Have you ever wished to see The Flood in their own dedicated horror game? Not as a Spartan, but as a vulnerable marine, fighting for your life between every bullet and around every corner? Well keep wondering – but not for long, because that future is just over the horizon.
In this thread I will be detailing my plans to make just that: a dedicated horror game set in the Halo universe with The Flood as your sole nemesis. There will be gore, there will be terror, and a whole lot of action. (can you really have a Halo game without some awesome set pieces?)
This will be a non-profit operation, by the fans for the fans, and any brave souls who dare contribute to its development will be promised no monetary compensation. It is not a journey for everyone, but if you’ve got what it takes, we could use all the help we can get.
Make no mistake, this will be a project years in the making! But we are Spartans – in blood or spirit – and the heart of a die-hard fan never dies! So join me on this journey to create the world’s greatest Halo horror game it has ever, and may ever see.
Project Spore - the rundown:
Set on the Phoenix-class colony ship Noble Sanctuary, you are a privateer – a once honest wartime salvager, now indentured under the iron boot of a Kig-Yar warlord and her ORS-class heavy cruiser Trial of Torment. You and your crew (The Ravens) have one job: infiltrate the colony ship and take control for Kig-Yar annexation, or they’ll do it for you and make you their next meal.
This isn’t your first rodeo, but it may be your biggest haul yet. And worse yet, there’s more than colonists on this ship and its empty halls are the hunting grounds for something neither Human nor Kig-Yar. But the matriarch wants that ship, and she’ll sooner blow you out of the sky than let you leave without finishing the job…
Out of the frying pan, into the maw.
-the gameplay:
Spore is a game heavily inspired by the predecessors that came before it, both in genre and in-universe. The brunt of gameplay will feature a blend of Halo’s FPS model with a loving nod to its renowned sandbox – matched with the slower, hostile gameplay of entries like Dead Space and Alien: Isolation.
Caution will be the central focus in gameplay, with enemies like infector forms (or popcorn) that can quickly become a lethal threat all on their own, navigating vents and finding small, unassuming hiding places from which to pounce and tear into their victims (think Prey but worse).
The name of the game is paranoia – or it may as well be, with inspirations like Dead Space and John Carpenter’s: The Thing putting a focus on threats up close and afar; a plasma bolt may not be enough to stop a rampaging combat form, but the shot from a pistol or a shotgun may just ring the dinner bell. You’re in a tin can in space… best not drag your feet.
Speaking of space, the inhabitants can be the least of your problems on this ship. Parts of it have been cut away during the inciting conflict of your “benefactors” outside, and some outer decks of the ship are, shall we say, “well ventilated”. Contrast that to the deeper bowls of the ship, where The Flood are making quick work to terraform the inside to their liking.
Not so far gone as the halls of High Charity when it fell during the war, but take a page out of Metro if you want survive a minute down there; some of those decks are positively filled with Flood spores, and a few good breaths of that will rip your lungs and your immune system inside out.
Of course, fresh oxygen and a few wasted air filters beats trying to hide from the things trying to eat you by holding your breath. That is… If you’re naive enough to think those two things cant be in the same place. Infector forms just love to hide in thick, damp, green, foggy places… Watch where you step.
And lastly this isn’t an in-and-out operation. The longer it takes you to get what you need, the more bodies added to The Flood’s ranks. More importantly however, is The Flood’s knack for adaptation, so much like what you’d expect from Dead Space or Prey, don’t get too comfortable. Expect nothing; expect anything.
-the sandbox:
Lastly, a resourceful grease monkey like yourself knows that the best way to survive is to use everything at your disposal. Human and Covenant tech haven’t seen much assimilation in the war, but for those caught in the middle, everything’s up for grabs.
Your personally designed augmented plasma pistol is a prime example. Fitted with an optimized charge and a flexible array of settings, the Raven’s plasma pistol can be whatever you need it to be. A plasma cutter to reach a circuit behind the wall, long-ranged bolts to keep you alive in a chase, a life-saving flare that will burn your fingertips as much as anything within ten feet (that one’s expensive). If you got the charge, it has a way. Just use it wisely, there aren’t many charging stations that take Covenant tech.
Depressurized areas are a common issue to for salvagers like the Ravens. The covenant had a great way of using plasma shielding to keep the air in their hangars and the space outside separate, and they made good use of such technology in the war. A little tinkering and that same deployable shield may as well be a wall made of hazmat sheets, capable of keeping air particles in, and space (or spores) out.
Having a reliable source of fast-acting foam never hurt anyone though – you can thank Prey for that. For those rare occasions you need to bunker down in a hole somewhere, you might be better off putting something between you and whatever is making that scratching sound in the vents. Or maybe you just need to close up that hole in the glass that you just shot out. Either way, handy thing, that magic foam.
The matriarch and her pirate warband have a funny way of killing ships… but that’s not for you to worry about. What you should worry about is the projectile they fire into said ships, with you inside. Liken to something designed by a brute, these cabled “drop pods” shoot into the hulls of bigger ships, doubling as an anchor to keep them from running, as well as a handy, if brutal means of clearing a hallway. Or at least it is when half that hallway is sucked out. Then you get the honor of cleaning up the mess; executioner and cannon fodder – look at you, bigshot!
I mentioned air filters and spores – of course you get your own oxygen mask, fitted with a refillable supply tank, if limited. What, you thought you going to space with just a helmet like those jarheads? You live in the sticks, their air-tight ODST drop pods are luxury hotels for you. You’re lucky if yours has a window, much less air. Of course the supply doesn’t last forever, but you can’t trust what you might breath in on some of those ships. Gassy leaks are common when you’re ripping the place apart. The filters in your mask should do the trick, though there’s no telling how long they’ll last against a super cell virus that tears at them by the second… Guess you’ll have to test them when you get there.
Spore - coming to a free-to-play steam page near you
This is the first drop in the bucket; the first step in a long line concept work and development. Expect future updates as I (and hopefully someday we) put forward the schematic skeleton of an eventually complete and proud title that will make Microsoft wish they had jumped on the demand for it before their fans put it out for free. Stay tuned Spartans and stay frosty. This is only the beginning.
I’ll take a look!