- Insanity
One aspect of cosmic horror I really like is the idea that something can be so incomprehensible, and so disruptive to our foundational expectations of reality, that merely observing it can drive one insane. Lovecraft’s descriptions often start by building an image in the reader’s imagination only to sabotage it with conflicting information. Words can evoke the idea of something incomprehensible, something that shouldn’t be able to exist, but video games are a visual medium. Movies face the same problem. How do you visually depict something unfathomable?
One way is to make it abstract. Annihilation and Color Out of Space don’t have a physical creature as the antagonist. Instead, you get the Shimmer and the Color. In both cases, they’re depicted as light. That gives them some presence so they can be shown on the screen without giving the audience’s minds much to hold onto. The effects they have on the characters and the environment around them are much more important.
Actually, now that I think of it, in Annihilation they also show that trippy mandelbrot.
I guess what’s really important is that we can’t easily categorize it. There’s a meditation technique where you attach labels to your thoughts and feelings as they float around in your head. When you attach a word to something, “oh, that’s a thought” or “that is a feeling” it takes away some of its power. Same reason why writing to-do lists can make the tasks for the day ahead seem less overwhelming.
So if I see a monster and I can easily categorize it, “oh, that’s a giant squid” or “that’s like the Alien xenomorph” then it seems less scary. There’s probably an arms race to come up with different forms that people haven’t yet seen and categorized. Recombobulating tentacles and scales of sea creatures into novel monsters probably worked well for a while but now people are used to it. We’ve got a category for that. I’m sure there have been other phases but maybe right now the state of the art is to use some kind of unnatural light effect.
Another way to depict something incomprehensible on screen is to… not. You can hide it. It’s a well-known fact in horror movies in general that the less you show a monster, the scarier it is. Monsters hide in the dark or in the forest or in the mists. Maybe you only see a streak of something moving impossibly quickly at the edge of the frame. Sometimes, there’s a bit of disappointment when a monster is finally revealed at the end of the movie. It wasn’t quite what you’d built it up to be in your imagination.
I guess imagination is limitless compared to what you can do on a screen. Despite the word “image” being in there, “imagination” is not just visual… it’s like we build up a sense of what the imagined monster could do. I wonder if that’s part of it. We’re imagining its affordances.
Anyway, that’s a lot of thinking/writing just to say that I want to try making a game where I never show the big bad.
Here’s a game from the previous Cosmic Horrors Jam called The Library that Speaks by Bad Piggy. This game uses fixed cameras instead of first person or third person. The camera sits still and the player character walks through the scene.
It reminds me of an old point and click adventure series that I used to play as a kid, King’s Quest. But it works great in the horror genre because it can give you the feeling of being watched.
It does seem like it’d be tricky to do well. Sometimes the shot changes can be jarring. But researching fixed camera angles more, I found some great ideas like timing the shot change when the player character lands a jump or fires a gun.
Anyway, the other nice side effect of using fixed cameras is that the player and the player character (PC) don’t see the same thing. That means the player could react to something that’s happening off screen or occluded. I’d have to try it to find out but I have a feeling that it’ll be cool to see the PC stop in their tracks and stare at something in horror—something that I can’t see—and then have some huge reaction. Maybe they turn and run, or start vomiting, or their eyes burn out, or they start scratching their own face off.
That way I can show the effect of the incomprehensible thing without having to show the thing itself.
This of course begs the question: what about when the player can see something but the PC cannot? I can see a lot of potential there, too. The PC might hear a noise and be afraid to turn the next corner when you, the player, can plainly see that it’s just curtains billowing in an open window. Or the PC might casually open a door when you can see that on the other side there’s something terrifying.
The Effects of the Thing #
Don’t show the incomprehensible thing itself, just the effect it has on others.
I was thinking that if the PC died to the big bad then maybe I show some sort of scary dream sequence but that implies that the player saw it not just the PC. And it’s another task that’s gonna be hard to pull off well. (There was a great one at the end of Paraedolon by the way. It’s another game from the same jam Here’s a video.)
That’s a whole other topic. Not even sure if dream sequence is the right word. I always think of Rick and Morty’s Wormhole Trip. Even throws me back to the original Half-Life. Here it is. PC jumps through a teleporter and gets transported to a couple other environments along the way.
I’ll have to tackle this at some point down the road. I was also thinking of including one in a cosy bee game I’m making. It’s just something I’m’a have to try at some point.
Anyway. There should be various NPCs who have gone insane after exposure to the monster and are demonstrating some pretty severe symptoms. Reckon most of the danger the PC faces will be the NPCs. A lot of them will be paranoid and see the PC as a threat. Others will just be compulsively violent, lashing out at anything that moves with a knife or other makeshift weapon. Maybe somebody else has hunkered in their bunker and have setup traps which pose a threat to the PC. Still others might form a cult around the big bad, seeking to do what they perceive to be its will.
Gameplay #
The PC will never overcome the big bad. All they can do is avoid it. They’ll have some tools to help with that. There should be obvious signs of the approach of the big bad. The environment should have few dead ends. Always two exits. Lots of interconnection. Multiple paths to each room.
I still have a lot of questions.
- Who is the PC and what’s their goal? An archaeologist seeking lost knowledge? A scientist or reporter seeking the truth? Someone rescuing a family member?
- Where does this all take place? An ancient ruin? A mansion? A hospital?
- Who are the NPCs that occupied this place?
- What caused the big bad to occur here?
I’ll probably use controls similar to the library game above but instead of rendering a 3D scene I’ll use drawings like in the old point and click adventure games.
Risks #
I’ve been working my way through Jesse Schell’s book The Art of Game Development and he describes the loop for iterative game development.
- State the problem
- Brainstorm possible solutions
- Choose a solution
- List risks of using that solution
- Build prototypes to mitigate those risks
- Test the prototypes until they’re good enough
- State the new problems and go back to step 2
Problem: make an awesome cosmic horror game in two weeks! Solution brainstorm: I guess I already did that on paper previously… Choose a solution: …and chose one. List risks of using that solution: Here’s some new territory.
- I won’t be able to make good background / environment art or find a team member who can.
- I won’t be able to make good character animations or find a team member who can.
- I won’t be able to make good music and sound effects or find a team member who can.
- It won’t be fun to play.
- Too much walking in an environment that’s not engaging would suck.
- Never getting to beat up the boss would suck. Especially if the player doesn’t get the hint that they’re no match for it. (Maybe brainstorm ways to communicate this clearly. The PC will go insane just like everyone else who saw the big bad.)
- If I can’t create tension without having a bunch of enemies running around
- Controlling the PC in a fixed camera scene will feel clunky.
- Swapping camera shots as the PC moves around will be disorienting.
- The fixed camera angle with 2D art won’t work with lighting.
- I won’t be able to create a haunting atmosphere.
- A character moving in the space won’t look right, e.g., because of perspective.
That’s a lot of risks. What can I do to mitigate them? Stuff that I won’t use directly in the jam but which will help me once it starts.