"Of course, there are many horror movies with ghosts and mutations, which are more visually impactful, but there is also a type of horror movie composed entirely of ordinary people, and the horror effect is also very outstanding."

"To put it bluntly, horror is just a feeling. There's no need to be overly fixated on visual impacts like ghosts or mutated monsters."

"Take our company as an example. As long as the curtains are drawn and everyone is immersed in a terrifying atmosphere, just one scream is enough to make everyone feel terrified..."

"Therefore, creating the atmosphere is the most important thing. Sometimes, the human heart is more frightening than ghosts... This should be a very important point."

"If we can replicate this feeling in the game, wouldn't we achieve the same horror effect?"

Wang Xiaobin strongly agreed, "Yes, yes, yes, I was just about to say that."

"So, we'll create a terrifying scene in the game, then throw a bunch of players into it, letting the terror gradually 'infect' and 'spread' among the crowd, just like what happened in our company."

Ye Zhizhou continued, "In other words, in this game, the sense of fear doesn't come from the texture of ghosts, but from the malice of other players, from the ever-spreading atmosphere of fear, and from the environment."

"Then, after the fear spreads, conflicts will inevitably arise between players."

"The players can't be in complete cooperation with each other, otherwise it will become 'singing the Internationale and venturing into a haunted house hand in hand,' which would lose its challenge and go against our goal."

"We must make the players have conflicts and confrontations, scare each other. Isn't this completely unpredictable danger the source of fear?"

"As for how players confront each other... President Pei has already revealed it to us: the weapon system!"

Ye Zhizhou turned his attention to the third point that President Pei had emphasized: "The strongest weapon is just a pistol. This is because everyone in the game is an ordinary person, not ghosts or demons, so there can't be overly powerful weapons, which would unbalance the combat between players."

"Other weapons can be daggers, stones, anything that can harm ordinary people, but not kill them instantly."

The two discussed and recorded simultaneously.

Lin Wan interjected at the right time, "There's also a hidden setting here. Although President Pei didn't explicitly state it, this setting has become obvious during our deduction process."

"To achieve the effect of fear spreading among the player group, it means that initially, most players should be in the identity of 'innocent people'; and later, to enter into confrontation, it means that some players will transform into the identity of 'perpetrators'."

"How exactly will this transformation happen?"

Ye Zhizhou frowned and thought for a moment, "I remember President Pei said that at most, there would be... mental illness in this game?"

Lin Wan nodded, "That's right, mental illness!"

"These active perpetrators, in terms of the story, should be dangerous people with abnormal mental states, or rather, madmen."

"I think we can introduce the concept of 'sanity value,' which exists in many games, the san value. Many elements in the scene will constantly increase the player's mental stress. Once it reaches a certain value, the player goes crazy and becomes a perpetrator, going to kill those who are still normal."

Wang Xiaobin nodded while recording, "Sure enough, now that we've sorted it out, everything is clear."

"It's just that some details are still lacking."

"For example... since it's a multiplayer online game, should we add a voice system, and should players be allowed to chat with each other in the game?"

"If players can chat with each other, they will engage in a series of silly behaviors, weakening the game's sense of horror. It's also possible that they will maliciously team up after discussing it through voice, exploiting loopholes in the game and reducing its fun."

"If they can't chat with each other... it feels like we're losing a lot of fun, and there won't be much communication between players, which may turn into just confrontation without cooperation."

Ye Zhizhou thought for a moment, "This is easy to solve. Since 'speaking in the game' is such an important thing, we have to find a way to limit it."

"Players can speak, but they can't speak casually. Every word is very precious, and speaking too much may even have penalties."

"For example... becoming a madman."

"A qualified horror game should be like the atmosphere in our company."

"Everyone is groping forward in the dark."

"If someone suddenly says something, then everyone will scream..."

"Speaking of which, I suddenly thought of a good game name."

"《BeQuiet》, the Chinese name will be 《嘘！》 (Shh!)."

……

Under the brainstorming of the three, the concept of this horror game was born quickly.

The basic idea of the horror game *BeQuiet* is a multiplayer horror game. Each game consists of 8 players + a random number of NPCs.

The number of NPCs ranges from 4 to 8. The NPCs are played by AI to create a certain deceptive effect on the players.

All players and NPCs will enter a randomly generated game map, search for items, find a way out, and interact with other players and NPCs.

The game map will use different scenes. The initial plans are: mental hospital, madman village, suburban hotel, ancient castle, school.

These scenes will have extremely high randomness. The algorithm of the program will randomly refresh the purpose of each room and the items in it before the start of each game.

Each room has collectible items and scene items. Scene items cannot be carried, but can be used to produce special effects, such as a radio that can play a specific recording to increase mental stress.

Players and NPCs will randomly and sparsely refresh at some spawn points on the map. After the game starts, they will begin exploring the map.

In the map, players will find some special items, such as daggers, bandages, psychotropic drugs, strange idols, etc. Some of these items can attack others, some can heal themselves, some can reduce mental stress, and some can increase mental stress.

How to use them depends on the player's game strategy.

At the same time, the 8 players will have different identities at the beginning. The victory conditions are different depending on the identity.

Among the 8 people, there is 1 police officer, 3 good people, 3 mental patients, and 1 ambitious person.

The goal of the police officer and the good people is to escape from here, the goal of the mental patients is to make everyone go crazy or die, and the goal of the ambitious person is to survive alone.

If NPCs appear, the NPCs will be assigned according to a ratio of half good people and half mental patients.

When a player dies, his identity will be finally revealed.

There are some weapons and props in the scene. The police officer is born with a pistol, which can cause a lot of damage to both normal people and madmen, while other players can obtain props from the scene, or throw them on the ground for others to use.

Common props are daggers and strong flashlights. Daggers deal high damage to normal people, while strong flashlights deal high damage to madmen.

In addition, there are also axes, flashbangs and other relatively difficult to obtain but more powerful weapons.

Mental patients are not equal to madmen.

"Madman" is a concept relative to normal people.

Initially, police officers, good people, mental patients, and ambitious people are all normal people, and their initial attributes are exactly the same.

As time goes by, and some props in the scene affect them, some players' san values will continue to decline. When they reach a certain critical point without taking special drugs, they will change from "normal people" to "madmen."

The movement speed, health, attack power and other basic attributes of a madman will be higher than those of a normal person, but once the player enters the "madman" state, the player will completely lose the ability to communicate, and the muscles will swell and the model will change, allowing other players to see it intuitively.

Voice communication is allowed in the game, but it is strictly limited.

Players can only say one sentence at a time in the game, within 10 seconds. After saying it, the sentence will be played through the system's sound software.

Each time a player says a sentence, their san value will decrease.

If they don't speak at all, they are easily regarded as enemies or AI by other players; if they speak too much, on the one hand, it increases their risk of becoming a madman, and on the other hand, it makes other players suspect their true intentions.

In addition, in order to avoid silly players from creating show effects, most of the meaningless actions have been deleted in the game.

For example, players can only jump when passing through some specific terrain, otherwise they cannot jump around in place.

For players, especially for the actors of mental patients and ambitious people, they can adopt different strategies and play styles in the game, which is similar to many board games.

Police officers and good people have to search for mechanisms and find exits in the scene, while being wary of others, and decisively take action to eliminate hidden dangers when necessary;

The san value of mental patients is much lower than that of good people. They can actively turn into madmen and attack good people through the props in the scene, or they can disguise themselves as good people and cause guidance to other good people, leading them into some traps;

The ambitious person can also disguise himself as a good person or a madman according to the current situation to achieve his goal.

Each player in the game must constantly guess the identity of the other party and adjust their game strategy at the same time.

After this game is over, it will be comprehensively scored based on everyone's data, game time, and the role they played.

For example, the ambitious person is a very difficult role to win, so losing will only deduct a small number of points, and winning will add a lot of points. At the same time, considering that killing, puzzle solving, collecting props, etc. will all be included in the bonus points, so even if the ambitious person's goal is very difficult to achieve, there is still motivation to continue playing.

……

In just one afternoon, the game's framework was already built.

Proposing problems and solving problems, in this endless cycle, some settings in the game were quickly finalized.

Looking at the densely written design draft, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin couldn't help but sigh.

It's much smoother than originally imagined!

Before, they were playing horror games while conceiving the game settings, and they didn't produce much results after two weeks.

But now, in one afternoon, the prototype of the game has come out!

What's the difference between these two times?

The difference is that President Pei pointed out the direction, and Director Lin provided a way of thinking to analyze President Pei's intentions.

According to this line of thinking, all problems were solved easily!

So far, although everyone is not sure whether this game will be successful, at least, the gameplay of this game is complete, and there are no similar competing games on the market, giving people a very novel first impression.

And President Pei pointed out a clear path for this game, which is equivalent to giving everyone a reassurance.

Looking at the design draft, Ye Zhizhou couldn't help but sigh.

"Could this be what President Pei had already thought about, the final product of this horror game?"

"How wonderful!"