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Today we're continuing our look at the Black Knight.
Why is the Black Knight in the game?
Hello! Today we’re looking at our most recent monster, The Black Knight.
What is the Black Knight?What is it? What is it? It is night, it is the void, it is the presence behind you, it lives within mirrors and corners of eyes. It is whispers made coherent, shadow dressed in rags, evil that walks like man, a walking nightmare.It both darkness and shrouded in darkness, wearing the lightless void like a cloak. It twists and turns and tortures words and thoughts – like barbed wire in your head, like glass breaking, finger-nails-down-blackboard scalpels-down-your-spine – and turns those around it. I’ve seen men weep as they murdered their colleagues. Beg for death as they strangle the life out of friends, loved ones. Laugh with cracked and broken smiles as their blood pooled around them on the floor. Fall, catatonic in an instant, never to recover. It stands at the centre of the carnage. The bindings hide its face but I am sure it smiles.
Today in part 3 of 3 we're completing our examination of Screamers in the game.
How have Screamers evolved in the game?
Screamers began as an amalgamation of a couple of things, and since then we’ve fiddled around their rules and costume to make (hopefully) a bit scarier and bit better at their job.
Screamers were initially inspired by the Witch in Left 4 Dead – the appearance of a Witch slams a handbrake on the game’s action, and that’s something that we wanted to recreate in-game. Plus, we have to keep up with the opposition. The choice for them to spawn a bunch of Zombies rather than jump up and tear your face off was due to the physical limitations of the game and our resolute effort to keep the game as call-free as possible.
Since that first foray, Screamers have proved immensely popular with the GM team and players alike (okay, not so much with the players, but we think they’re enjoying it) and we’re always trying not to include them too much lest they lose their appeal.
Somewhere in between games 6 and 7 I saw the Silent Hill movie – it was terrible, but there was a wonderful scene where the heroine had to creep down a corridor full of those creepy nurses. Even though they didn’t fit with the mythos (and man, there was so much wrong with that film in comparison to Silent Hill 2, but I’m getting off topic here) it was very tense and, here’s the important thing, very easy to recreate.
Since then Screamers have operated in a “Zombie Forest” (technical term) where they are surrounded by inert, but standing, Zombies. This means that players have to work a lot harder to weave their way around the threat rather than tiptoeing over dead bodies.
With the advent of the new game, we’re trying to make Screamers even scarier – and we’re doing this through giving them “webs.” Each Zombie surrounding a Screamer will be attached to them via thread, wool, string etc forming a series of tripwires, meaning that our brave survivors will have to work even harder to navigate the (now larger) zone of influence.
Above you can see our sort-of-final concept for the Screamers - we're still toying with the blindfold and wondering if there's a different way to rig up the web. The tattoos, though, give a pretty solid indication of what we're going for.
Tomorrow: The Black Knight cometh!
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