Multiplayer/Co-Op & Frictional Games? NO!!!

[LSunday]

I would be inclined to say it's a good idea, but only if approached VERY carefully. I trust Frictional, and think they would be capable of making it work. I say this because a I came up with the idea with a few of my friends, and they said very similar things to you until I explained how some of it would work.

Basically, you need to make the immersion work. If you have two characters in a chat or something, it would get too easy to break the illusion. So, I came up with using the computer's internal mic.

Basically, the game would create a voice chat between you in your partner, but ONLY if you and your partner are within a certain range of each other (earshot). The sound made by your mic would spread in the world a certain range, based on the volume, and not only could your partner hear you, but the monsters can as well- forcing you to be quiet in real life when you see a creature.

The game would also have to make you fear for the well-being of your partner as well as yourself. In order to do this, the game would have to split you up frequently to solve puzzles- And, importantly, it would have to not immediately restart if one of you died. We came up with two restart options: You both die, OR your partner finds your body. In order to keep it interesting, a creepy ghost control could be made (Like the wind in Amnesia, only player controlled), so if you died you need to try to tell your partner (in this situation, the voice chat range would disconnect). Or, you could just snap to your partner's screen and watch them for a while.

Obviously, this is risky. It wouldn't be very hard to break the illusion- However, if done properly, a co-op horror could potentially be much scarier than the single-player, by not only using fear for yourself, but fear for another person. And with the 'finding the body' technique, when you realize your partner has died, you then have to venture into an area that you ALREADY KNOW is dangerous.

And yes, this is mostly a repost from my response in another thread. But it applies here as well, so deal with it.