Making RimWorld Spooky -- the argument for scary and existential threats

[REMworlder]

^{spooooooky John Kenn}

Lots of what makes danger a compelling subject is the uncertainty. RimWorld eliminates much of this, down to the exact percentages I see of how likely a shot is to hit a target. What we need is something that goes off the rails and threatens not only the colony, but the player's imagination.

The narratives we find in historical tales are pretty scary, like Black Forest witches eating children or Aztec priests ripping out conquistador hearts on bloody pyramids. And some fates are worse than death: don't get your soul devoured by Ammit the Egyptian soul-eater! Or you might be turned into something you don't want, an unwilling shade, werewolf, vampire, or undead lich.

Now these are all predictable tropes, but many more abound in lesser-known tales and imagination. Really what makes these exotic and supernatural dangers less scary is they're quite well defined. A good threat is ambiguous and painted in broad strokes with only brief highlights of the especially horrifying. Beset by one monster -- yes that's bad -- but what if he has buddies? And what monsters scare your monster?

^{Colonists: the real monster?}

In all of this, the funny thing is RimWorld colonies are probably the most terrifying places on the planet, strewn with human meat and leather, decomposing bodies, and art commemorating gruesome victories. Not only will a colonist shoot off your leg, she'll throw you in a room, take your organs, and feed you nutrient paste made of your friends. Then immortalize it in sculpture.

Meanwhile, raiders, tribals, and mechanoids all are lethally-straightforward. Sometimes they'll kidnap a colonist -- and there's some ambiguity there -- but most of the time they'll just apply bullets or arrows until your colonists are dead. In this sense they're not entirely different from dealing with the flu or other illnesses, albeit the method of treatment varies. Adopting very clinical attitude towards them is easy.

^{Scope: dwarf the colony in size}

The suggestions:

Feed some details, but not too many
-Imagine tribals carry human flesh instead of meals in their inventory. If colonists get captured what happens to them? Possibly lunch. What a great implication.

Add some scary monsters
-The animals in RimWorld aren't that weird; they're all analogues to what you'd find on earth with the exception of boomrats and boomalopes. But boomrats don't hunger for human flesh and just do their own thing. Manhunters are a start, but some genuinely eldritch horrors are needed. Picture a warg digging up corpses or dragging its incapacitated prey away.

Hint at scope
-A giant shadow falls across the map. A group of tribals appears, but they're already fleeing. A mechanoid ship crash lands, and you find a human inside hooked up to something. None of these give specific stories, but give broad strokes that add to the emergent stories players are building.

A Fear Debuff
-Some things should scare players. I'm not suggesting re-introducing the Fear system, but fear is an intuitive emotion. In contrast to bad thoughts caused from things like psychic waves. Fear should be brief -- it's not dread -- and triggered by specific types of enemies, objects, or environments.

The void gods
Like mentioned in the kickstarter, gods are great for providing a little ex machina and the occasional punishment for hubris and lack of faith. Also a great source of curses and religious cults that go maybe just a little too far and summon something they shouldn't have.

Unbeatable odds
You know how in zombie apocalypses people are told to stay inside? More events to force a player to lock the doors and hide, just like the Maneater event. Except maneater is more an opportunity for free food than anything. Different than a raid where the threat actively destroys the colony, these lock-the-door threats should be solvable by locking the door and not opening it for any reason for awhile.

Ghosts
While Towns now rests in development hell, it did a good job incorporating spooky elements into the game. Especially ghosts, which spawned when townies were left unburied and would rampage among the living meting out violence. RimWorld wouldn't need to use the same mechanic, but imagine the shimmering outline of a dead colonist roaming during a psychic wave event. Ghosts -- or whatever their RimWorld equivalent is -- are a great recurring player in myth. Their consistent irritability, remote personalities, and aloofness are great for suggesting greater scope as well; how bad is something if it bugs someone who's already dead?

[Thane]

Some atmosphere would definitely be appreciated. Maybe if you chop people up you occasionally get a ghost siege during psychic events.

[Limdood]

i definitely don't want more "wait inside" events.  Toxic fallout is already boring as hell.

I wouldn't mind some "horrors" on the map though...abominable snowman type unique enemies...probably treated as an event like thrumbos.  You COULD treat them like manhunters...stay indoors and let them pass, or meet the horror head-on and try to kill it for some effect...maybe neurotrainer-like items or psychic insanity lances or some such.

As a whole, however, i think that most of the aspects you're proposing belong in a horror themed game, and really have no place in rimworld, which is basically rustic sci-fi.  Psychic waves are the closest thing to "magic" or supernatural that the game has, and, in my opinion, rightly so...

I believe that horror elements are strictly in the realm of mods...let a "zombie invasion" happen, have weird "sacred" sites on the map that punish you for desecration, make ghosts appear and give a mood penalty or heck, just have a ghost appear and float into a colonist to cause a hard or soft instant mental break.  Just keep it out of the cold and clinically scientific base game.

[NuclearStudent]

I thought this game was a furnishings and haberdashery simulator.

If we're going to add spooky events, I do love the idea of seeing a horde of terrified travelers dash through your colony, followed by an invasion by some freaky giant black ghost whisp that screams like a banshee, doesn't suffer from stun lock, and eats through your walls. Like the It from It Follows.

Or a massive wave of panicked refugees give you a call and want to stay in your colony. If you agree, you get hit by terrifying fucking wave that's an absolute murdersaurus guaranteed to kill many, or even all the visitors. If you refuse that faction hates you now and will send a retaliation raid in a few days.

Or, like, mechanoids decide to be dicks and fire mines down from orbit. If you fuck up and step on one you won't die, but you may be missing a leg or a couple nonessential organs.

[Japzzi]

I would sure like to see some more events where you go ''Oh shit''.

I never build mountain bases so sieges are pretty annoying. But I would really like something which just makes you think that this might just be the end.
Would be cool if dangers to mountain bases would be added. Earthquakes maybe?

[Limdood]

i'm assuming earthquakes would cause a roof collapse of some sort?  that would be instantly unfun.  there are currently no events where colonists instantly die with no chance of survival while doing nothing wrong.  That would be such an event.

EVERY event is currently an "oh shit, this might be the end" event.  If your base is set up well enough, you'll fight it off.  Be it manhunters and toxic fallout and having enough food to wait it out, or a massive tribal raid and murdering them all in a killbox.  Events with NO response aren't fun...i don't mean no way to COUNTER it, i mean nothing that you can do to even diminish the effects.

[Livingston I Presume]

What about an event where the entire maps goes pitch black for a couple of days, player can't see anything that isn't illuminated by lamps, fire ect.  When colonists enter the darkness they get a huge mood debuf or general badstuff.  This would work great combined with a Scyther assault (Lets assume Scythers have thermal optics and such).  Could call it like "Dark Night" "The moon appears gone and the thick clouds are blocking all light from entering the surface.  Colonists may injure themselves in this darkness"

[Limdood]

but this is just another "stay indoors" event.

[kingtyris]

At mid-day, you receive an alert: Jerbear has been acting strange all day, claiming to hear faint voices calling to him, beckoning him into the wilderness beyond the colony. That night, you receive another alert, this time that Jerbear is sleepwalking toward the edge of the map. You send another colonist to arrest him, but before he can get to him Jerbear is off the edge of the map, never to be heard from again...

[REMworlder]

As a whole, however, i think that most of the aspects you're proposing belong in a horror themed game, and really have no place in rimworld, which is basically rustic sci-fi.  Psychic waves are the closest thing to "magic" or supernatural that the game has, and, in my opinion, rightly so...

In science fiction there's Clarke's Third Law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. RimWorld is filled with magic with different names, from the metal golems called centipedes to the arcane machines players use to commune with ships in space. What if the box Pandora opens is just Roko's basilisk? A crazy AI that likes to collect colonist organs is understandable at some basic conceptual level doesn't make it any less scary. Plus void gods are semi-canon, but that's another topic.

The frontier RimWorld takes place on is especially prime for the ambiguously threatening and weird. What if hostile tribals didn't always attack, but circled your colony at night? The player would figuratively circle the wagons the same way settlers literally did. The threat is understandable but not completely obvious. And that's where odd events come into play, by shoving something unfamiliar into the player's face.

Whatever the explanation is, science or magic, seeing eyes in the dark is frightening in an entertaining way.

What about an event where the entire maps goes pitch black for a couple of days, player can't see anything that isn't illuminated by lamps, fire ect.  When colonists enter the darkness they get a huge mood debuf or general badstuff.  This would work great combined with a Scyther assault (Lets assume Scythers have thermal optics and such).  Could call it like "Dark Night" "The moon appears gone and the thick clouds are blocking all light from entering the surface.  Colonists may injure themselves in this darkness"

When I see the darkness mods this is the first thing that comes to mind. The night is dark and full of terrors! I love Don't Starve, and it does a great job with the darkness as a mechanic. I could totally see RimWorld using the darkness for something. Besides, everyone's been afraid of the darkness at least once in their life.

At mid-day, you receive an alert: Jerbear has been acting strange all day, claiming to hear faint voices calling to him, beckoning him into the wilderness beyond the colony. That night, you receive another alert, this time that Jerbear is sleepwalking toward the edge of the map. You send another colonist to arrest him, but before he can get to him Jerbear is off the edge of the map, never to be heard from again...

I like it! Couldn't possibly be related to all the ancient ruins on the map, or the pulse rifle Jerbear pillaged from them...

[Limdood]

At mid-day, you receive an alert: Jerbear has been acting strange all day, claiming to hear faint voices calling to him, beckoning him into the wilderness beyond the colony. That night, you receive another alert, this time that Jerbear is sleepwalking toward the edge of the map. You send another colonist to arrest him, but before he can get to him Jerbear is off the edge of the map, never to be heard from again...

but this is just the "Jerbear has broken and is leaving the map" condition all over again.  Admittedly its flavored far more interesting, BUT...

...The whole POINT of rimworld is creating your own story.

Maybe i decided Jerbear has had it with this colony's shit and is just sick of it, he'll take his chances in the wilderness.

On the other hand, in the SAME event, you might decide Jerbear is "acting strangely" (mood low) and eventually "sleepwalks away" (broken and leaving the map).

Why force the flavoring on players when the design of the game is INTENTIONALLY vague, so as to allow players to make their preferred story.

Similarly, you might flavor your communications array as a complex magical device, or not...it doesn't affect me at all, so you can do what you want...write up a nice interesting story based on it and toss it on the forums.  I even read a lot of those.  But when you insert the flavoring and atmosphere into the game by default, then you remove some of the choice and versatility in creating your story.

[Regret]

Interesting discussion.

<snip>
As a whole, however, i think that most of the aspects you're proposing belong in a horror themed game, and really have no place in rimworld, which is basically rustic sci-fi.  Psychic waves are the closest thing to "magic" or supernatural that the game has, and, in my opinion, rightly so...

I believe that horror elements are strictly in the realm of mods...let a "zombie invasion" happen, have weird "sacred" sites on the map that punish you for desecration, make ghosts appear and give a mood penalty or heck, just have a ghost appear and float into a colonist to cause a hard or soft instant mental break.  Just keep it out of the cold and clinically scientific base game.

Horror does not have to be magical, read stories on 365tomorrows.com for examples of sci-fi horror. In fact, read some 365T anyway, it is usually very good. Not all of them are horror though.
One example: http://365tomorrows.com/10/30/sailors-steeplejacks-and-scouring-men/

I do agree that the psychic waves are as magical as things should get in Rimworld, I sometimes even think it goes too far.

More ambiguity and uncertainty would be nice, the events are too easily figured out now.
One thing I really like about the toxic fallout events and such is that you don't know how long they will take. You don't know if your food supply will hold out, or how many times your colonists could be allowed outside without permanent effects.

i'm assuming earthquakes would cause a roof collapse of some sort?  that would be instantly unfun.  there are currently no events where colonists instantly die with no chance of survival while doing nothing wrong.  That would be such an event.

EVERY event is currently an "oh shit, this might be the end" event.  If your base is set up well enough, you'll fight it off.  Be it manhunters and toxic fallout and having enough food to wait it out, or a massive tribal raid and murdering them all in a killbox.  Events with NO response aren't fun...i don't mean no way to COUNTER it, i mean nothing that you can do to even diminish the effects.

I agree that instant death would be boring, but a collapse that blocks a corridor or tunnel could be interesting. That alone wouldn't cause the feeling of horror though. Has anyone thought of bad air existing in tunnels that go too deep?
Something that could also be fun would be a under-mountain heatsource that causes heat management problems deep in a mountain base all of a sudden. But when handled properly could create free heating. The current heat dissipation code will need an overhaul to really make this work though.
How about a cave with fungus growing inside feeding a megascarab-spawning hive?
When the megascarabs run out of food hungry megascarabs dig tunnels through the mountain to find food. If that food happens to be your well-fed colonists... well, that could get mighty interesting.

Huh, I'm just brainstorming events here, not specifically horror. I guess i'm not very good at writing horror.

[Limdood]

Mountain mishaps...hmmm.

What about those "rooms" you occasionally come across inside the mountains?  The  "new area discovered" rooms.  What if those occasionally had manhunter animals or scythers?  Not a bunch, because running a single miner into 15 squirrels is just another instant death event. 

A pair of wargs, a single scyther, 3-4 megascarabs....something you'll probably want to run away from with your single colonist, but could handle with a little help.

Some mood penalty for deep deep moutains might be in order too, or something as simple as penalty to the "space" metric whenever you're under "overhead mountain" (it is quite an imposition on your sense of "wide open space")

[MeowRailroad]

The collapse could have rock chunks spawn on the ground and only a few tiles of the roof collapse, maybe the collapsed tiles would become rock again, so you would have to get some miners to dig trapped colonists out. Maybe they could run out of oxygen eventually.

[Thane]

For my original idea with the ghosts I meant it more like an event that lets Randy Random at you with as many pieces of paper as he wants of smaller events. We are talking death by a thousand cuts here (3-4 smaller events a day.)

Psychic waves motivated by hate couldn't directly hurt your colonists, but suddenly they start shorting out your electronics, taking over individual turrets, setting small fires, 'possessing' colonists, damaging machinery, random squirrels deciding your colonists are better than nuts, etc. Basically the worst string of small bad luck events you could think of all in a relatively short period of time.

This is where Void Gods could come in. I especially like the idea of exorcising the dead  by sacrificing a living being(s) to the Void Gods. Be it man or chickens; that choice is up to the player.