Ghost Master Preview

On a shelf behind Gregg Barnett's desk, there's a small library of ghost-related materials. There are books about haunted houses and paranormal investigators. There are DVDs and videotapes, both documentaries about supposedly haunted places and films about ghosts and hauntings (including both Ghost and The Haunting). One DVD is particularly appropriate--a copy of Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, which is about a charlatan exorcist who has his ghostly friends haunt houses and then charges the homeowners for removing the ghosts.

Ghosts can draw upon a variety of powers, such as making a room colder.

Barnett is the creative director for Ghost Master, a strategy game that will take this concept one step further--imagine a hybrid of The Frighteners and The Sims. You control a team of ghosts, and you must send them into various locales to scare off the inhabitants or would-be interlopers. "We wanted to do a game that was the opposite of what people expect," Barnett explained. "There have been lots of games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill where you go in and get scared. We wanted to make a game where you choreograph the scares."

It's a clever premise, and it promises to be more than just a good idea. There's a good deal of variety both in what you can do and what you need to do, and each of your ghosts has special powers and abilities to help you achieve your goals. In the most basic scenarios, such as the sorority house that serves as the first level, you'll simply need to scare everybody away. This isn't just a matter of plunking down some specters and watching them work. There are different types of ghosts, and each one has very specific uses.

For instance, the gremlin can be placed only on mechanical objects. Once placed, the gremlin can cause the object to malfunction in ways that will unsettle the local humans. Headless horsemen can be placed only on roads. Others have more bizarre requirements. Sandmen can be placed near slumbering humans and go into their psyche to find out what scares them, while poltergeists can only bind to children. There will be 23 types of ghosts, and each one--from banshees to ghasts to trickster spirits--is based on the mythology and paranormal theories of different cultures.

Once placed, the ghosts can begin using their powers. There will be 150 powers in all. Ghosts can cause the temperature in rooms to drop to near freezing or cause blood to flow from the walls. They can cause hordes of insects to scurry across the floor or cause objects to fly about the room. One power--called "unnatural erection"--allows spirits to stack objects in little paranormal pillars. Your spirits can even trigger earthquakes.

There are other, more direct, powers as well.

Once you start scaring, you can watch as the humans react. "You can actually go into the point of view of the ghosts and the humans," Bartlett explained. "So once you set up the scares, you can actually go into the heads of the people and experience them firsthand, hear their hearts pounding."

Ghost Master will attempt to emulate some realistic human behavior, making it follow the recent trend seen in games like Black & White and The Sims and become yet another game that owes a debt of thanks to David Crane's nearly 20-year-old Little Computer People. The humans of Ghost Master will go about their business--watching television, doing their jobs, and talking with each other--until you come in and get to haunting. Then they'll react to your actions. Make a room cold, and they'll start a fire. Make a wall leak water, and they'll try to fix it. "We aren't going for realism," Barnett said. "More like pantomime realism. You might use a power where characters are set on fire, or at least they think they're on fire, and they'll go and jump in the shower or someone will grab an extinguisher."