80s Style Slasher Flick game

Yeah, but some of them will actually be grateful for it, so it’s still fantasy in that aspect.

Looking forward to it.

Eh, if it’s too tongue in cheek then it runs the risk of having that kind of “I’m oh so clever” vibe. But if it’s too true to slasher movies, then it runs the risk of a) being formulaic for those quite familiar with the genre, and b) the characters could come off as annoying as all get out depending on which 80s slasher movies you draw inspiration from.

Remember if you’re playing to stereotypes, the virgin nerd girl would have the best chance of surviving to the end, while the slutty party girl would have the worst chance.

If this is a camp, then you’ve got more than a few selections to chose from as far as type of psycho killers go:

The traditional route would be to use an invincible Jason type character. Just brute force, but he’s pretty direct with how he’s killing people and doesn’t bother with traps and such. He might not even bother sneaking up on them and will just suddenly bust down the door and chop their heads off. Kill scenes don’t need to be too inventive, though still a variety of deaths should be included.

You could make him “dumb” but given that he’s been successfully killing people at the camp for years, it at least puts him at animal cunning level and probably higher than some of the victims. Plus he’d know the camp and surrounding woods like the back of his hand and have the big advantage there. He is probably slower than all the victims so outrunning him works, but only if he’s still in sight. As soon as you can’t see him anymore he could suddenly pop up again. He doesn’t need too much motivation for killing people, but a short little description of why still helps. He doesn’t speak either, he lets his axe, machete, spear gun, etc. do the work.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to make him supernatural or not. If he’s supernatural then that explains his invincibility. The victims have to find his original grave, mom’s locket, a cross or whatever to actually kill him for good. If he’s just a plain old crazy human that’s just incredibly strong and tough, then doing enough damage should do the trick and you could probably tone down his “teleport” ability.

If you’re making one of the “victims” into the psycho, then I’d suggest giving several of them personal problems of some sort, just to keep everyone off balance on who the killer is. The motivation can be almost anything, from the traditional mother issues to they love the camp so much that they never want all the new friends they’ve made to ever leave.

This killer should be much more clever. Setting up traps like showers that pour acid instead of water, locking the outhouse door and funneling in killer bees, etc. And while “playing sane” they should be misdirecting everyone as much as possible. Once this killer is found out though, they shouldn’t be as hard to kill (Though perhaps a little tougher brought on by psycho power of course)

The next kind involves multiple killers. In this case, you should at least have a trio of psychos. Probably an inbred family that has taken offense to one of the campers getting too close to their neck of the woods. One of the psychos is most likely going to be the strong retarded one and will be doing the majority of killing. He’ll be harder to physically hurt, but a lot easier to outwit. The second one will be the “average psycho”, they may even appear “normal” at first. Definitely smarter than the first one but not as strong or tough. The last one will probably be the “brains” of the bunch and they’ll be directing the other two. Probably older, could be a parent or older sibling. Together they would all probably be using a mixture of direct and indirect methods to kill folks.

This one can get grimmer, mainly because you’ll also have to write the twisted family dynamic. While the other two examples are just killing people, this group is probably attempting to capture a few of them alive to taunt and torture for amusement purposes. Then kill, eat them and make furniture out of their bones. They might even be doing worse than that, but I imagine there’s a limit to what is allowed on here.

Yeah, I doubt Love SICK would stay linked on this site for long. Then again I don’t think I could nor do I have any intention of trying to write something that horrifying.

I don’t think I could do the psycho hillbillies right now mainly because I just recently watched the only horror movie I’ve seen about psycho hillbillies and it’s actually not about psycho hillbillies at all. BTW: Tucker and Dale vs Evil is awesome.

Thanks for the input End Master. I think it’ll be very useful.

By the way, @Vendetta You have that cool save feature in your game, I think something like that would be especially useful in a game like this where a far greater number of options can lead to dying horribly.

@Shoelip It does seem to make a big difference in players’ appreciation of a game where the risk of dying is often just a wrong choice away . . . Starting from the very beginning again is just too much like hard work.

I’m very happy to share the simple system I use in Vendetta with anyone who wants to use it in their own game. If you don’t have the means / know-how to grab it yourself from the online files, feel free to PM me with your email and I’ll provide the guidelines & sample code.

Further to the above, I’ve posted to the forum the basic system I use, as it’s entirely possible others might be able to improve on it.

this sounds like a great game that if done right can make you think

What if the PC was the killer? O.o

@Colonel_Sanders Then we’d have a totally different game. Anyway I don’t see myself making this any time soon, I should probably tell everyone that in case they were anticipating it.

Damn, good idea though

OK, so now that finals are done with I’m thinking about actually trying to start doing this. So while I’m studying how to actually make a choicescript game I was hoping for some ideas and thoughts from people here. Specifically, what kinds of stats do you think would work for this kind of game?

Continuing @Colonel_Sanders idea even though you don’t want it. :stuck_out_tongue:

What if, strangely, you faint and when you regain consciousness, you don’t remember anything that happened in the past 2 hours. (And you appear in a different place) Oh, and every time you regain consciousness, a murder is reported. :stuck_out_tongue:

To add to that, you join the other NPC ‘survivors’ to try to survive together without knowing you’re the killer. And soon, each of the other NPC’s start dieing.

Since you said if the PC dies, we pick another NPC. And that my idea states the PC is the killer, I got an idea!

The PC, when blacked out, kills himself? Lol. And when you pick another NPC, somehow, they too end up getting this “blacking out disease” and start to kill the others?

Crazy but possible.

CountDon, please learn to use the Edit button.

I did actually see this one indie slasher flick once about an alien orb that takes over people and makes them kill until the die, at which point it moves on to another(of course the characters never thought of the idea of restraining their insane murderous friends instead of murdering them back…). That would be an interesting concept, although it’s not really what I had in mind.

I did learn how to use it. That’s why I edited the first comment and changed ‘black out’ to ‘blacking out’. *Trollface* Lol

Hm, I wouldn’t have admitted that if I were you.

Hey what if the murderer is one of your friends in your social circle (not best friend because you would notice that somethings up) and he/she has a giant emotional event in her/his life like parents die or sister dies and nobody notices until it’s too late and the ones who do notice are the ones who die next.

This is just a small idea and it might not fit in with your game. :slight_smile:

That one has already been suggested actually. I’m not sure, with all the other stuff I’m going to try to do, that making the killer a random member of the group every time is a good idea on my first game. And if it’s the same member of the group every time that hurts the replay value. Also, it means I don’t get to make a separate killer and means there’s one character I can’t kill off.

Anyone got any ideas for stats? I’m thinking I may imitate Slasher Flick by Spectrum Games and use Brawn, Brains, and Spirit. Then I’ll just try to work out how those work from there.

Well next time I’ll look more thoroughly at the comments before making a suggestion.
Live and learn

I have no idea.
But don’t worry someone who has experience will answer soon enough.