Coping with incomprehensible insanity

[Treadlight]

This post is going to be rather long, please bear with me. Spoilers obviously, however know that I still have many things I've yet to find. I really wish I could just put the various chunks of text into collapsible boxes.

I'm going to preface this by saying I've only completed two runs. I'm posting here due to finding the incomprehension, "insanity artifact" on my very second run. This was shortly after finding an IFF scanner, an alien compass with a marked waypoint, and lots of just generally amazing equipment. >71k credits worth of stuff. My first run was almost entirely uneventful aside from finding a stealth omni-radar.

It took this friend until their 9th or 10th run to find the "insanity artifact", and I found it on my second run. I tried playing the game again, assuming I just got unlucky and it was supposed to be rare. Fairly early into the run, as soon as the rover returned to the ship, the normally tiny red tint in the corners of the screen got really bright and large and I closed the game immediately. So not only do I find this stupid thing on my very second run, I find it on my third run as well. Two runs in a row. Is at least one of this thing guaranteed to appear somewhere on the map every run?
One more note. I had two "Bodies in Tubes" modules in my storage. I have been keeping the storage room deprived of air, just in case. I could hear very faint breathing sounds when I got close to the modules sometimes. Just to make sure they weren't breathing, I deprived both the storage and quarters rooms of air, and watched closely after I opened the air valves temporarily. The storage room filled up very slightly more slowly than the quarters, which is rather worrying. All of this was before I got the insanity artifact, I don't know if they truly can do anything at all. After picking up the insanity artifact, I can't be sure if they won't wake up or something as a spook. I don't feel comfortable with how irrational that artifact has made me.


So the point of the thread... I am inclined to believe there are ways to identify this thing before you bring it back, and I feel like there should be some way of safely identifying it quickly once its on the ship without needing to fully research all of the rest of the stuff I brought back. Pragmatically, if there is no way to deftly dispatch this artifact consistently, it becomes a run killer for speedruns & score targets. I do not believe it is possible to "defuse" the artifact to any degree, but that hasn't been disproven either. What follows is the "war story" of what happened before I brought it onto my ship. When I first encountered it, I only brought 2 or 3 things back to my ship. I remember picking up 3 or 4, one of them might've been destroyed. One from a derelict, and one from a destroyed hostile. The IFF scanner I had said something about a cryptographic signature that led me to believe it was an identity card of sorts. It showed the "drones" nearby as green after being yellow and not attacking for a moment, and I was filled with glee at this thing being a friend now. However it immediately turned red and hostile as soon as I touched the derelict I suspect had the artifact on it. This or a nearby derelict seemed to be making a loud noise sounding like a radio signal, but it was picked up by the mic. I soon found a drone with a highly damaging spread-shot weapon I'd not seen before that consistently shot around my rover for a long time before the drone figured out how to aim. As I approached what seemed to be the spot marked on the alien compass, two ground drones and one flying arwing-looking drone ambushed me really close up and destroyed both the compass and my weapon. I recalled while they were still shooting me, and one of the ????????'s I picked up was red with damage.
Now, I don't believe them becoming hostile when I touched the derelict was simply that they don't like it when you touch their stuff. I don't exactly remember, but I think it turned yellow to give me a chance to redeem myself before it turned hostile. They were also totally fine with me looting the drones that were in a destroyed state before I got there. I also suspect the scanner's cryptographic signature matched the specific role of what I got it from, and perhaps violating that role is also a red flag to the drones. I wonder if they'd care if I dropped the thing they didn't want me to have after that point, but the manual didn't specify how to drop things.
(Specifically, the manual says that installed modules cannot be dropped, and at another point says that modules jettisoned from the ship are lost forever. It doesn't explicitly mention how to drop uninstalled modules from the rover onto the ground, nor does it allude to what happens to them after that.)
I don't have any idea how to identify it once its on the ship aside from researching everything until something has an inconsistent research speed. I don't even know if it's exclusively found from derelicts, or if it's specific to a certain derelict or drone.


When I first found this artifact, it was such a worrying experience that I forewent any pretense of spoiler-free at least for this thing, just to make sure there were no jumpscares. The knowledge that there is a jumpscare--a very fast skull-thing combined with an alarming scream (in spite of being told it was silent)--has made this game almost unplayable. I don't understand what's happening to you guys that fully desensitizes you to the rest of these things, because they don't get less effective on me just because I know what's going on. The jumpscare is genuinely bad design, and the excuse that it always gets a jump out of people is...stunning to me. This has almost completely turned me off from playing this game at all, maybe even getting me to discourage future potential players. The rest of the game is quite good, and the developer has proven to care about the same sorts of things I do, so I don't want to give up on this yet.

[Khallis]

Thanks for writing!


First, I'd like to say:

If the very fast skull thing is combined with an alarming scream, then that scream came from the player, not the game. I absolutely positively 100% guarantee the skull thing is silent, and anyone who says otherwise is completely mistaken. I wrote the game, I know it inside and out, and I am dead certain about this.

(There is a monster that can make a screech, but, you cannot encounter it on any run where you can encounter an insanity device, they are mutually exclusive. No one has objected to that sound yet; I think the imps in Doom make a more unnerving noise.)


Regarding your questions:

The insanity artifact is not present on every planet. It is present on about 30% of planets, and on those planets, you aren't guaranteed to encounter it.

The insanity artifact can be dealt with consistently, and in my opinion it isn't an impediment to speed runs or high scores; it's worth +10k bonus points to deal with it, and it can not kill you or end your run. (I've had some users complain that the various possible special items you may find have solutions that are TOO consistent - once you find the solution, it's always the same solution.) It also will not penalize you with a bad score for failing to deal with it until two hallucinations have been witnessed, to guarantee the player had a fair chance to notice and solve the puzzle.


Regarding the jumpscare and bad design:

Based on the feedback I've gotten regarding the one jumpscare present in the game, I am considering including a config tool option to turn that single hallucination off. There have now been three users so far that I can recall mentioned not liking it being in the game. I would consider this in the spirit of an accessability accommodation. Would that address your concerns?

(I do not yet agree that it is bad design - I am open to a discussion about that if you are, or we can agree to disagree on that point, whichever you would prefer. I do not intend to cause you offense, and I apologize if I have.)


Regarding the overall worrying experience:

I advertise this as a horror game, right up front on the store page. I think that I did a good job of delivering on one. Many horror games, in my opinion, do not. From the sound of your writeup, it sounds like it has succeeded at being scary and unsettling - was that not the goal? If it succeeded beyond your expectations, that seems to me more a good thing than a bad thing.



Regarding your UI question:

I'm sorry that wasn't more clear in the manual. You can drop uninstalled modules from the rover - select them with the mouse, and the location where the "Pick Up" button appears, will show a "Drop" button instead. When dropped, they will be left on the ground on a sample case. You can pick them up again later, if you drive to where you left them. The cases on the ground will produce an Object Nearby prompt and a "Pick Up" button just like derelicts do.



Thanks for taking the time to write, I'd far rather get to hear what's on your mind than never know that the game left a bad taste in your mouth here.

[Treadlight]

Alright then, wall of text for wall of text. My favorite! Now to respond.


"First" block

For the skull/face/however its described, I do only have my friend's word to go by, so I suppose I can discard that part for myself. I wasn't there to see it, unfortunately. For all I know, if I get it in the future, it could end up being much less distressing to me than I've been concerned about. I should probably keep in mind that every time I see a message posted by you on here, you always seem to focus and care about the same things I do in regards to design. Perhaps that means I can put forth some biased trust that you probably knew what you were doing here, and my concerns are premature.


"Questions" block

That's more specific than I was expecting. I wasn't (and still aren't) aware of exactly what the most efficient way of dispatching it could be when I wrote that, I didn't even know about the point bonus. I probably would if I wasn't scared by it simply being nighttime IRL. (In my enclosed habitat that houses five humans, four cats, and no relevant history of malevolent paranormal residents that I'm aware of.)


"Jumpscare" block

Honestly, I can't say whether that would be the best way to handle this. I think the tense situation has made a lot of people (myself included) get emotionally charged when recalling it. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be able to look at this from an entirely accurate perspective because of that.

Originally posted by Khallis:

(I do not yet agree that it is bad design - I am open to a discussion about that if you are, or we can agree to disagree on that point, whichever you would prefer. I do not intend to cause you offense, and I apologize if I have.)

I'm not sure anymore, I think I can't have a proper opinion on it until it happens to me. It'd be good to know if any of the hallucinations can occur more than once, or how the game handles when it runs out of them if they can't. It might be better for me to experiment a bit with that one.
Oh and:

Originally posted by Khallis:

I do not intend to cause you offense, and I apologize if I have.

I feel like I'm looking in a mirror reading this. I revised that OP so many times over several hours, and still wasn't quite sure how confident I was about it. I'm sorry.


"Worrying" block

Oh no, I'm in complete agreement with you here. I don't recall using the word "overall", but if I did I'm sorry for the confusion. The experience was worrying for its implications; I now knew that this was a thing the game could throw at me, and I encountered it on my very second run despite intuition insisting this was emblematic of something particularly rare. (Knowing it's a 30% chance shreds that assumption.)


"UI" block

Cool, that answers that question. Could you tell me which page of the manual describes this process? I did read the entire manual before I even tried the game on my friend's copy, and I didn't see anything on this. It's not absent, is it?


I've honestly really enjoyed the game so far. You've achieved the sort of design I love most; Your game feels coherently real. (There's a very specific & complex way of doing this, but it's extremely unconducive to a large swath of subgenres. I've found very few games that even try.) It's the only thing that consistently bypasses my severe depression. It seems like the derealization doesn't get applied to illusory realities. (I can't believe you people get to feel like that all the time.)
This didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth per se. It made me really antsy with the game by appearing on a very early run, before I even felt partially confident operating the ship as a whole.

[themousemaster]

Hi, current Top Score holder here, and one of the guys Khallis said is opposed to the assault head :).

Just for full disclosure, I call the head a "screamer", which Khallis can't stand. I call it that not because it has an audio component (it doesn't, it's silent), but because, as a horror setpiece, a "screamer" is something designed to make the audience scream, which it has for me at least once.

(Also, it reminds me of the "screamer" monster from Might&Magic 4 ;p)



Anyway, The reason I'm personally not thrilled with it is because it seems out of place. In a game where the "horror" elements are about suspenseful insanity, it's the only one that is designed to cause fright, rather than tension.

Also, most of the other effects have to do with your "ship". Like Occupied Bathrooms, bloody handprints leading to the airlock, or a meteor shower coming at your windshield, they are things that interact with the environment to make you think your ship (or yourself) is going nuts.

The head just makes me think that somewhere, Pennywise was looking to broaden his horizons.

I mean, if (and please Khallis, don't take this to mean that I am advocating for you to do this ;p) instead of that head, you had a no-audio-component Hitchhiker alien rush the character and disappear right as it hit you, THAT would be in-character.



There are other things that you can, and indeed I know you *have*, done that can be scary, even if you know it's one of the cognito-hazard's effects. For example, one thing that can happen is you play the sound effect of the Hitchhiker trrying to break through a cargo hatch, which can be a real kick in the pants to someone who wasnt paying strict attention to that possibility.

You could also have the Medbay Scan do the Affected by malicious AI animation and sound (with the appriate trigger of "only if the science lab is reasearching unidentified objects").

Heck, have the rover HUD get static-y (like it was being shot) randomly. And/or have random "beam weapon" fire cross the camera that doesn't exist. That would get a jump out of people even if they knew the artifact was *on board*


And lastly, if that thing is "affecting your brain", nothing says some of it can't just be silly too. Have that model dinosaur in the bunk just start randomly spinning, or the lights in Atmospheric suddenly go Disco ;p

[Khallis]

I'll answer Treadlight first.

Originally posted by treadlight:

Could you tell me which page of the manual describes this process? I did read the entire manual before I even tried the game on my friend's copy, and I didn't see anything on this. It's not absent, is it?

It's on page 10, under "Message Area".

Originally posted by treadlight:

For all I know, if I get it in the future, it could end up being much less distressing to me than I've been concerned about. I should probably keep in mind that every time I see a message posted by you on here, you always seem to focus and care about the same things I do in regards to design. Perhaps that means I can put forth some biased trust that you probably knew what you were doing here, and my concerns are premature.

I think your concerns are probably legitimate here. It's startling, and from the sound of what you've said thus far, I think it'll make you uncomfortable and make you jump.

I think it makes most people jump - but the reaction after that jump varies, between some people going, "Aw man, that got me, good one" and some people going "Oh screw this, that was a cheap shot". Reactions being mixed here is why I'm considering v1.07 having a switch to turn it off.

Originally posted by treadlight:

It'd be good to know if any of the hallucinations can occur more than once, or how the game handles when it runs out of them if they can't.

Sure, I can answer this. During a run, each hallucination can only occur once. There is a slight exception possible here, an edge case - if an ongoing hallucination is happening, and you send the rover away with the insanity object on it, that hallucination will vanish, but could possibly come back if you bring the rover back with the insanity object still aboard. That could make it look like it sort of happened twice, but this doesn't apply to the jump scare, it occurs and then is over, it doesn't stay around. When it runs out of possible hallucinations, then the tilted camera with heavy red pain haze sticks around until you solve the problem or end the run.

[Khallis]

TheMouseMaster:

I agree your terminology is accurate. I think we're both correct - you are using a term of art correctly, and I'm quibbling to avoid user misconceptions that do occur from it.

I looked up the Might & Magic screamers - I never got far enough to run into them. Hahaha, yeah, fair enough, that's apt.

My argument toward it being in character would be that, like the paintings in your bunk, it's something out of the character's subconscious. If it's all in your head, then anything people have deep seated reactions to is fair game. There's three possible bunk art hallucinations, for instance; eyes are viscerally creepy, pseudoreligious demonic imagery is creepy, and the third one, well, it's a tribute painting I made, to a line from a Roger Waters song - "I awoke in a fever, the bedclothes were all soaked in sweat. She said, you've been having a nightmare... and it's not over yet." I was trying to touch what felt to me like fairly universal anxieties.

I like your ideas for alternatives, though I'm not likely to get too silly with it. But the implementation cost of doing these and testing them is substantial, so while it's *possible* I may add or modify a few in the future, I'm sure not promising anything on that front. A switch to turn one of the twenty-ish ones that are in the game off for users who didn't like it a lot easier.

[Treadlight]

Originally posted by themousemaster:

Just for full disclosure, I call the head a "screamer", which Khallis can't stand. I call it that not because it has an audio component (it doesn't, it's silent), but because, as a horror setpiece, a "screamer" is something designed to make the audience scream, which it has for me at least once.

(Also, it reminds me of the "screamer" monster from Might&Magic 4 ;p)

Didn't you also say that on the thread I quoted Khallis from in the OP?

Originally posted by themousemaster:

I mean, if (and please Khallis, don't take this to mean that I am advocating for you to do this ;p) instead of that head, you had a no-audio-component Hitchhiker alien rush the character and disappear right as it hit you, THAT would be in-character.

Say what you want about me, but I'd find that distressing not because of any fear, but because it would break my heart (in-universe). I can't be the only one who finds it to be cute...

Originally posted by themousemaster:

There are other things that you can, and indeed I know you *have*, done that can be scary, even if you know it's one of the cognito-hazard's effects.

I feel that knowing it's a hallucination does a good job of preventing me from dismissing it. It no longer matters if it's real, so any explanation or reason is moot.
(Technically speaking—if it were a hallucination—trying to conclude anything about it would inadvertently affect it accordingly. Even without hallucinations, OCD giving me involuntary thoughts and memories certainly behaves like that.)



...I really miss having an em-dash key...

EDIT: Eep, I totally forgot this part. Why exactly are the corners of the screen always red? I first noticed it after I got the artifact for the first time, specifically after looking at the corners of the screen when my rover returned for the first time after that run. I initially thought I had picked it up on the first expedition, but it's just always red. It's not nearly as bright and huge as it is while the artifact is present, but it's still there.

[Khallis]

The red periphery is a health indicator. You're taking radiation damage as soon as the game starts, so, there's always at least a touch of haze there to remind you. It will slowly get worse over the duration of a run - or rapidly if you sustain injuries. The autodoc can clear some of it away. When it gets really bad, you'll hear your own pulse, and the haze will throb in time to it.

[themousemaster]

Treadlight:

I probably did say that in another thread. I just like making sure that relevant data to a thread is present in a thread, in case someone besides us 3 ends up reading it ;p



Khallis:

I realize it's easier just to flip an off switch (I'm a programmer myself), but I don't want to "lose" the ability to have to watch out in this game. I'm just trying to find some third option(s) :)

(Also, one could argue that "silly" doesn't have to be logically opposite to scary. Disco lights might be one that is strictly silly, but... say, having the color of the overhead light in the cockpit that illuminates the Rover HUD randomly change from Blue to Orange while a person is driving the rover could unsettle people in a "Gaslight" way without them even realizing its happening)

[Treadlight]

Originally posted by themousemaster:

Treadlight:

I probably did say that in another thread. I just like making sure that relevant data to a thread is present in a thread, in case someone besides us 3 ends up reading it ;p

I couldn't figure out how to word it without sounding like I had felt it was redundant, which isn't the case. Maybe I shouldn't have cut me asking if this was the reason from my earlier reply, heh.

[Treadlight]

Originally posted by Khallis:

The red periphery is a health indicator. You're taking radiation damage as soon as the game starts, so, there's always at least a touch of haze there to remind you. It will slowly get worse over the duration of a run - or rapidly if you sustain injuries. The autodoc can clear some of it away. When it gets really bad, you'll hear your own pulse, and the haze will throb in time to it.

I finished that run I mentioned before, and knowing this really does confirm I was just super paranoid when that was going on. No artifact, just the research lab room being unusually radioactive.
Just clarifying for you, or any others who read this later.

[fulf]

The first time I got the artifact, I was listening to a recovered "audio data" (which turned out to be silent) when the astronaut hallucination triggered. I thought the audio data was the cause... and that in and of itself is a pretty creepy idea- sounds beyond the range of normal human hearing affecting cognition.
I'm not too keen on horror as a genre, but I love when games and other media have unexpected horror elements. I love that feeling of dread.. the hallucinations, medbay in particular, really gave me the sort of chills I've been craving for a while.
The flying faces, though.. It came as somewhat of a cheap-feeling scare when the skull appeared on a terminal, but in a later run I was looking through a door when a white face flew towards me and that was the first time in a long time something like that's made me audibly scream and lose my breath. Since then I'm quick to dispose of the artifact instead of letting myself enjoy the other hallucinations- which I do indeed find pretty fun.
I dunno, there's just a difference to me between the creeping dread of hallucinations like altered personal logs, bleeding paintings, asteroids, handprints, an occupied restroom, seeing yourself flatline/being out of air/etc and having something bright, fake, and flashy fly into your face for the sake of a sudden scare. It's not "realistic" horror, I guess. Kinda breaks immersion; I get less of a feeling of "this artifact is altering your character's cognition" and more a feeling of "this is meant to make you- the player- scream"

[Khallis]

I've added the option in the config tool to disable the jumpscare in the v1.07 patch that just went live.

[blitz4me]

I just experienced the hallucination for the first time last night. And I gotta say, i personally loved every aspect! Yes, the jump scare startled me horribly, but to me, after reading lots of H.P. Love craft, I saw it as another random effect of a frenzied/insane hallucinating mind. To me, insanity/hallucinations should not always have any rhyme or reason. Man, The whole event (jump scare included) had me so distraught and paranoid that I was like, “Thats it! I’m taking my ship out of this forsaken hole!” And promptly left.... apparently artifact on board (I didn’t know them that it was the cause)....and dire consequences followed. What a twist! And I love how the epilogue suggest to the player that something brought on board was the cause (for me to go... Oooo... All in all, I totally did not see any of this coming! Loved it developer!

[Khallis]

Thanks, blitz4me!

I am really happy to hear it worked so well for you and that you enjoyed it. That is great.

Yours is the experience I had hoped people would have of it, when I built it. As a fellow Lovecraft fan I am glad that it spoke your language.

Appreciate you writing that up, that made my day. Thanks for taking a chance on an obscure game.

[themousemaster]

you can tell when a work is someone's pride, rather than their paycheck, when even after they're all but done with it's creation, they still talk with those that use it ;p