What do you want in a horror game?

[rippy4500]

2 minutes ago, podkall said:

yeah but your excuse for using less lossy format is "other games are 500GB so it's okay"

You're right maybe comparing it to modern 100GB+ games wasn't the best idea. But just a gigabyte or two of space could store hours of FLAC 24/48, most people wouldn't care that much about that.

[MC.Morrado]

10 minutes ago, podkall said:

yeah but your excuse for using less lossy format is "other games are 500GB so it's okay"

The whole game will be less than 70GB total. I'm not building anything super huge even though there will be actual chapters and boss fights. A fun little optimization method while still fitting the theme of the game is by making the loading screens and menu when saving your game look like a 1980's MS-DOS terminal with white pixelated text on a black screen.

[Mark Kaine]

tank controls or no deal.

 

bonus points for pre-rendered backgrounds. 

[Caroline]

An actual story and lore instead of jumpscare simulator.

[MC.Morrado]

6 minutes ago, Caroline said:

An actual story and lore instead of jumpscare simulator.

You are in luck: the game is story and character driven, the official Heart Of Circuits novel released a while ago should give you a pretty good idea of what's going on.

[emothxughts]

Technical-wise: FSR 3.1 support right out of the box, for players on a really tight GPU budget. (and maybe DLSS too)

 

Content-wise: Make the player feel uneasy throughout the playthrough, like Scorn did to me. Not a mildly pleasant walking sim punctuated by sudden jumpscares.

[Stahlmann]

The #1 priority of every game should always be the gameplay. Technical features, optimization or sound design doesn't matter if the game isn't fun. And yes, horror games are also supposed to be fun to play imo.

[MC.Morrado]

4 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

The #1 priority of every game should always be the gameplay. Technical features, optimization or sound design doesn't matter if the game isn't fun. And yes, horror games are also supposed to be fun to play imo.

I am aware that a game needs to have solid and good gameplay. Focusing on technical stuff in a forum site like the LTT one helps me know what you all need me to do so everything runs smoothly on your PC. An addition to good gameplay is getting it to even run properly on your computer in the first place (at least 60FPS consistently or even as the 1% lows).

[MC.Morrado]

My biggest complaint about modern horror games is that an overwhelming amount of them are nothing more than soulless cash grabs seeking the attention of Game Theory and 30+ year old adults with millions of subscribers doing over the top reactions to lame jump scares for their child audience.

 

I am never making any mascot horror games because I don't want to be associated with the piles of low-effort slop churned out to make a quick buck. Heart Of Circuits is a traditional survival-horror game, NOT mascot horror, just to make myself clear.

 

The story telling of FNAF is an incoherent mess at best. If you have to rely on somebody's theory video just to understand what the fuck is even going on: you have failed to tell a story, and you should plan out a full COHERENT story before even making a series of games. I finished planning and writing the actual story for the game universe of Heart Of Circuits over the course of 2 years because I am taking my time to actually tell a story from a sentient animatronic's point of view. FNAF selectively deciding what's canon and what isn't between the book and game universes makes storytelling a complete mess and a waste of my time to even try to figure out.

 

What I can confirm about Heart Of Circuits so far:

The official novel https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-of-circuits-mc-morrado/1144917476?ean=2940185909386

and the game take place in completely separate canons and different dimensions entirely. The novel stands on its own as part of my shared book universe.