What would you like to see from Frictional next?

[LSunday]

I was talking with some friends, and came up with the idea that a Co-op story, if done properly, could really work, and we came up with ideas that would help it along.

Basically, you need to make the immersion match. If you have two characters in a chat or something, it would get too easy to break the illusion. So, we came up with using the computer's internal mic.

Basically, the game would create a voice chat between you in your partner, but ONLY if you and your partner are within a certain range of each other (earshot). The sound made by your mic would spread in the world a certain range, based on the volume, and not only could your partner hear you, but the monsters can as well- forcing you to be quiet in real life when you see a creature.

The game would also have to make you fear for the well-being of your partner as well as yourself. In order to do this, the game would have to split you up frequently to solve puzzles- And, importantly, it would have to not immediately restart if one of you died. We came up with two restart options: You both die, OR your partner finds your body. In order to keep it interesting, a creepy ghost control could be made (Like the wind in Amnesia, only player controlled), so if you died you need to try to tell your partner (in this situation, the voice chat range would disconnect). Or, you could just snap to your partner's screen and watch them for a while.

Obviously, this is risky. It wouldn't be very hard to break the illusion- However, if done properly, a co-op horror could potentially be much scarier than the single-player, by not only using fear for yourself, but fear for another person. And with the 'finding the body' technique, when you realize your partner has died, you then have to venture into an area that you ALREADY KNOW is dangerous.