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Don't Starve should be more creepy. Do you agree?


XirmiX

  

51 members have voted

  1. 1. Don't Starve should be more creepy. Do you agree?

    • Yes, add more horror elements to it, to twist the mood.
      33
    • No, I like it as it is.
      18


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/\Title. Honestly I don't have anything else much to say other than that. I dunno how the game could be made more creepy, but I personally want more of it. May be make it almost as scary as Screecher. Insanity isn't too scary really. It kind of is, but not too much. It's more annoying than scary.

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first time i heard the jack in the box music when the hands try to extinguish my campfire i got shivers


first time i heard the jack in the box music when the hands try to extinguish my campfire i got shivers


first time i heard the jack in the box music when the hands try to extinguish my campfire i got shivers

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There are plenty of horror survival games out there if that's what you want.  Don't Starve straddles the line between creepy and charming quite well enough. It manages to balance dark elements, humor, and a certain sense of elegance in the gameplay.  It's great as it stands, and trying to turn it into more of a horror game would kill quite a bit of the appeal for me. 

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To me, Don't Starve has been more about quirk and charm than outright horror. It's had that theme from its inception, and sanity wasn't even an early feature in the game's development. Even the boss music is somewhat lighthearted. That said, the Ruins add a more macabre tone in appearance, ambiance, and difficulty, as only the most well-prepared players can go down there even temporarily, much less permanently. If we were to go deeper (i.e. meeting Them), I have a feeling the horror would skyrocket.

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I feel like Don't Starve has a perfect progression of creepiness to humor and quirkiness. As you start out, it feels like a simple survival game of finding food, making a camp, etc. But then, as days go by, things start to get creepier: you lose sanity and start to see hallucinations, or maybe you explored into the caves, where there is very little light and bats everywhere, or perhaps even into the Ruins, where the eerie mood really settles in and makes you constantly tense as to whether there is a horrorterror chasing your behind.

Of course, there is also the storyline, which, if one chooses to follow, can quickly turn the game into something darker than it seemed to be from your first play.

It all depends on what the player chooses.

One could stay on land living with the beefalo and pig men, happily farming and maintaining a food supply, whilst building an wonderful base.

Another could delve deep into the ruins, and go through story mode and discover what lays behind Maxwell's character.

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It seems like havingbmore horror implementednis taking the lead in the poll. My mod's been going on for quite a while now, thought recently there has been no progress due to everyone being busy. My ideas that mod will include might fascinate you guys, as the horror will be spread all across with it.

What is the one thing that quite creeps us out in the evening and especially in the nighr? No, not the swamp. Swamp is more of a death pit with not much spooks. Forest is the creepiest one. Well, to me it was, when this happened to me:

My first plays through DST were laggy and even thought I was quite good at the game, the lag and the nerfs changed everything. Despite knowing all the elements of the game, I had died due to lag and while trying to find the others again I went through a forest as a ghost. I was a ghost, I could not be harmed AND I knew the game from in-on-out, yet the whole scene scared me for some reason. It was weird, as I had never had that kind of a feeling before. So, this is what I thought would be great to be in the game so I thought to add it to my mod:

Some of you might remember when I showed quite badly drawn but quite well explained idea of how the biomes could be changed in generation and how biomes could change depwnding on the season? Well, the layout of that would make the Forest being the biome that covers most of the discoverable map. And having forest as the biome to spawn in would make it all the better in terms of creepiness. You would probably spent a maximum of a whole day walking through the forest with the mod enabled (considering that one day would take 24 minutes instead of 8).

Okay, enough spoilers, I really just want to get some stuff for the mod done and when a lot of it is I would give you something completely new, something that would make you go like ;_; or O_O but also :o:D so get hyped, cause the mod's gonna have some heck a load of content.

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Absolutely, 100% NOT.

If I wanted to play a survival horror I would play one of the other billion games in that genre.

Adding a horror element would strip the soul of this game and I would never play again.

Absolutely, 100% NOT.

If I wanted to play a survival horror I would play one of the other billion games in that genre.

Adding a horror element would strip the soul of this game and I would never play again.

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Putting together a mod for those that want it is fine, in my opinion.  As long as we're not trying to raise a battlecry to get Klei to change the base nature of the game.  Having more options is always a good thing, as long as those that don't want them aren't obliged to use them.

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I really think it's impossible for Don't Starve to be horrifying forever. It's definitely overwhelmingly creepy when you first play, but familiarity corrodes fear. It's why aversion therapy works so well in real life. It's why something as well known as vampires will never be scary again. A "scary" game that is meant to be played for a very long time is pretty much guaranteed to eventually lose its teeth. Your first run of Amnesia: TDD is going to make your heart pound out of your chest. Your fifth run of the game will probably see you stacking physics objects just to mess with Mr. Face's pathing, just for the lulz. That it doesn't usually come to that is because Amnesia is sorta only meant to be played seriously once. Don't Starve is meant to be played a whole buncha times.

 

But seriously, want to see how effective DS is at creepy? Watch a first time player react to low sanity effects around a fire. They'll get gooseflesh in no time.

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I would definitely like more horror, with both more ways to lose sanity as well as ways to maintain it and ways to profit from it. Like, I feel that having tools break on you, which is a rather violent animation, should induce a sanity penalty at least if it happens during the night. Or on a more complex level, I definitely would love implementation of a personal upkeep system (I mean, if wetness can be a thing) that influences the characters' maximum sanity or health or both. And more creatures affected by sanity than the rabbits and bunnymen is a common request anyway.
 
More kinds of shadow creatures would be nice too, in part because I feel that past the Crawling Horrors and the Hands, there's a bit of sameness to them. Like, the Crawling Horrors are utter brilliance - cowardly creeps that'll run but then you encounter a solid one and it's suddenly not running anymore. And even when not solid, they get in the way of gameplay by moving over items. I love that last part in particular, because it doesn't immediately harm you, but does create a situation in which you become more vulnerable. It's the same reason I love the hands. But the rest... well, the Terrorbeak is pretty much a regular (if difficult) enemy and the other three are just a form you find staring at you from a distance. Less fear due to familiarity is just unavoidable, but figuring out that half the variation is almost purely cosmetic is a bit of a bummer.
 
I don't really know how to spice that up. Maybe a shadow creature that only manifests as sound? I absolutely love the environmental and creature sounds of this game, but either a sound is up in the air, you know, untraceable or it comes from a source that's more important than the sound itself. How about a sound you can track to a specific spot, but there's nothing there other than the sound? The Hands already establish that sound is a form of expression to them. Or maybe shadow creatures that take the shape of the creatures in the area but (non-runningly) actively seek you out if you get close to actively induce insanity. I mean, imagine doing your daily beefalo (or pig) poop collecting and suddenly there's this shadow version of one among them slowly making its way to you (and then later you find a whole bunch of them in the ruins). Just... something that doesn't make half the shadow manifestations interchangeable.
 
And I reckon I'm not the only one who'd love to see a bit more activity at the graveyard. Maybe a keeper? Like, someone who is principally not aggressive, but will come after you if they spot you digging graves? It'd give a small bit of strategy to gravedigging that decently compensates for the chance you'll summon not a single ghost (I've had a few worlds/playthroughs like that.). And maybe their standard behavior upon spotting you can be to walk over to the nearest grave that has your name on it and just watch you from there?
 
Or in short, the idea that more creepiness equals a gameplay more akin to survival horror is nonsense. Nor is more horror bound to be pointless due to familiarity. Eternal Darkness, the first game with sanity as gameplay element I ever played, has become a breeze enemy-wise, but the atmosphere is still magnificent.

Whether it is the WWI chapters or Max's amazing descriptions of the creatures he encounters, the horror remains intact. In fact, one of my favorite parts are two separate chapters in which you enter the city of the Ancients' servants and have to go through the museum. The first chapter, exhibits escape and you have to fight them. The second time, you have to use your summon abilities to restore the exhibits. There's no fighting the second time, but I find the second time much more horrific because it feels like you are connecting with what's out for you. Like when a little later you blow up the city and have to escape and essentially have to run past clearly panicking creatures. They don't fight you at that point. It just gets me every time.
So, I think the horror can be easily enhanced without noticeably deviating from the current feel. (Not to mention the question if change is a bad thing at all, considering how much this game's already been changed since its release.)
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I forgot to mention that I don't think much in the way of gameplay mechanics is capable of creating horror on their own -- or detracting from it. The poster before this used Eternal Darkness as an example: at some point in that game you gain pretty much the ability to restore your health and sanity to full at any time with no real resource cost aside from regenerating mana. That the game is still often skin-crawling even after that point says a lot. People often cite Amnesia as a seminal horror game -- and rarely mention that it's actually impossible to permanently die outside of a couple of specific circumstances.  

 

(and outright impossible in Machine for Pigs -- though now I wonder if Maxwell had a hand in that story.)

 

 

I think the design of a horror game and the design of an overtly game-like game are often at odds. A learning and memorization-based game like Don't Starve is by its very nature antithetical to fear, due to fear being largely based on primal and illogical feelings. That's actually okay in my opinion -- it's okay if Don't Starve doesn't stay scary .

 

Because maybe it's the whole idea!  :snarlingspider:   Maybe you the player are meant to come out of the experience slightly less human! Isn't it kind of noteworthy that at the very point in the game it's likely to no longer be scary -- and you mastered the basic mechanics and thus naturally navigated Adventure mode -- that the villain Maxwell becomes playable? That's because you, the player, at this point have more in common with him (and his eldritch nature) than you do the other "victims". That's kind of a unique experience all on its own.

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   Personally I think just having a camera like in Screecher would make the game both

a lot more immersive and a lot more creepy. For one thing, you wouldn't be able to see

anything behind you, which would really be quite panic-inducing during nighttime hound

raids. For another thing, what you WOULD be able to see is the vast expanse of darkness

at night or while exploring a cave.

 

   I at one point tried to port the camera system from Screecher over to the main game

as a mod, but it proved to be WAY above my skill level.

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