Scary House Guest places you in the shoes of the spirit of a dead person whose currently waiting in limbo. To past the time, your spirit has volunteered to take part in the hauntings of several residences and buildings, take care of some unfinished business and complete some quests along the way. There would also be a more sinister underlying plot so that this is not just a collection of random levels.
Being a ghost on a slightly misaligned plane to reality, you are invisible, silent and have the ability to walk through objects. You can see into the minds of people by placing your hand on their shoulder. You may appear as a glimpse in a mirror or in the background of a photo being taken, but ultimately in order to actually interact with the real world you must draw from a regenerable "ectoplasmic energy reservoir" you have. The energy available to you in it increases to the more your mark believes that something strange is going on, and thus more draining interactions become available.
Your various marks range from true believers to the unmovable skeptics. Obviously more has to be done to make the skeptical believe. Here, various the haunting interactions (acts) available to you include the usual moaning and groaning, audible footsteps, invisible touch, magical display and actual movement of objects. Choosing a particular combination of acts can also determine what class of ghost you can become, which have their own unique haunting acts and abilities. For example, a poltergeist would have greater control over movement of objects.
In similar fashion to Black & White, there is also an alignment system, so you can be a friendly ghost or an evil ghost. You can completely terrorise your marks or even try to make friends with them, even help them out with some things. Some may choose to help you! These also open further classes and abilities such as Guardian whos job is to protect or Bringer of Death sent to punish the wicked.
Apart from your hauntees, they'll also be a wide variety of personalities to meet on the way, from paranormal researchers, to exorcists, ghost busters, reality TV crews, famous ghosts and even Death himself...
The game would have multiple endings, based on your actions in the game. However, there will be no direct references to where you'll actually end up at the end of your journey.
I envision this would be a 3rd persion 3D game, probably looking a bit like The Sims with a fully rotatable 3D world and a movable camera.-- mrkillboy, Jun 27 2001 Bubble Ghost http://www.geocitie...989/bubbleghost.htmNot exactly what you mentioned, but a top game with a smiley little ghost! [Pallex, Jun 27 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004] I'm moving my O-vote to this one.-- nick_n_uit, Jun 27 2001 Wassa wibni Mephi?-- Lemon, Jun 27 2001 WIBNI = "Wouldn't It Be Nice If", something impractical that is frequently desired, like infinite energy, flying cars, mind reading, free lunch. (See also, the help section on marked-for-deletion.)
Mephista either deliberately or accidentally overlooked that the item described is a computer game.-- jutta, Jun 27 2001 All right, let's say a true believer and an unmoveable skeptic are in their bedroom in a New Orleans guesthouse, at a *highly charged moment*, when the bedside lamp goes on. No dusk lighting scheme, no automatic switch; just the antique on/off key, high up inside the lamp, which is difficult to turn in the first place. And naturally, the key hasn't moved.
Let's say the true believer immediately realizes that a visitor from the spirit world is in the room, and that the visitor is female and friendly, and what's more, this was probably her room to begin with. Let's say the unmoveable skeptic (now scared out of his wits) speaks to the proprietor of the guesthouse the next day, and confirms not only the true believer's realizations, but also secures the name of the ghost.
If all of the above is true, and UnaBubba is correct (as he often is), suppose the process works in reverse: the spirit can place herself in the shoes of the living person. Imagine the game you could play in that case! Why, it might be years before any of the living person's loved ones realize there's an antebellum plantation mistress running around in her shoes!
This is a perfectly lovely idea, mrkillboy. I'd certainly play it myself, if I wasn't playing already. I further declare, sir, that the 21st is by far my favorite century. Much better than the last two.-- 1percent, Jun 27 2001 Taking control of a person would still drain the Ectoplasmic Energy Reservoir, and be only good for short things, such as persuading people, like that scene in which Ted possesses his detective father in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
This is really has more to do with today's computer abilities as what you are describing 1percent, would be far to complex for them to handle.
But that anyway is an excellent idea and would be a fantastic stand alone game.-- mrkillboy, Jun 28 2001 I give it an Aye, though it's already been done... kind of... on the Genesis platform in the form of a game called "Haunting... Starring Polterguy"
But that was an action game.-- Lank, Apr 10 2002 random, halfbakery