Atmosphere.
Gerry Kevin Wilson
discussion of atmosphere in text adventures.)
Atmosphere is vital to the feel of a text adventure, or even a graphic
adventure. But the trouble is, it's also a very tenuous thing to grasp hold
of. But, I'll do my best to see if I can decipher some of it both for my
own information and anyone who is interested. To do this, I'll look at some
specific atmospheres and see how I would create them.
Horror: I'll start here because it's one of the easier effects in my mind.
First, I'd start out by watching my vocabulary closely. I'd use words
like leprous, misshapen, and cancerous. Anything that gives a diseased
feel to the story. Then, I'd use a couple of Cliffhangers (see my plot
post) to frighten or unnerve the player. Also, I'd have some innocent
item produce frightening effects. I'd delve deep into horror stories
of all sorts and come up with a suitable Big Nasty (tm). Now, this is
only my personal opinion, but I would put the player's personae in danger
rather than a companion. Brings it home better. ( still think Horror of
Rylvania is great.) Hmm...some sort of wasting curse or slow possession
would be fun. Creaking doors, footsteps, I MIGHT use, MAYBE. Probably
not. They've become quite hackneyed. I liked one scene in Piranhas 2
where this guy drops his watch into a murky sink and you just know a fish
is gonna eat him when he reaches in...but it doesn't. Then, just as he
turns around, a fish jumped him. (Flying fish, hilarious stuff.) Scared
the hell out of me because I was busy relaxing. I might even plunk the
player into a dark room with a nasty, player only hears a slight breathing
and a steady scraping of feet that gets closer as he fumbles a match,
and then strikes another just in time to illuminate a living corpse's
face staring mindlessly at him. It's the little touches that make the
big impacts.
Next, I'll look at umm...
Mysterious - This one is fun. I get images of thick fog and strange lights.
Of corpses that have no business being where they are, and of course,
sinister men huddling in London alleys with scalpels. (There's a thought,
anyone want to write a game about Jack the Ripper? I'd be glad to help
with publishing and packaging and such.) Words like tenuous, inexplicable
and the ever popular moonlit trip from the tongue. I don't like secret
passages in old houses though. My idea of mysterious (add this to future
Vertigo games list) is this: Something called _Lost in the Fog_. The
player is a survivor from the Titanic, adrift, clutching a life preserver.
Freezing in the ice cold waters that killed many of the survivors, it
seems that death is inevitable. Just then, a bell rings distantly through
the fog, and the player can swim for the sound. He finds the sound is
coming from an old Spanish Galleon, miraculously afloat. So he climbs
aboard, and hears footsteps. The player evades the footsteps and searches
the ship, discovering that its crew is somehow alive as well. Have they
been transported forward in time, or he backwards? One of the player's
ancestors is aboard the ship, and will befriend the strange young man who
calls his name. But according to legend, the ship went down in a vast
vortex that appeared inexplicably in its path. Just then, the player
hears a loud rushing sound, and realizes that history can't be changed,
but perhaps, just perhaps, it can be avoided. (Also, any Twilight Zone
episode (the old series))
I also wrote a humor one, but it didn't come out well, so I'll try again for
a more upbeat atmosphere another day. (It's these finals depressing me.)
--
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