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Organ Quarter - Kickstarter for a Silent Hill-esque VR/Non-VR PC Horror Game

D

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller

There's been a Kickstarter for this little game called Organ Quarter going on.

Kickstarter Gameplay Trailer here.

To take the description of the game from its own Kickstarter:

"Organ Quarter is a VR survival horror game focused on what made survival horror great: labyrinthine environments, resource management and well-balanced puzzling. We'd love to pay homage to the slow, methodical survival horror experiences of the '90s – this includes building a compelling world and universe as well as making a great adventure.

Here's the twist: we're also going to leverage hand-tracked and room-scale VR to provide the most intense and unsettling experience possible. We're going to bring horror into the realm of the intimate. Horror in your personal space, as well as in the world outside.

A key tenet of Organ Quarter's design is maintaining a tight balance of exploration, puzzles and combat.

This is not a wave shooter or a walking simulator – Organ Quarter is a traditional survival horror game. A long-form adventure which plays out over a large area and a longer span of time, with intricately connected levels, resources and tools at the player's disposal. The gameworld is designed with old school survival horror in mind – the player can roam in larger 'hub' areas, but to progress through the world and story they must complete specific areas or 'dungeons' and find 'keys'.

The game's combat revolves around simple but tense gunfighting gameplay. As the player progresses, combat will use hand-tracked aiming features to toy with their expectations (enemies having weak points, strong points, items on their bodies, etc)."
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At the time of writing it's at $3,234 of its $6,500 goal with 18 days to go, I think it'll make it but I kind of wanted to bring it up with GAF.

The game had a VR demon on Steam a few months ago:


Organ Quarter Pre-Alpha Demo on Steam here

There's something about the game I'm just absolutely attracted too. I don't have VR on any system currently, but even the planned non-VR version of this game I am excited for. Something about the kind of low-poly art style, monster design, surreal edge, and setting personally make me quite interested, and had heard from other horror fans with VR the demo was pretty good.

There's also one GAF'er who's apparently working on the game but that's not why I decided to make a topic, I do look through Kickstarter every once in a while for horror game projects and this one caught my eye and I do think some peeps on GAF may enjoy it.

Some gifs:

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CryptiK said:
Looks really bad.
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I'm in disagreement, but then again I find appeal in horror games that can strike a balance between artistic direction and low-poly models. I do think there's something good about a horror game that looks rough. It's a bit hard to explain, but it has to do with the reasoning for example the lower poly models of Silent Hill or RE1 may come off a lot more creepy than a high quality modern day monster model. Enough there to tell what you're looking at, but low quality enough that your mind does fill in some blanks. Lone Survivor more recently also accomplished something to these ends. And I think it fits for the gross sloppy fleshy look they're going for.

But there is a demo to try which has been well received if doubtful, though I can't try it as I don't have VR.
 
As discussed, this looks like a very creepy and dark atmospheric horror game, and a modern horror game in first-person it looks great. It isn't cloning Outlast and Amnesia like certain other trashy games, instead Organ Quarter seems to draw inspiration from 90s horror including but not limited to PS1 horror such as Hellnight and Silent Hill. I do get PC FMV game vibes from this though like the Of Light and Darkness: The Prophecy game. The eyeballs on the monitors and the jittering, stop-motion-esque movement of the enemies is very reminiscent of PS1 games too, so I really love that.

But it's fucking VR... so that's an automatic no, everything is great about this except how it's being tailored towards VR, which I have no interest in. Why does it always seem like these survival horrors that play or look like old school horrors always have something majorly wrong with them?
 
Plumpbiscuit said:
As discussed, this looks like a very creepy and dark atmospheric horror game, and a modern horror game in first-person it looks great. It isn't cloning Outlast and Amnesia like certain other trashy games, instead Organ Quarter seems to draw inspiration from 90s horror including but not limited to PS1 horror such as Hellnight and Silent Hill. I do get PC FMV game vibes from this though like the Of Light and Darkness: The Prophecy game. The eyeballs on the monitors and the jittering, stop-motion-esque movement of the enemies is very reminiscent of PS1 games too, so I really love that.

But it's fucking VR... so that's an automatic no, everything is great about this except how it's being tailored towards VR, which I have no interest in. Why does it always seem like these survival horrors that play or look like old school horrors always have something majorly wrong with them?
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There is a non-VR version. I'm probably going to back it because they are offering a non-VR version.
 
Thanks a million for the thread, Dusk Golem.

Yeah I'm helping out with this project. If anyone has any questions feel free to drop me/us a line.

Re the "it looks bad" comments – could you let us know what makes you think that? Help us communicate problems, manage how things look more effectively, etc :)

thehillissilent said:
There is a non-VR version. I'm probably going to back it because they are offering a non-VR version.
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Thanks so much if you back the thing.

Full disclosure: The game is VR first. The non-VR version will likely have certain aspects toned down or stripped out. It won't be definitive: the sense of claustrophobia, presence, hand-tracked interactivity and proximity you get in VR is key to what we're going for.

Greatest Ever said:
Dusk Golem horror thread? Subscribed.
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I know right!

Plumpbiscuit said:
As discussed, this looks like a very creepy and dark atmospheric horror game, and a modern horror game in first-person it looks great. It isn't cloning Outlast and Amnesia like certain other trashy games, instead Organ Quarter seems to draw inspiration from 90s horror including but not limited to PS1 horror such as Hellnight and Silent Hill. I do get PC FMV game vibes from this though like the Of Light and Darkness: The Prophecy game. The eyeballs on the monitors and the jittering, stop-motion-esque movement of the enemies is very reminiscent of PS1 games too, so I really love that.
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I feel your pain re missing the old school ways of doing things. Resident Evil 7 scratched that itch for me pretty dang well, though (at least the first half did), and we're definitely in a new golden age for horror these years.

Plumpbiscuit said:
But it's fucking VR... so that's an automatic no, everything is great about this except how it's being tailored towards VR, which I have no interest in. Why does it always seem like these survival horrors that play or look like old school horrors always have something majorly wrong with them?
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Totally get your frustration. Unfortunately we're actually trying to leverage how hand-tracked and room-scale VR works specifically for this game. I.e. interacting directly with monsters' bodies, putting your body parts into things, stealth with bodily hiding from enemies, etc. This stuff is the real core of the experience. We're just building an aesthetic we love around those core ideas.
 
Sorry to bump, but the Kickstarter hit 50%, thanks in part to a couple of GAF pledgers, which is pretty cool! Thanks dudes!
 
SomTervo said:
Thanks so much if you back the thing.

Full disclosure: The game is VR first. The non-VR version will likely have certain aspects toned down or stripped out. It won't be definitive: the sense of claustrophobia, presence, hand-tracked interactivity and proximity you get in VR is key to what we're going for.
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I did back it. I understand that it is VR first, but I hope that the non-VR version will still be good.
 
I don't have VR but I'm interested. I'm hoping the atmosphere is amplified in VR because currently (not the low poly) the art direction? effects? mood? doesn't seem to be doing much for me.

The funding goal seems low. They also mention they don't have an Oculus but want to develop for it? Are they getting a dev kit for free, if not the funding is even more off-base.
Their schedule is very aggressive; release in July, they are only accounting for a few weeks leeway for the entire project. Their basing the entire projects development off of the time it took for the alpha (2 months). Is the alpha substantive? In 2-3x the alpha's dev time they expect to have a finished polished game? I'll have to check out the alpha.
This looks to be amateur hour but I'll follow along.
 
898 said:
I don't have VR but I'm interested. I'm hoping the atmosphere is amplified in VR because currently (not the low poly) the art direction? effects? mood? doesn't seem to be doing much for me.
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Yep, an important thing about VR is that you can do a lot with relatively little. Even giving the player a dull, bare room but putting good sound design on top (like many of the rooms in A Chair In A Room: Greenwater) can be very compelling and put the player entirely on edge.

Experiencing it is a completely different thing to seeing it on screen. We're also being careful to design levels to feel like real, holistic spaces, rather than the abstract 'gamespaces' used by many roomscale VR games.

We're expecting the style to come across a lot more in the full game.

898 said:
The funding goal seems low. They also mention they don't have an Oculus but want to develop for it? Are they getting a dev kit for free, if not the funding is even more off-base.
Their schedule is very aggressive; release in July, they are only accounting for a few weeks leeway for the entire project. Their basing the entire projects development off of the time it took for the alpha (2 months). Is the alpha substantive? In 2-3x the alpha's dev time they expect to have a finished polished game? I'll have to check out the alpha.
This looks to be amateur hour but I'll follow along.
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Have a look at the Kickstarter page for more info, but in short: Using Unity3D allows the team to develop very quickly, and mechanically VR games aren't necessarily too complex. Most of the game mechanics and the entire demo (30-40 minutes of pure gameplay, a complete vertical slice) were built in two months (up to launch in October 2016) and a lot of that will be carried over to the full game. There's also been steady development ever since. The game will release this year - the Kickstarter is just there to help with our living costs for the duration (so we can focus, etc).

Thanks for the keen criticisms though, haha. Seriously.

Edit: Oh, and re Oculus Rift – plenty of people apparently already have it working on Rift using the OpenVR wrapper. It's apparently beyond easy to set up - it would just be a minor control scheme redesign. That said, we are going to reach out to Oculus for a dev kit soon.
 
SomTervo said:
Sorry for DP, but the lead dev has been working a lot on his environment modelling and lighting skills. The assets in the demo were placeholders.

This is closer to how the final game will look:







... hopefully much grimier :)

Still a long way to go, but thought we better let you know that the pre-alpha demo is not indicative.
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They look good and it's close to meeting it's goal, I hope all goes well for the final week and push.
 
SomTervo said:
Sorry for DP, but the lead dev has been working a lot on his environment modelling and lighting skills. The assets in the demo were placeholders.

This is closer to how the final game will look:


... hopefully much grimier :)

Still a long way to go, but thought we better let you know that the pre-alpha demo is not indicative.
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Not exactly AAA quality, but some of my favourite horror "games" of all time are Half Life 1 & 2 mods, so... I'm not really picky. Best of luck with the game lads. :)
Dusk Golem said:
They look good and it's close to meeting it's goal, I hope all goes well for the final week and push.
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Agreed. Looks much better, and definitely well above the "people that aren't naff mainstream idjits will play this" line; DreadOut levels of acceptable / "Yup, serviceable", or something. I dunno. Don't need much eyecandy in my games.
 
Kickstarter's now in its last three days!

A couple of new screens of some potential puzzley content:

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Maniac said:
Not exactly AAA quality, but some of my favourite horror "games" of all time are Half Life 1 & 2 mods, so... I'm not really picky. Best of luck with the game lads. :)

Agreed. Looks much better, and definitely well above the "people that aren't naff mainstream idjits will play this" line; DreadOut levels of acceptable / "Yup, serviceable", or something. I dunno. Don't need much eyecandy in my games.
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What people might not realise is how much you can get away with in VR even with bottom-tier graphics. The sense of scale and physical space is far more convincing than good textures and lighting - although they do help :)

Strides are definitely being made, anyway.
 
Congrats! This game deserves all the funds it can get. The demo is one of my favorite things in VR and all those new environments look sweet. RE fans take note.
 
Dusk Golem said:
Yup, ending in a little over an hour now. Happy it made it's goal, and crossing fingers the rogue-like mode meets it stretch goal (it's a bit close) before the last 80 minutes are up!
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Thanks DG, and thanks again for the thread! You're a pillar of the horrific community. (Horrific as in 'relating to horror'.)
 
Out now, thanks to anyone and everyone who supported us.

There's a launch sale going on, 20% off, and it should segue into the Halloween sale.

We are currently aware of two bugs in the game and are crunching to fix them.

- One relates to the mapping system, where you may lose stamps you place on your map. -
- The second relates to a locked door system half way through the game, where big doors may re-close when you load the room. To fix this one, simply exit and re-enter the room.

If you run into issues please visit the Steam forums where you will find discussions and more details. We may publish cheat codes there to help bypass any issues. We will also be launching a Discord server the next 24 hours for live discussion about the game.
 
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