Why I Want a Cloverfield Game

I’m not gonna lie to you: my taste in films is what some people call “terrible”. In my top five, you have (in no particular order): Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, Blade Runner and, as the title suggests, Cloverfield. I love these films for lots of different reasons, and Cloverfield sits very comfortably in the middle of that list because it ticks a lot of my boxes. It’s a monster movie without the big guns and huge explosions; and don’t get me wrong, I love big guns and explosions: Pacific Rim sits in my top ten. Cloverfield is a slice-of-life drama with the backdrop of a Kaiju attack, and it makes me very happy every time I watch it.

Ultimately though, it’s still an 85-minute-long story that doesn’t change, no matter how many times I watch it and how differently I’m sitting on my sofa. So I went looking for a more interactive version, and found nothing much outside of a couple flash games on Kongregate, the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) from the original and a short series of test footage from 2008 for an indie game that, as far as I can tell, never went any further than those tests.

And this upsets me: I think the concept of having a monster chasing me and being able to do nothing about it but run and try to hide exhilarating. It’s been done in horror, with games such as Outlast proving that running-and-hiding works in a game. But as soon as your enemy becomes clearly and distinctly bigger than you, game developers suddenly can’t help but give you a way to kill it.

If you think you can kill this you're using cheats

I remember last E3, with the announcement trailer for Horizon: Zero Dawn, I briefly thought and hoped with all my heart that someone had finally got it. The “Thunderjaw” burst through the trees and scared off all the little robot dinosaurs, roared triumphantly and all the audience gasped. I was, and I cannot stress this enough, literally jumping with joy: this was a game I could get excited for, this was what I’d wanted for so long. And then they ruined it. In one foul, terrible, awful swoop, the character killed the giant robot T. rex and with it my excitement for the game. It could be great, but I won’t care because it could have been greater.

Just imagine how good a real Cloverfield-inspired game could be: you spawn in the city somewhere, and your only goal is to make it out alive. Somewhere out there is a monster who only wants to kill and destroy everything, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Between you and the many ways out are throngs of people who also want to get out, and have no intention of letting you leave before them.

The rest of the game is simple: you go as quickly as you can to one of the exits, hopefully avoiding the monster and getting out alive.  If this sounds easy, it shouldn’t be: the game should be actively stacking odds against you to make things seem more realistic. I’m talking buildings collapsing, bridges being destroyed, helicopters being plucked from the sky, gas explosions, panicking rioters, over-zealous armed forces; the whole works.

Heck, even make it multiplayer; take the formula that Rust, DayZ and their ilk have been using and add more NPCs. Make the game a competition where the fastest escapes get more points, and points add to a progression so you can put a new hat on your escapee, make them half a second faster at climbing stairs, or have a slightly improved stamina bar.

The equivalent of Bloodstains from Dark Souls

You could then even add in group events, where one or more of your group of friends is trapped somewhere and needs to be rescued first. Give more points based on how big the group is when (or if) they escape. It could even become an esport, with the best teams competing against each other on stages in front of thousands.

I mean, running away from a kaiju is surely more exciting than watching Hearthstone…