Sci-Fi Game Idea: Darkfire

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So, I've been developing an idea for a sci-fi first- or third-person (not quite sure which yet) shooter for a couple weeks now, and kind of want some opinions and feedback on what I have of the game's premise so far.

It's inspired by games like Dead Space, F.E.A.R., and to some extent, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Currently, I'm using the tentative working title of Darkfire.

Something sinister is afoot in a remote corner of the galaxy. As a UN flight marshal, Patricia Briggs is trained to contain and resolve dangerous, quickly-escalating situations swiftly and decisively, but when an attempt to stop the terrorist hijacking of a commercial space liner goes wrong, she finds herself in over her head. The further she investigates in the aftermath of the event, the more she finds that the terrorists have much more planned than just conventional retaliative destruction and mayhem. Discovering evidence of a horrifying top-secret government project, the investigation becomes a race against time and resistance from all sides to prevent a supernatural hell from being unleashed on the rest of the unsuspecting galaxy.

If it ever got made (which is highly unlikely at this point, or any point in the foreseeable future) it'd be rated M for just about everything under the sun: Blood and gore, intense violence, disturbing imagery, sexual themes, partial nudity, and strong language. And no, that's not just to attract an audience; it all has a legitimate place in the game's story, so far.

Wow real good idea! I see you worked it out more then you post here to! I think it should be FPS, because when you are in first person view, you connect more with the character and i see its a really story driven game.

Anyhow: o.O

That's certainly what I'm going for. I'm writing the story and the script as if it were a movie, and working the gameplay mechanics in around that. I'm kind of trying to do the reverse of what Hollywood does with video game movies. They try to take a game's plot and turn it into movie. I'm trying to write a movie's plot and build a game around it.

If you get the horror/supernatural themes right then it sounds good to me.

Where does it actually take place, on the space liner itself or in a city or something at a later time?

The only problem I have is with the characters name. Patricia isn't a very exciting name and Briggs is almost like a cliche soldiers surname.

I'm working on that. There'll be some weird psychological and body horror stuff going on, but not quite conventional weird psychological and body horror stuff, I'm hoping.


It currently spans several different major locations. The space liner is one, but also a remote mining colony, an high-tech research lab, the headquarters of a major corporation, a future UN headquarters, and the slums of a large city. Not necessarily in that order.


Well, she generally goes by Trish, and I think it's a name that fits with the appearance I have in mind for her, so yeah. And Briggs is a relatively common western last name, meant to reflect that she's really not all that different from a normal person. I'm also writing the script so her dialogue and some of her actions and choices make her stand out from the rest of the action hero crowd, especially from characters like Rayne and Lara Croft, and the other action heroines you tend to find in games these days.

The market is already way oversaturated with dark violent shooter IMO. Why making another? I bet people would kill each other with firearms, which is not very realistic in a "futur" setting as much as nanotubes are concerned...

There aren't that many horror themed shooters out there. Only ones I can think of are the Fear games and Jericho. At least for the ps3 anyway. The way he's describing it sounds like much more than just a shooting game.

Those, and the Dead Space series, the Resident Evil series, and maybe System Shock 2. That's a grand total of maybe 12 big-name games in all, out of the hundreds, if not thousands out there.

I'm certainly trying, at least. I'm constantly stopping to ask myself, 'is this plot devolving into an obvious cheap-scare hall crawler like Doom 3 or some of the weaker parts of the F.E.A.R. series'? And if I feel like a part of it is, then I look over my plot notes and try to figure out how to change it so it doesn't feel so contrived.

Dead Space is not quite a shooter in my eyes. I guess I just see it in a different category. Fear and Jericho are essentially pure FPS games with a couple of horror/supernatural themes tacked on. Dead Space is much more about the survival horror aspect. Never played Resident Evil though I imagine it's more of the same.

The story seems to sound very engaging, but it would fall short if the game mechanics where too complex or too easy. With a story like that I can see how dead space was a motivating factor. I think the story would go even better with some mass effect elements such as being able to create your own agent, versus being dependent upon seeing the story as a pre-set hero/heroine.

I've actually thought about that, but doing something like that would pretty much double the time and effort that would go into the dev cycle. While there are certain RPG-like elements and game mechanics I'd like to include, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution did, I'm also trying to keep it within the bounds of what, say, an indie game developer might realistically be able to handle competently. Not much chance of an unknown writer getting hired or having their game's script picked up by a big-name company like Bioware, Visceral, Eidos, Monolith, or DICE.

I never liked blank-slate characters. They are boring.

Blank-slate characters like virtually every silent, non-descript, self-insert FPS hero out there, or like virtually every highly-customizable RPG character with next to no back-story established for them? Either way, I agree. I like playable characters who are more than just a self-insert for the player. Having a playable character with a relevant history to the game's story and having a distinct personality show through in their dialogue makes them fare more enjoyable to play as than just a silent avatar. That's one of the main reasons I liked Jade from Beyond Good and Evil so much: She actually felt like she had a pre-existing place in the world, even before the game started, and showed a distinct personality as the game progressed.

On another note, I've pretty much decided on having the game be in first person, with third-person cutscenes for important events, like how Deus Ex: Human Revolution and a lot of other games did it. I'm also thinking of sticking with a single default character model for Trish, as well, just to keep things simple. I've had a particular physical appearance in mind for her character since the beginning, pretty much, anyway. I've also been listening to a lot of Geomatic and Faun for inspiration and ideas for a slightly more exotic Asian/Arabic/Celtic/Medieval techno soundtrack.

I also wrote up a tiny section of the game (maybe five minutes or so worth of gameplay and a cutscene) in prose, just to kind of get some of my ideas out of my head and down somewhere I can see and review them. Of course, some things are slightly embellished for story-telling purposes; not everything I wrote down would be completely possible or practical to include in the game mechanics, but I know that. I might post up the non-spoiler section of it for people to read over, if anyone's interested. It's not very long: About a thousand words; a page and a half, or so.

Shameless double post.

Here's the scene I wrote down the other day. Note: Possible spoilers ahead, along with some gratuitous violence and a lot of strong language, as well.

It's from about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through the game, I'd guess. The description of the room Trish is in is most likely subject to change. Also, just to be clear, the place she's in is a deep-space research station with artificial gravity. Its natural gravity is near zero, which is what the capsule she's trying to open is suspended in; a pocket of microgravity unaffected by the station's artificial gravity generators. Zero gravity is something I'm working on including in the gameplay.

Link: Darkfire - Extraction