There's horror movies, horror FPS's, horror TPS's, horror RPG's (I think. There has to be one out there). What do you think about horror RTS's? Me personally think it's a good concept, but very hard to pull off. To be scared, you need to be in an "intimate" position with the game and its characters, which is not possible in an RTS. Normally in an RTS, you're a commander directing the battle from an unassailable position. I'd love to see it happen nevertheless.
Has to have a nice next gen graphics and has to be almost as real like final fantasy graphics but only scarier.
I think it wouldn't be possible with how the genre mechanics currently work. There is a reason why they havn't used RTS to make a horror game. RPG's and FPS work because they can be very immersive in their atomosphere and enviroments. They would have to make it very detailed and in a close up view etc to be really good. Honestly, no horror video games has been able to scare me at all yet except for maybe silent hill 2.
Yeah sure it can be done! , kinda like killzone liberation but better sort of a siuation or something like doom , duke nukem but more scarier sorta stuff where the alien's are very freaky alien's! , iff that;s what You mean then YES it could be done! just a little bit more depth and differnt view's!
In FPS you die: BAD! In RTS your men die: Shit happends. Idiotic but very true explanation, so horror RTS games don't exist! ;D
well the cinematic scenes on StarCraft were pretty horrific, and I think thats as close as we're gonna get. Unless Blizzard has something up there sleeve waiting for us on SC2... stay tuned.
What if you're commanding your men in a dark and creepy atmosphere then suddenly! A face pops out on the screen and yells at you for 10 seconds and you fall off your chair and then you'd be like: "Aw man, that was hardcore." I like it
It can probably be done, but it would not be scary for all the players. A horror RTS have to include something that scares, right? That means that one of the races have to be the scary ones, which means that that race wouldn't be frightened.
Well if the screen went blank and I lost half an army that would scare the crap out of me. O wait that already happens. Its called a video driver crash.
The best an RTS can get in regards to horror is unnerving. Its just not personal of an experince enough.
The key to making horror scary is keeping the environment outside of the player's control. You need to create a sense of desperation that is typically done by limiting movement, ammunition, and sight. You are typically either pushing into some impossible hellish situation, or running to escape it. To do this in an RTS you'd have to forgo static structures (this is possible, but rarely done) or you're stuck to the "locked in the barn fighting off zombies" scenario, which, while it's done in RTSs, can't be the base of the game's gameplay. The desperation could be created by making the game's resources dangerous to harvest, increasing their value, and forcing the player to cherish every bit. Realistically though, players hate it when you do that kind of thing to them, so it would would require incredible game design to get that to work. The main reason I don't think a horror RTS would work is that it requires a sort of personal connection between the player and the character. They have to be able to place themselves into that situation in order to properly fear it. In an RTS, you're controlling many entities. This is not something that people can connect to personally, because people can only connect one entity: themselves.
10-Neon you raise some excellent points, but I disagree entirely. Here are my reasons. You say people cannot sympathize with an army of soldiers and such, but I disagree. Here's what I would do If I was forced to make a horror themed RTS. First thing, you have a SQUAD. Think Aliens here people, you sympathized with those charectors, and I don't see why it couldn't work here. You would be limited to yourself and the squad to an indoor envirement. You would be one of the charectors, and your squad should be.. roughly... I dunno six people to start? Next, RTS' need management. Have a HQ, say the bridge of an infested ship, a place to purchase upgrades and work various ship subsystems to manage the squad has it makes its way down narrow, dark corridors. Then you have the aliens. Give them things like say... cloaking for a short period of time, teleporting short distances. To fully grasp my meaning check out the Half-Life 1 mod Natural Selection, a RTS/FPS where the commander is playing a strategy game, and the other players are playing as marines in an FPS. That kind of envirement would be PERFECT for a horror FPS, random members of your squad dissapearing, losing comms with your base, stuff like that. Its very doable, it would just take an obnoxious amount of attention to detail. Sorry if the description doesnt make sense, I'm half in sleeply land here... my sentence structure and fluidity has gone all kablooie. :bad: Hopefully you all get my meaning.
I am not sure I would call what you're describing a "strategy game" it sounds more like an RPG with character-independent control, kind of like the RPGs you can play in UMS games in StarCraft. Also, the focus on squad control pulls the concept away from "strategy" and towards "tactics". While the game industry itself puts very little effort into acknowledging a distinction between the two, there is a distinction nonetheless. Strategy deals with long-term planning, meaning you should be able to anticipate future events. In a horror game, the effect is achieved almost exclusively through surprise, meaning knowledge of future possibilities would negate that aspect of the game. A horror game, from the point from the view of the player, is strictly tactical. They must deal with the situation on a moment-by-moment basis. Long-term plans are or are expected to be trumped by whatever force they are fighting to overcome. Now, your example with the FPS/RTS hybrid can be played as a horror game for the people playing the FPS aspect. They do not have the control the RTS person would have, and they are unable to prepare for incoming attacks beyond what their equipment and surroundings afford them. For the RTS player, however, they could not be expected to get much emotional value from the experience, because unlike their underlings, they do have the power to affect where and how battles take place, and they are not personally at risk when the team is killed. Rather, once the team is killed, if the bogeys set out to get the RTS player, the RTS player either stops being an RTS player, and drops down to the role-level of the FPS players, and must fight tactically or, if the RTS player has defenses at their disposal, it fails to have the absence of large-scale control that is necessary to create a horror atmosphere.
