“In horror movies, while ghost and mutation themes are common and have a stronger visual impact, there’s also a category of horror movies entirely made up of ordinary people that achieve excellent horror effects.”

“Simply put, horror is just a feeling. There’s no need to be overly fixated on ghosts or mutated monsters for visual impact.”

“Take our company as an example: just by drawing the curtains with everyone immersed in a horror atmosphere, a single scream is enough to make everyone feel terrified…”

“So, creating the right atmosphere is most important. The human heart can sometimes be scarier than ghosts… this should be a very important point.”

“If we can recreate this feeling from our company 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 horrifying scene in the game, then throw in many players, letting the horror gradually ‘infect’ and ‘spread’ among the crowd, just like what happened in our company.”

Ye Zhizhou continued: “That means in this game, the sense of fear doesn’t come from ghost textures, but from the malice of other players, from the spreading atmosphere of fear, from the environment.”

“Then, after fear spreads, conflict will inevitably arise between players.”

“Players definitely can’t be in a completely cooperative relationship, otherwise it becomes ‘singing the Internationale while hand-in-hand walking through a haunted house,’ losing its challenge and going against our goal.”

“We must create conflict and confrontation between players, letting them frighten each other. Isn’t this completely unpredictable danger the source of fear?”

“And the method of confrontation between players… Mr. Pei has already revealed it to us: the weapon system!”

Ye Zhizhou looked at the third point Mr. Pei had emphasized: “The strongest weapon is just a handgun because the game features ordinary people, not ghosts or demons, so there can’t be overly powerful weapons as this would unbalance combat between players.”

“Other weapons could be daggers or rocks—basically, things that can harm ordinary people but won’t kill in one hit.”

The two discussed while taking notes.

Lin Wan interjected at the right moment: “There’s another hidden setting here. Although Mr. Pei didn’t explicitly state it, in our reasoning process, this setting is already emerging.”

“To achieve the effect of fear spreading among players, initially most players should have an ‘innocent’ identity; later transitioning to confrontation means some players will transform into ‘perpetrators.'”

“How exactly should this transformation occur?”

Ye Zhizhou frowned, thinking: “I remember Mr. Pei mentioned that at most this game would have… mental patients?”

Lin Wan nodded: “That’s right, mental patients!”

“These active perpetrators should be mentally unstable, dangerous individuals in the storyline, or other words, maniacs.”

“I think we could introduce the concept of ‘sanity value’ that exists in many games. Many elements in the scene would continuously increase players’ mental pressure, and once reaching a certain value without taking special medication, the player would go mad, becoming a perpetrator who must kill the still-normal players.”

Wang Xiaobin nodded while taking notes: “Indeed, tracing it this way, everything becomes clear.”

“Just some details are still lacking.”

“For example… since it’s a multiplayer online game, should we add a voice system? Are players allowed to chat with each other in-game?”

“If players can chat with each other, they’ll engage in a series of silly behaviors, weakening the game’s horror. They might also deliberately team up after voice negotiations, exploiting game loopholes, reducing the game’s fun.”

“If they can’t chat with each other… it feels like much of the fun is lost. There wouldn’t be much communication between players, possibly becoming just confrontation without cooperation.”

Ye Zhizhou thought for a moment: “That’s easy to solve. Since ‘speaking in the game’ is such an important element, we need to find ways to restrict it.”

“Players can speak, but not casually. Every sentence becomes precious, and speaking too much might even result in punishment.”

“Like… becoming a maniac.”

“A proper horror game should be like the atmosphere in our company.”

“Everyone groping forward in complete darkness.”

“If someone suddenly says something, everyone screams…”

“Putting it that way, I suddenly thought of a good game name.”

“‘BE QUIET,’ with the Chinese name ‘Shh!'”

…

Under the brainstorming of the three, the creative concept for this horror game emerged quickly.

The basic concept of the horror game “BE QUIET” is a multiplayer horror game, with each game comprising 8 players plus a random number of NPCs.

The number of NPCs ranges from 4-8, played by AI to create a certain confusion effect for players.

All players and NPCs enter a randomly generated game map, searching for items, looking for exits, and interacting with other players and NPCs.

The game maps will use different scenes, initially planned as: mental hospital, maniac village, countryside hotel, ancient castle, school.

These scenes will have strong randomness, using algorithmic procedures to randomly refresh the function of each room and the items within before each game starts.

Each room has collectible items and scene items. Scene items can’t be carried but can be used to produce special effects, such as a radio playing a specific recording to increase mental pressure.

Players and NPCs spawn randomly and are dispersed at various spawn points on the map, beginning their exploration once the game starts.

On the map, players will find special items such as daggers, bandages, psychiatric medications, strange statues, etc. Some can attack others, some heal themselves, some reduce mental pressure, and some increase it.

How these are used depends on the player’s game strategy.

Simultaneously, the 8 players will have different identities from the start, with different victory conditions based on identity.

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

The police officer and good people aim to escape, mental patients aim to drive everyone insane or to death, while the ambitious person aims to be the sole survivor.

If NPCs appear, they’ll be distributed in a ratio of half good people, half mental patients.

A player’s identity is only revealed upon death.

There are weapons and items in the scene. The police officer spawns with a handgun that can cause significant damage to both normal people and maniacs, while other players can acquire items from the scene or drop them for others.

Common items include daggers and high-intensity flashlights. Daggers deal high damage to normal people, while flashlights deal high damage to maniacs.

Additionally, there are relatively harder-to-obtain but more powerful weapons like axes and flash grenades.

Mental patients are not equivalent to maniacs.

“Maniac” is a concept relative to normal people.

Initially, the police officer, good people, mental patients, and ambitious person are all normal people with identical initial attributes.

As time passes, and under the influence of certain items in the scene, some players’ sanity values will continuously decrease. When reaching a critical point without taking special medication, they transform from “normal person” to “maniac.”

Maniacs have higher movement speed, health, attack power, and other basic attributes compared to normal people. However, once entering the “maniac” state, that player completely loses the ability to communicate, and with muscle enlargement and model changes, other players can visually identify them.

Voice communication is allowed in the game but strictly limited.

Players can only say one sentence at a time, within 10 seconds. After speaking, the sentence is processed by the system’s voice software before being played.

Each time a player speaks, their sanity value decreases.

Not speaking at all makes it easy for other players to view you as an enemy or AI; speaking too much increases the risk of becoming a maniac on one hand, and makes other players suspicious of your true intentions on the other.

Additionally, to prevent silly players from creating entertainment effects, most meaningless actions have been removed from the game.

For instance, jumping is only possible when crossing certain terrains; random jumping in place is not allowed.

For players, especially those playing as mental patients or ambitious people, different strategies and gameplay approaches can be adopted in the game, similar to many board games.

The police officer and good people must search for mechanisms in the scene and find exits while being wary of others, decisively eliminating potential threats when necessary.

Mental patients have much lower sanity values than good people and can actively transform into maniacs to attack good people using items in the scene, or disguise themselves as good people to mislead other good people, leading them into traps.

The ambitious person can also disguise themselves as a good person or a maniac based on the current situation to achieve their goal.

Each player must constantly guess the identity of others while adjusting their game strategy.

After each game, a comprehensive score is calculated based on each person’s data, game time, and the role played.

For example, the ambitious person is a very difficult role to win with, so losing only deducts a small amount of points, while winning adds a large amount. Considering that kills, puzzle-solving, item collecting, etc., all count toward points, even though the ambitious person’s objective is very difficult to achieve, there’s still motivation to play.

…

In just one short afternoon, the game’s major framework was established.

Raising questions and solving them, in this endless cycle, many game settings were quickly finalized.

Looking at the densely written initial design draft, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin couldn’t help but marvel.

It was much smoother than originally imagined!

Previously, they had spent two weeks playing horror games and conceptualizing game settings without much result.

But now, in just one afternoon, the game’s prototype had emerged!

What was the difference between these two attempts?

The difference was that Mr. Pei had pointed out the direction, and Director Lin had provided an approach to analyze Mr. Pei’s intentions.

Following this approach, all problems were solved effortlessly!

So far, although no one was certain whether this game would succeed, at least the gameplay was complete, there were no similar competing games on the market, and the first impression was quite novel.

Mr. Pei’s pointing out a clear path for this game was like giving everyone a reassuring pill.

Looking at the design draft, Ye Zhizhou couldn’t help but exclaim.

“Could this be what Mr. Pei had in mind all along, the final product of this horror game?”

“It’s brilliant!”