Give coop players hidden agendas to create paranoya!

Example:
Player 1 has hidden agenda to kill player 4.
Player 4 has hidden agenda to sabotage own teams weapon factory.
Player 2 has hidden agenda to help enemy players enter through back door of fort.
etc..

Fear and paranoya grow when you don know how is friend and how is enemy.

/Tyrian

I think the possession aspect is an interesting one for a co-op game. Imagine your character starts to aim towards you partner and you have to fight it off while hearing voices whispering in your ears.

Games like Eternal Darkness are also interesting with their sanity meter where your character starts to go insane and more strange things start to happen (you start seeing and hearing things that aren't really there).

I think by creating environments with good atmosphere and use the interesting aspects of Left 4 Dead's AI director (use an atmospheric director???) you can actually get something interesting going.

Fear is all about unpredictable pacing.

If you have music build to a crescendo in the walk up to a dark hallway, then complete silence as they walk down it, for nothing to happen, the player will think.

Wait, what was the music for?

Then that's when you hit them.

Same goes for co-op games. Separate them, take away their ammo and armour away with monsters that eat metal, when they're at their weakest, let them meet up right at the big boss battle.

Narrow walkways, flickering lights, all that business.
The monsters don't matter so much as the moments they're introduced.

If I were to make a "scary" CoOp game I would probably go for something where you are working with everyone but not always. For instance each player starts with 3 or 4 "gambles" where they can trigger the opposing side to do something "bad" for all the players. If their gamble works against all the players they get an individual bonus of somesort(screwing everyone but them), if their gambles fails they just plain screw everyone and themselves.

Basically if you want to finish the game everyone needs to work together. If you want to finish the game as the "best" you need to use human intelligence to know when the best time to mess with everyone is. Basically the plan is to have the pacing to be unpredictable and intelligent because you have human drivers working for their own interest.

Basically you could set up really really simple event AI that comes in random increasing waves, then have player opposition events modify how the AI behaves/does. The game doesn't end till all "gambles" have been played. You can get some very interesting stuff as random waves and players playing gambles together/against/unknowingly with each other.

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Original post by Talroth One thing to keep in mind when considering what restrictions are placed on information sharing between players: VoIP. Anything that relies on changing what information two players knows is doomed to failure if one can ask the other "Hey, are you dead?" and have the other reply "No, why?"

Thats great - until the voip cuts out, starts repeating something someone said hours ago, replays the last moments of other soldiers, random screams, little girl asks for mummy etc.

i would not have event driving waves, enemys would not act in an arcade way , its more about giving the ai inteligence to kill you , knowing about you're positon and his position and figuring out a way to kill you silently or as creepy as possible, i just think ai that just run at you constantly is boring and if there just hiding in the shadows planning there next move thats what makes an intense game as you dont know what there going todo as you cant see them yet etc, plus i would have the enviroment be able to kill you / hurt you with things like nails in floors, the floor falls through leaving you with a nasty fall to the level underneath (which means you're split from the team and have to go route 1 alone till you meet up again),glass breaking causing bleeding, light bulbs smashing for no reason and that glass shatters on you hurting you..this is the kind of enviroment i want to play in :), i would also have something like , say a 1 player out of the team is moving forward to fast without the others.

I would have a door slam behind him so he is trapped inside and has to go another route alone and meet up with the rest later, this would be his punishment for acting big headed thinking he can do it alone when infact my game knows he isnt a team player and will be split from them.I do like the idea that the spirits could posess the player and make him turn on the rest at some point , as demons and spirit can posses people and take over them with the thought of just to kill anything in sight (then maybe the rest of the players have to find a pray book to heal cure is possession etc), but how would you keep stop him in the mean time while you're looking for the book to cast out the spirits (and if 3 players pray for the 1 possessed player he would be healed quickly)but what if there is 3 possessed players?,1 person left to pray for the others etc, thats going to take alot longer right?, i am not sure you would have guns and you dont normally ghost hunt with weapons :), also the player controling the possesed character , what would he see on his screen , just a simple message to kill the others or something?,also how would he kill the others?(no guns), another thing i just had in mind is , lets say each player has to carry a cross and if you drop or loose that cross then thats when you can become possessed etc ,because you have no protection from the demons..,and i think the players would be preist's and vicar classes, which a job to get rid of the evil thats been happening from suicides to fires and alot of other evil stuff thats been going on ...this would totally be my perfect coop game...

[Edited by - Anddos on October 4, 2010 5:49:36 AM]

There's one game I know of that was very scary, multiplayer and steam based. Aliens vs Predator. It succesfully captured the tension and fear of the classic movies. If you were marine you were contantly bricking it because an invisible enemy might pop up to skewer you or chop your head off in a grisly cut scene. Couple that with the beeps that unreliably signal an approching enemy, and tension hits the roof throughout the game. If you were the Alien you were constantly afraid of being seen and the thrill of the hunt added to the sense of fear. The predator was a mixture between the two and bit less scary to play than the other two classes tbh.

One key element in that game was the darkness. We are all innately afraid of the dark. Another key element was lethal and gruesome danger, very close at hand yet not clearly visible. Yet another key element was that the enemies were other players... Its much more scary to face up to an unpredictable/smart real person than a predictable/dumb AI.

There was no chance of VoIP ruining the atmosphere, because there was no time to get distracted or unninmersed. Even with enemies and friends all being able to talk to each other the most you got was "oh man I think there's an alien nearby, shit he's up..." or "I'm gonna f**k you up..." :)

Mind you, this was a quite nice kind of afraid, which made you want to play, not an omg I don't want to play kind of afraid. Which is perhaps not what you are looking for. There are a couple of games I've played that made me feel omg I don't want to play afraid, but both were single player games...

Nice Thread...

First. The following Games come in mind if i think about scaryness.

Alien vs. Predator 1. (Playing as an Alien to get an sight on sneaking and killing silent, playing as an marine and get this feeling in your neck when your motion tracker starts to beep faster and faster...they coming...oh my god, so many of them.. ;))

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Special Enemies scare the fuck out of my pants ^^ the first time u have to kill a vampire, or this thing wich can throw stuff at you with his telekinetics, or if you are very alone in the wild and get the warning that an eruption is approaching and you have to find shelter very fast)

Doom 3. (coz the environment was sometimes very cool. Suddenly a gascan was floating midair in front of you for no reason, or bloody screens and bloodstains on the ground, light flickers)

Painkiller. (the sanctuary level was of nice scary design, with this iron-masked freaks running around)



Gameplayside...what dos u scare in a game? things u cant explain...
what if the door you just came through and have to go back leads now into a total different room, or the repeating corridor trick...
sometimes things should move around, sound that u cant locate from where it comes...
your radar starts to get useless, automap shows only noise...

leveldesign... its a good idea to design the levels for coop that you need to separate from your teammate. one has to trigger a switch, while the other has to run through a door

and you definetively need the feeling that a single enemy can kill you right at your next step. or you hear that a lot of enemies are coming, but u cant say from where...starting to nervous turn around yourselve in that damn labyrinth...


mh...just some ideas i had so far ;)

This thread would be an amazing game!

In a team of 2-4 players, only one starts whit a weapon. Maby a pistol with vere limited ammo. When a enemy/spririt/zombie/what ever appears you will shit your pants because there is a vere litle chanse of actually beating him and that would leave you vere low on ammo if not all out. The smartest thing would be to run for your life. And thats a perfect time for the game to try to separate the players.

I love the idea of messing with the players communication.
One thing happening alot in co-op games is just what Anddos pointed out, one player is moving forward to fast and "triggering" som scripted events and looting and just ruining it for the others. Lets say the door slams behind him and all of a sudden the other players cant hear him, maby only some random static disturbance (in the headset).
The player who got ahead of him self will be in a very dark and disturbing place.
He cant hear the other players at all. but his headset is full of activity. maby a crying woman, a child plying, laughing, singing, a disturbed voice telling you all sorts of terrible things. No weapon, flickering lights, shadows semes to move. It will be a very close to panic feeling and the natural respons would be to back into a corner and sit down and wait until the rest of your team finds you because this place is evil and it will try to hurt you. The teame is racing against time to finde you.

You guys have an incredible imagination and your ideas would be the moust frighting game ever, and the fact that ´co-op eaven makes it worse! Love it

p.s sorry for spelling and grammar

Personally I don't play scary games, and from what I can tell, the games that people say are scary are pretty lame. Doom3 scares consisted of giving physics objects a thrust or letting a monster attack you from behind. Fear slowed down time and showed/hid a girl. Both was made unsettling with lots of gore, and made me jump with the help of stingers.

I don't believe you can make a scary game, and a coop game is even harder, however you can include elements that people under the right circumstances consider scary.

First, make the main enemy unknown. Like the smoke monster from lost or the pov of evil from evil dead. Anything that gets to close to it, is devoured and possible left as a bloody corpse. Make them scream as they die painfully. In these chase sequences players have to help each other through and over various obstacles to escape from the monster.

The player has to control some weak character, someone that cant fight back. The player cant possible be expected to be afraid of something, if (s)he can kill it without endangering him/herself :) So I'm thinking teenage cheerleaders with pom poms, after some party going home and the subway crash through the ground killing several passengers, and awakening the monster.

Then they have to split up, to move forward, perhaps some activation of some sort. Here are some creepy aliens like monsters that are part of the environment. The monsters in the beginning of solomon kane are a good reference, as is the cave monsters in The Descent, and (I'm guessing) pretty much any other vampire movie where the vampires lives in darkness. They players can work together and play it as army of two as one character draws the attention of the monsters and then flees; or sneak around and flip those switches that need to be flipped.

Then you could have some breather gameplay, where the player could catch their breath and the girls could mourn their lost ones, chat with each other, cry and generally be afraid.

Repetitive, yes, but I believe it has potential :)