#hehashivemind

With this game we wanted to tell more of a story and have the main protagonist have a personality of her own that responds to the events around her. We actually talked about death scenes and like.. We were thinking of going back to good ol' Sierra classics where there's 20840824 horrible ways you can die at any time. You get horribly eviscerated... then wake up in your bed with your day's progress lost, as if you woke up from a horrible night terror.

And it's awesome you mention Eternal Darkness! I freaking love that game. We weren't going to implement hardcore sanity mechanics, but we DID discuss 'status effects' and 'conditions.' Status effects are your standard RPG fare--poison, paralysis, etc.Conditions are psychological problems such as 'hopelessness,' 'depression,' 'stress,' etc. that are generally caught on by long-term problems in your village. If, for example, you fail to retrieve enough food from the woods, your character could suffer and fall into hopelessness. Eventually your villagers start dying.

As an another note kind of breaking up the 'dungeon crawler' type of game--we were going to have it operate by the day. You wake up, head into the woods to forage/explore/travel deeper by day, but as it gets to night you hear cackling and have to make your way back to the village before you're overpowered by the darkness. As you empower your village you gain the ability to start the day off further and further into the woods.