Game Jam - Space Horror
I had so much fun with the last game jam on itch.IO (Plaguebearer for Maximum Monster Month), that I've signed up for the Space Horror Jam. I was pleased overall with my submission for the previous one, really my first game ever completed, but I want to keep pushing my boundaries and evolve as a game designer/creator. This one appeals to me on a number of levels, but the three month time period is probably the greatest factor. I want to have time to really create something fun to play.
There's a lot you can do with Space Horror, from awful aliens to the psychological horror of being alone in vast space. To me, horror in space is the reality of how little there is to keep you from being sucked into the vacuum. Movies like Apollo 13 and The Martian are as much horror to me as any genre film, causing my breath to catch and my anxiety to spike. Making something that is disaster related, but also creepy and hopefully even scary is the goal.
The Wreck of the BSM Pandora is the main inspiration for this jam. I'm not copying the mechanics of the game, just going to recreate the "spirit" of it. I like the idea of the player juggling multiple disasters and trying to recapture or eliminate alien specimens.
Pandora is evocative of disaster. Opening the jar to gain knowledge but unleashing something even worse. Listening to Gaiman's Norse Mythology, I found the god Mimir to be similar to Pandora. Mimir is a god who was beheaded and Odin gets secret knowledge from it by talking to the head. That's pretty creepy in and of itself. So the ship and AI will be called Mimir.
The Xenobiological Survey Mission Mimir (or XSM Mimir, or just Mimir) is in it's fifth year of collecting samples of alien flora and fauna when it exits an FTL burst into an asteroid field. Most of the critical ship systems are damaged. The crew are roused from hypersleep by the ship AI to find that most functions are disabled, hulls are punctured and leaking oxygen, alien specimens (some quite aggressive) have escaped their containment units. The ship is starting it's cold shutdown sequence, which if completed will result in all crew and specimens freezing solid.
And go! The game jam starts tomorrow...
There's a lot you can do with Space Horror, from awful aliens to the psychological horror of being alone in vast space. To me, horror in space is the reality of how little there is to keep you from being sucked into the vacuum. Movies like Apollo 13 and The Martian are as much horror to me as any genre film, causing my breath to catch and my anxiety to spike. Making something that is disaster related, but also creepy and hopefully even scary is the goal.
The Wreck of the BSM Pandora is the main inspiration for this jam. I'm not copying the mechanics of the game, just going to recreate the "spirit" of it. I like the idea of the player juggling multiple disasters and trying to recapture or eliminate alien specimens.
Pandora is evocative of disaster. Opening the jar to gain knowledge but unleashing something even worse. Listening to Gaiman's Norse Mythology, I found the god Mimir to be similar to Pandora. Mimir is a god who was beheaded and Odin gets secret knowledge from it by talking to the head. That's pretty creepy in and of itself. So the ship and AI will be called Mimir.
The Xenobiological Survey Mission Mimir (or XSM Mimir, or just Mimir) is in it's fifth year of collecting samples of alien flora and fauna when it exits an FTL burst into an asteroid field. Most of the critical ship systems are damaged. The crew are roused from hypersleep by the ship AI to find that most functions are disabled, hulls are punctured and leaking oxygen, alien specimens (some quite aggressive) have escaped their containment units. The ship is starting it's cold shutdown sequence, which if completed will result in all crew and specimens freezing solid.
And go! The game jam starts tomorrow...
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