i got a game concept that has been spinning in my head for quite a while now and after talking to the peeps in sebmax cult (shoutout @aernirose @hypernova-donut @dora49 for adding ideas you guys are legends) it doesn't seem right to never be released to the public so hear me out. this is gonna be a long one so buckle up fuckers it's gonna be one hell of a ride.
anyway. sim racing horror game. the entire premise of the game is basically you doing the 10 something hours of night driving in the nürburgring. yes watching nbr24h inspired this shit.
you start out thinking this is just a normal (if not to say a low quality) sim racing game. a little bit low poly a little bit unrealistic physics and then all the supports and it's basically a knockoff of the f1 game except you're on a gt3 and doing laps around the nordschleife in the virtual sunset. seems pretty so and so. you are freely able to cut some corners, crash into some barriers, that's fine, just rewind and/or take some light penalties, nothing much. and then you return to the pits at the end of the first stint for tyre changes and that is where the game starts to change.
the graphics get better. the physics become more realistic. the track incidents start to become more serious as night falls. gone are the times that you can just pull out random stuff for shits and giggles. now every corner has a risk of something happening there. cars crashing. oil spills. gravel on the track. yellow flags. code 60s. if you are unlucky enough your car can start manifesting some technical issues and you will have to maneuver on that. the track is dark and barely lit at some sections. all you have to guide your way across the circuit is the map stuck near your seat and the voice of your engineers.
and to top it all off, clearly you and your teammates haven't had a very good rest before the race, because around halfway after the second stint starts, you start to feel the symptoms of insomnia. your vision is spotty. your ears are picking up things that you probably shouldn't be able to listen. your brain is imagining things that do not exist. the track map becomes hardly usable as the location indicator is jumping around everywhere and the sectors start to warp into unrecognisable shapes; you now have to rely on your racing instincts and the landmarks around the track to make your way around, but can you actually rely on your senses? there may or may not be a car next to you. the flag the marshal just waved may be green but could also be yellow. it feels like something may or may not just broke apart in the car. your race engineer may or may not have just given you false information. the surrounding trees are reaching out and trying to swallow you alive. there are monsters chasing you down every lap. you're hearing music from somewhere and judging by the sounds of it it might as well be from hell. it's not a race anymore. it's survival. especially when about five or something hours in, your character realises that this is no longer a silly sim race they booted on their computer. this is, for them, the reality. there are no more aides to rely on. one stupid mistake and their race, their life, is over.
no, pitting does not help. sure, five minutes or something of being stationary and not having to worry about crashing does help a bit in relaxing your character, but when you've witnessed all the horrors, can you truly relieve yourself of all your fears once it is time to head onto the track? your teammates may not have experienced it live, but when their status is just as bad as yours, what's to say that they'll be able to separate truth from hallucinations? what's to say that you yourself will be able to tell the difference when it's ultimately your turn to hop into the car?
and it's not like you can just choose to stay in the pits forever and wait for it to be over. after all, you entered this race to win, not to be p135 because you're too chicken to go out in the eifel night. but you do you.
your objective? do as many laps around the nürburgring as you can while trying to survive until the sunrise.
... yeah that's basically it. anyway the cult is comprised of exactly 0 people who can do good coding so if someone is looking for a game idea to make feel free to grab this.
