[Concept] Shadow Hunter Tactical FPS
This game concept was actually born from a dream I had after having been playing a bunch of Ready or Not and having seen a friend streaming some Alan Wake gameplay. It's uh, very easy to see how exactly it all coalesced together in my mind.
The core gameplay is a multiplayer PvE tactical first-person shooter. The whole idea is that the players are members of a special military squad dispatched to deal with shadowy otherworldy beings who have breached into our reality. These creatures are shrouded in a regenerating shadowy energy which nullifies most weapons, so to defeat them the player must burn away this armour with bright light. To stop this just being a matter of shining a flashlight at the enemy though, they'd probably have some method of killing persistent light sources. Maybe they can straight-up drain electrical power from objects?
The tactics in it all come in the form of a variety of tools available to the player. Flash traps serve as a method to quickly strip the armour of an enemy players can lure onto it, tracer bullets allow players to at least deal some damage to shrouded enemies, dazzler rifles allow a player to forgo their lethal weapon to focus on exposing enemies while their allies deliver the killing blows.
Much like Ready or Not, gameplay would consist of tailor-made maps rather than any sort of persistent world but with different variants for different gameplay modes. Extermination would serve as the default mode with the objective simply being to eliminate all creatures on-site with the creatures behaviour set to use guerilla tactics and generally be non-direct in their attacks on the players.
Nest Clearance would then be a more difficult mode wherein the players have to clear a more entrenched site with much more aggressive enemies, perhaps even having additional enemy spawners or a boss creature guarding the nest proper. Alternatively the nest clearance procedure could be an area defence type objective thing where players need to set up some specialized UV spotlight or something and guard it against incoming enemies until its burned away the nest's shroud? There's a few possibilities for this honestly, hell, maybe all of the above could work, either in combination or perhaps randomly chosen at mission creation.
Thinking about enemy design, I think it's important that the enemies look and feel alien. The most basic type of enemy would probably be a small bipedal or tripedal little thing with no arms – think of a body akin to that of the little drones from Metal Gear Rising or the fleshcrafted creatures from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. The ability to climb along the walls and ceiling like an insect despite their shape would probably make for a good creepy vibe. For a stealthier, more insidious enemy type, I’m thinking some manner of creature that lurks against the walls, trying to blend in as a shadow before lunging to strike any player who passes it.
I think maps featured would generally be indoor areas because I think it would work better with the spookier aspects of the game as well as the tactical approaches to room clearing and usage of tools. Plus thematically an outdoor area would be a pretty transient place for such an infestation to take place, wouldn’t it? I dunno, maybe an outdoor area in the middle of the day would make for a pretty good tutorial stage against weakened enemies, ending with clearing a dark shed of an enemy proper to teach the player about clearing the shrouds?
I think that about sums up the concept as far as I’ve considered it. Definitely suffers from being a bit derivative overall, but I think the sum of the elements overall could still make for a pretty interesting and fun experience that mixes the tactical, thoughtful FPS play of Ready or Not with the creepiness and dread of something like Phasmophobia perhaps?
