Adapting the SCP Universe

 I know it's a multiverse; leave me alone

Recently I spoke a little bit about the SCP presence within the world of indie games and mentioned how I thought it made for a ripe ground to grow from. Though the very nature of the internet horror story collection is open source, there's a huge and expansive universe of cryptids and curses with wildly imaginative hearts beating in them, just waiting to be adapted either into film or game, held back only by the non-profit clause of the SCP universe. Still for those of us too cowardly or talentless to make profit out of our work (like moi) there's a definite world of inspiration to be drawn from the world of the Secure Contain Protect foundation and I want to touch on just a few ideas I feel like could be explored in standalone game projects, either of an Indie level or slightly bigger.  And this is by no means exhaustive, I might add; the quality of SCP stories just lays out too many great story ideas to be covered over one blog. Perhaps even too many to be covered over a Hundred! 

First off is a SCP that has actually appeared in a game before, Containment Breach, but I think could be capable of so much if focused on for a standalone game. I'm talking about SCP-096; the creature known as 'Shy Guy'. The lanky, pale skinned monster with garishly oversized claws. It's quirk is that the creature hides it's face, and if anyone should break it's privacy and look at it, the creature will hunt them down and kill them. But when I say 'Hunt' I mean it in the fullest sense of the word. No manner of containment procedure can get in between 096 and a target, it's can slice through any metal, survive any damage done to it's body and obtains a supernatural knowledge of where the person who saw it's face is at all times. Whatsmore, you don't even have to look upon 096's face directly; doing so through satellite or even a picture is enough to doom you, so you can see the potential for a terrifying chase, based game here; right?

If there were a game adaptation I would probably make a few changes to the lore, such as the supernatural positioning. Perhaps if it had the sense of the general location of it's target the gameplay could become more of a cat and mouse affair, because just constantly running away from a creature that can break down any barrier would get very old fast. What I really forsee as being fun would be the amount of ways you could get creative trying to kill the thing, only to see it shrug everything off; very similar to the original terminator. That could be the objectives during the gameplay: get him trapped underneath a car, cause him to slip of a rainy rooftop during a chase, create a makeshift pipe-bomb and blow him up, and of course, melt him down in a steel-factory. (That last one might be a bit on-the-nose.) Only to learn, once all the chaos and attention inevitably brings the heel of law enforcement down upon and you're bought into the station to be booked, that nothing can stop the Shy-Guy from killing it's privacy back.

My next concept would be a much more ambitious idea, spurred by my fascination with Post-Apocalyptic style games that don't just adapt the typical 'Nuclear War' premise but do something interesting with it. (Like The Last of Us, Horizon or, specifically to this idea, 'I Am Alive'.) One of the most famous of the very many adaptations of SCP 001 is known as 'When Day Breaks', and tells of an alternate earth where some sort of anomalous change to the solar System's sun suddenly renders it's gaze fatal to all organics on the planet. Although 'Fatal' might not be the right world for it. The Sun develops the ability to melt down all those who bare it's brunt into a gelatinous blob of somehow sentient, and still very much alive, flesh that yearns to hunt down those who survived the event and drag them into the light so that their bodies can be fused into that grotesque Cronenberg-style whole. (Lovely, eh?)

What I see coming out of this is a Survival-style game, where exposure to the Sun is the big no-no threat of daily living. I don't mean an open-world survival game with thirst and hunger bars either, but a more directed story based survival game in the vein of Bioshock; where you have to scavenge for the bullets and tools to survive. Interactions with the 001-B mush people will be kept at a minimum for really intense horror moments and set pieces, with the bulk being other survivors gearing up to survive a world in the shadows. I could see a really intense, almost Last of Us esque tale about preserving in a world without hope. A place already destroyed. With Resident Evil style boss fights against ugly deformed metabolised monster men. A fairly straightforward premise but one with some legs to grown and expand on it, I think.

That very classic SCP-173 could make it's own standalone game work too. Although I bet many out there would rightly argue that early Containment Breach concepts already were the 173 standalone! 173, for those that don't know, is the weeping angel style SCP that existed before that Doctor Who episode was made. Garish statures that cannot move when looked at, but travel at superfast speeds whenever you look away or blink. If they ever touch a human, that victim's neck is immediately broken sending a shock to their nervous system and killing them instantly. The only weakness I can think of is that SCP-173 cannot operate doors nor pass through walls; meaning that simply locking them in a room by themselves is good enough containment.

A standalone version of an SCP game would probably share many similarities to Containment Breach, with an interactive blinking system to gameify sneaking around a creature that attacks the sightless. What I would like is a more linear and focused experience that can take advantage of extreme encounters. I have less of a concept for this one and more a general idea, but when I consider the potential of a 173 standalone game my mind is immediately drawn to one of the stand-out moments of 'Joy of Creation'. (A moment which Security Breach might have shamelessly ripped off.) I'm talking about a moment wherein a room full of creatures who act very similarly to 173 are placed between the player and their destination, requiring the player to manage looking at multiple statues at once whilst stealing away a glance to work on opening a door at the same time. A tense trade-off of safety versus progression that places the tools of fear at the hands of the player. 173 could definitely rock a set piece like that.

Finally I want to propose something out of left field: What if there was an SCP TV show? Yes, there's certainly enough cryptids and monsters to contain an exploratory series going into the various discovered SCP's throughout the years and how they could be maintained, but what about the basic framing device for the entire show? Well I think I have just that. SCP-963 tells of a jewel that carries the soul of a slain personnel member called 'Doctor Bright' that has obtained a tenuous immortality by way of stealing the bodies of others who wear the neckless. That sounds to me like a perfectly interesting lead character in a series that revolves around the discovery and exploration of that version of SCP-001 which is the book that creates other SCPs everytime that it's read. Essentially an origin point for the entire SCP franchise in that every page creates a new anomaly. The mystery of unravelling the truth behind that tools power whilst containing the anomalies all across the world, perhaps told over the course of a century as the Foundation evolves into the international secretive unit it is in modern lore. I think that'd be a sick show.

Those are just some mild musings I've had on what can be done with some of the cool stories told in the SCP world, but there's of course endless applications for this innumerable and versatile tales. I just learnt that three new SCP-001 entries were just 'declassified' the other month, demonstrating just how endless a font of inspiration the SCP world can be if only someone has the skills and tools to go at it. Which is why I very much encourage the creatively inclined to take a look at some of the stories of SCP for inspiration and ideas for where their own dreams might take them; there's no telling what strange new worlds they can envision with these cool stories as a starting point. And if you're not a creative person; read the SCP entries anyway. They're super fun.