Pitch Black! (aka: Planets That Turn Hostile After Dark)

If you've ever seen the movie Pitch Black with Vin Diesel as Riddick, you probably know what I'm talking about!

Imagine an alien world, deserted, utterly mundane or dreamy and lush during the extremely long day...

But once the night falls... it falls hard! And things turn to the worse!

From every crevice in the ground crawl alien creatures that had been waiting for the dark to come, and resume their reign over this planetoid!

Or alternatively, all the friendly creatures and plants could turn hostile instead. Happy critters and colorful vegetation show us their dark side!

Tell me what you think of the idea!

 

So pretty much like how Terraria was.

 

YES. This would be the perfect occurence for adventuring on a hostile planet. Why does it kinda make me think pikmin? but I think a "good by day, evil by night" planet would be good. The underground world in said planets would be interesting painful to try to explore too in that case given that "evil stuff" is hiding down under waiting for the day to turn night. gives me chills just thinking what could happen to you on these.

 

Or the planet where only night is safe. By day day roving bands of the uneducated try to get you to join their group proclaiming the great sky-builder as the creator of all things.

 

Nights in Terraria weren't that scary, and you could hole yourself up easily.

I'm thinking a planet that would only be truly safe to explore at day, or as you pointed out at night...
But instead of a few odd enemies spawning, there'd be a HORDE of monsters just wiping everything from the face of the planet.
You'd have to land on this planet, do whatever you want to do while it's safe and then get the hell out of there!

It's a race against the sundown! Grab all you can and get back to your spaceship... or you're toast!

And building a bunker shouldn't keep you very safe either, with tons of mobs that dig through your steel walls like butter!

However, days would be muuuch longer.

In Pitch Black you had this desert planet that only experienced nightfall every 22 years... during this time every living thing on the surface was usually eradicated by the terrors crawling from within! :O

With the right equipment, you could still manage to survive the hostile time of day, or to explore the dark depths of the underground... but only with heavy, high-level gear!

Or maybe the planet's sun bathes it in scorching heat or harmful radiation, making it only safe to traverse it at night!
Great idea!

 

A scorching irradiated planet made explorable only by heavy survival gear would be awesome. Either by suit or mech even! You could only get out in buildings or when it was night.

 

I would like this, especially if there was no light durring the dark times. Where you could only see what your flightlight or *insert space-age light source here* making you truly afraid of what could be out there. Having friends (or ally NPCs) would be very handy in the fact that you would have someone to watch your back and truly keep you safe.

 

Ooooohhh, this gives me chills just by reading this!

A nice little planet that turns really evil at night, sounds like fun. This base also leaves room for more complex ideas.

hmm, let me think... How about all your allies and NPCs turn against you at night, because a dark source (some end boss) takes control of them, and all you can do ist either kill them, (which would be a bad loss for you since they turn friendly again at sunrise) or run away and hide!

And the only way to this stop madness from happening every night, would be to find the dark source reigning on the planet, and kill it for good!

 

x-ray mode would be AWESOME (like batman detective vision) when it's pitch black night you switch mode and can see stuff in a greenish outline.

Or Predator heat vision where everything is bluish except for creatures being reddish.

 

so like lv 1 by day 1oo by night? that would be cool... or maybe one that's level 100 by day and 1 by night? (levels used as example)

 

I actually posted an idea similar to this called "Get Indoors Before the Night Comes". However, the idea was about a planet whose environments and creatures physically transform every night. The suggestion can be found here: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/get-indoors-before-the-night-comes.5127/

 

This reminds me of the pikmin franchise. Each night you must leave the planet(go into low orbit) as voracious nocturnal predators would kill your pikmin. Maybe the animals could have piercing red eyes and are very fast, forcing you to hide until day break?

 

Another idea:

A planet with such an agressive sun, that you are forced to go underground at day, and can only come out at night.
But... you are not the only ones who make its way up to the surface in the dark...

 

yea I think that sounds interesting and similar to crematoria in tcor. i'd like to see some planets that are more hostile temperature wise, ones which revolve very close to the star, you could have planets that literally scorch the surface during the day and freeze at night. there is a small window of time to explore at dusk/dawn. it would make for some really unique time based challenges. the ground wouldn't be dirt based it would be composed of some type of scorched rock or charred minerals,perhaps dust and ash in places. resources could be deep underground.

from the riddick wiki

 

Or, what if the planet itself literally came alive at night? That would be an interesting boss fight.

 

or a swarm like a cloud of killer bugs that rise out of chasms by night and attack everything you, your pets, unfortunate day mobs... no matter what you can't kill millions of bugs (w/ tiny hit boxes) so you would have to hide till morning...

 

i see flamethrower as an option ;D

 

I'd love it if it was possible for a planet to completely freeze over during the night, with actual changes to the tilesets etc.

As night falls temperature would fall rapidly and no source of heat would suffice. Eventually the planet would freeze over changing the tiles (covering the surface with unstable sand-like snow, freezing water to ice, etc), extinguishing all sources of heat and killing all living beings (potentially excluding some life forms adapted to this).

If the mechanic was in then perhaps the reverse could happen too -- a planet that dries out or burns up during the day, the heat killing everything.

 

This is an awesome Idea, I think it could be truly frightening to be running for your life from a huge mob of monsters, of course the ability to just beam up to your ship kind of takes alot of the danger out of it.

 

Very nice idea here. What I like most, personally, is that this all comes as a huge surprise to the player. Basically, with these surprises, it'd be good if the player could survive but just barely. It would take a lot of quick thinking to get out of these bad situations, and that's pretty exciting.