Vapourware Routine - Upcoming First Person Space Horror

[Renegen]

I think they're going for the Amnesia feel, but it looks good nonetheless. I'm not sure if an indie can create a truly powerful experience though, a game based on atmosphere and graphics needs a certain budget.

 

[tindrli]

for some reason this robot ruined my immersion..

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I think they're going for the Amnesia feel, but it looks good nonetheless. I'm not sure if an indie can create a truly powerful experience though, a game based on atmosphere and graphics needs a certain budget.

You don't get a huge budget to have good art and sound design. If anything, horror games can often get by with lower production costs. Look at the video, what little voice acting there is, is of the super cheap "garbled robotic voice" variety, no human enemies, so you don't need mocapped animations, and I would imagine the game doesn't have a lot of explosive set pieces and cutscenes. Making a pretty and detailed environment isn't that expensive anyway, as shown by tons of amateur modders and mapmakers for CryEngine and UE3.

The primary "low budget" indicator is going to be the game's bugginess upon launch, most likely.

 

[sexbad?]

I'm hoping there will be a challenge to actually navigating the world. The video reminds me more of Miasmata than Amnesia or SS2 or anything else. It's about surviving in a sandbox environment with supposedly few enemy encounters while searching for information and plot items. Part of what made Miasmata so fucking great was that you had to be aware of your surroundings. You had to map the world out by yourself with a cartography system, and you had to find safe means of navigating inclines and all that. I should like to see Routine having a navigation element that doesn't just feed you all the information you need, even though it's probably possible to map everything out via computer because science fiction.

What could harm this is the game's randomized nature, since we don't know how detailed the randomization will be. An entire network of corridors complete with pre-furnished interactive points, scripts and hazards could be this game's idea of a single module, for all we know. On the other hand, if the layout of the environment changes dramatically between each playthrough, then exploration could become an extremely involved mechanic, and the somewhat simple looking mechanics like enemy avoidance would be nice background elements that are more there to spice the game up. It would also make new playthroughs potentially as challenging as the first time you tried at it.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Interview, with new gameplay video:
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-the-moon/1100-4761/

Thanks for reminding myself this is still a Day Fucking 1 purchase.

 

[The Vanished One]

...A lot of people associate permadeath with difficulty. Because it has permadeath, the game’s going to be hard. That’s not the case with us. We didn’t put permadeath in there as a difficulty curve. We actually put it in there purely to make the player understand that there are consequences to his actions. He can just throw away everything if he’s not careful. I didn’t finish Amnesia. I’m not a big fan of puzzles, and the puzzles in Amnesia, to me, were a difficulty curve. If I’m not very interested in them, I’m not going to put a lot of effort into figuring the puzzles out. Therefore, I get a little bit stuck on finding the pieces and putting them in and so on. To me, that was it personally because I’m not as interested in puzzles. It was a bigger difficulty curve than a difficult platformer or something. It’s interesting. Ideally, for me personally, a player may not die at all from start to finish but he knows that if he does die, then he will lose everything. That would be the perfect scenario, just like your situation with the water monster. You got it perfectly your first time, but you had that real close encounter with death, with dying. It was a perfect setup for you. Ideally, that would happen in Routine, too. [laughs] But you’re trying to make sure that if you do die, there’s definitely huge amounts of variation, and the way that you play again is up to you. It’s not just repeating the same thing at all.

This approach still leaves me unconvinced... also, not finishing Amnesia because of the puzzles

Still, I want to like this, and I'm cautiously hopeful.

 

[keppj0nes]

Interview, with new gameplay video:
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-the-moon/1100-4761/

Thanks for reminding myself this is still a Day Fucking 1 purchase.

new gameplay video? isn't that the same as the "alpha gameplay trailer"?

 

[Behelit]

Interview, with new gameplay video:
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-the-moon/1100-4761/

Thanks for reminding myself this is still a Day Fucking 1 purchase.

new gameplay video? isn't that the same as the "alpha gameplay trailer"?

Cock tease!

 

[Silva]

So whats up with this game ? I thought it was almost finished ?

Is Dead Space any good for satiating my system shock fix while this dont come up ?

 

[chestburster]

Is Dead Space any good for satiating my system shock fix while this dont come up ?

No. But Dead Space (the first one, sequels are shit) is pretty good in itself.

 

[Metro]

First, you need to learn to use the tag. As far as Derpspace goes, the first is worth a playthrough. The limb-centric combat is decent enough.

 

[xemous]

So whats up with this game ? I thought it was almost finished ?

Is Dead Space any good for satiating my system shock fix while this dont come up ?

all the dead space games including 2 and 3 are worth playing.

 

[chestburster]

So whats up with this game ? I thought it was almost finished ?

Is Dead Space any good for satiating my system shock fix while this dont come up ?

all the dead space games including 2 and 3 are worth playing.

2 and 3 are good for what they are (TM). First one is a minor masterpiece. Other than using the monster closet cliche (which TBH is a limitation of the genre), it is flawless.

 

[Ivan]

3 is garbage. 1 and 2 are good. 1 impresses with its gameplay and story, 2 excells in gameplay and features a worse story. 3 is like COD Dead Space.

 

[mindx2]

3 is garbage. 1 and 2 are good. 1 impresses with its gameplay and story, 2 excells in gameplay and features a worse story. 3 is like COD Dead Space.

So whats up with this game ? I thought it was almost finished ?

Is Dead Space any good for satiating my system shock fix while this dont come up ?

all the dead space games including 2 and 3 are worth playing.

2 and 3 are good for what they are (TM). First one is a minor masterpiece. Other than using the monster closet cliche (which TBH is a limitation of the genre), it is flawless.

Can you rebind the movement keys on Dead Space 1 to the mouse buttons? When it first came out I heard you couldn't.

 

[Borelli]

So whats up with this game ? I thought it was almost finished ?

Is Dead Space any good for satiating my system shock fix while this dont come up ?

Dead Space is more Resident Evil 4 in space than a System Shock game IMO.

 

[tindrli]

i just dont give a fuck about dead space

 

[Sodafish]

I tried Dead Space once. Uninstalled after about half an hour.

 

[Sodafish]

Nah, from what I remember the controls were horribly wonky and the gameplay just didn't grab me.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The controls are so wonky you need a Hex Editor to set some of them.

I tried setting the controls, saved the configuration and the game RESET them for me... because.

Dead Space suffers from terminal consolitis.

 

[chestburster]

Nah, from what I remember the controls were horribly wonky and the gameplay just didn't grab me.

Controls are supposed to be wonky because you're a space engineer wearing a ton of metal armor using space tools that are generally not suited for combat.

Suppose you're fighting some beast in real life and you're using your home vacuum cleaner to kill that beast. You're going to feel wonky as hell because the vacuum cleaner is not ergonomically designed to be wielded in that way. Same goes for the mining tools in DS1.

DS2 made Issac agile and the control responsive. Thus DS2 lost its appeal to me.

 

[Sodafish]

Rationalising bad design as a deliberate feature

If the controls are better in DS2 it's because they realised their fuckup in the original and fixed it.

Anyway, this is derailing the thread at this point so let's just leave it be.

 

[Excidium]

The mouse lag was the main deal breaker in DS1

 

[chestburster]

Rationalising bad design as a deliberate feature

More like bad design ("bad" being subjective) resulting in an interesting mechanism that can be rationalized by game lore.

 

[tindrli]

i just cant believe that you're still talking about fucking DS

Start a DS thread FFS this is "upcoming Routine" remember??