Rated E games with blood?

[HylianSwordsman]

spemanig said:

HylianSwordsman said:

spemanig said:

HylianSwordsman said:
I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. Is the minor blood and gore essential to the gameplay, or just a visual effect to make it appeal to adults more?

It's essencial to the mood of the game. This is a game that is made to prove that a game can have children as it's target demographic, but still appeal to adults. This isn't a juvenile or trivial use of blood, and it isn't excessive. It's there for tone, not for eye candy.

The point is to make the world feel harsh, and to make the protagonist feel frail. When you die, you may cough up a little blood or when you slash at an enemy, they may lose their head, but with no excessive blood. The combat is meant to feel cold, dry, and inorganic.

And I want to emphasise how the blood and gore I'm envisioning isn't excessive and isn't ebundant. This isn't supposed to look like a rated E The Last of Us.

Yeah, I'll be honest, it sounds like a T game to me. I know the blood isn't excessive, but the fact that it's used for tone makes me think it'll be T. Excessive amounts would get you an M, while gore that's sufficiently dehumanized, for example cartoon zombies falling apart comically, might get you an E. Your game might still appeal to people under 13, but it won't get rated that way, because the tone will be seen as a tad bit too dark for an E rating. No amount of coloring the blood and other tricks could work without totally changing the tone of the game.

Well my arguement to that is that both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask had dark tones, and still managed to obtain E ratings. (This isn't me arguing your point, but more asking if there is anything I can do similar to those games that allow me to keep the tone while staying E)

Also, it also merits mention that this isn't supposed to be a "dark" game. It's supposed to be a bright exploration game, where combat feels harsh, but satisfying. My favorite game is Wind Waker, so aside from the unrealistic porportions, that's a lot of how the game is supposed to "feel," only the difficulty is more like an easier Dark Souls. Punishing and sometimes unforgiving, but managable.

And I'm fully prepared to change things up to keep the E rating, but for that, I'd need some more clever ideas. Majora's Mask had those painful mask animations, so I can follow that line of thought for the death sequences, but for the enemies I'd need something else to emphasize the harshness of the fights. I plan on leaving the enemy "corpse" models on the ground after you defeat them, instead of having them "poof" away. Samurai Jack did this clever thing where, instead of blood, robots had ink. Something like that?

And on your point about dehumanized gore, that's right on the money. The only things with "gore" will be like golems, spirit-monsters, skeletins, robots, and other very inorganic creatures. There will also be more organic "alien-like" creatures, but they are animalistic, and even they will have an inorganig tinge to them. Looks like you played Skyward Sword. Remember those hydra's you have to behead? Something like that.

Okay, I see what you mean now. Dark Souls punishing and unforgiving world, but Zelda kid-friendliness. Sounds like you know what you're doing. People who liked Dark Souls will probably go for it for the same reasons, while kids will like it and it might get them to try a game like Dark Souls later in life. Not that it's a Dark Souls clone, but it sounds like the same experience that uniquely draws people to Dark Souls will draw people to this game. People will get the same satisfaction out of playing them, but one will have a more kid-friendly aesthetic and be a tad more forgiving so as not to frustrate the kiddies with an impossible learning curve. I could see this working.