Hi Hello ^^ I'd like to run through you an idea I've got. Basically, It's a started project for my uni finals. And so I wanted to get an opinion. I don't have an itch page made yet tho... I hope it's not much of an issue, as I don't really have any other platform now to ask about it ^^'

Psychological horror detective game. 

Action: Solve riddles by finding clues in dialogues and items. 

Economy: Information gathered by finding items, using them in the dialogue and finding hints in the dialogues to progress the story.

World: Modern Central Europe - old train driving through the storm.

Story:

You're a passenger in a train, delayed by the storm. Game begins as the train starts to move again and you're left to explore as you wish. You can talk with all the passengers and interact with items they left or lost. Not long after the train started moving you hear about a few accidents. A girl is looking around for her cat that apparently escaped. Then some middle-aged man is looking in panic for his ill mother, argues with the conductor about it. You join in to look for her, but then after some time no one can find the conductor anymore. Not only that but the driver also won't respond. The driver's room door won't budge as well. People start to feel uneasy. Something's wrong. You find a piece of paper that belonged to the conductor, listing how many people bought the ticket for this ride. A group of passengers decided to talk in the bar compartment about missing people, but during the meeting one of the people present suddenly vanishes. No sound, no flash, no smoke. He was standing right beside them and now he's just gone. People panic, you run to your compartment frightened. What's going on? What happened and will this happen to you as well? You look at the conductor's list and decide to write down names of everyone present and gone from this train, if only to know who was here with you. Maybe this will give you a clue as to what's going on and how to stop it? People keep disappearing, leaving behind only a few trinkets.

By talking with passengers and interacting with items they left behind, find out who was in which compartment to save the memory of people that vanished and hopefully make this strange phenomenon stop.

I think your idea is excellent, it looks very interesting and has a plot that's not your average story, like a Sherlock Holmes version of The Polar Express, hahaha. Will there be any tangible enemies? I mean, any paranormal entities or monsters?

I've read the concept and the premise looks good. I hope there would be enough time for player to get connected to each passenger so when one is missing the feeling would be real.

However, the key in any good mystery lies in what the actual mystery is, how it is investigated and how it is solved. 

I think it’s an awesome idea! Really nice setting, and a cool concept. My only thing I would suggest caution with is the amount of work involved with a project as story heavy as this (as you mentioned it was a uni project). I can’t speak for what you can do but recommend planning out how long you think it would take, then double it (things go wrong etc.).

Lastly, a quick side - do you think it would instead be more horrifying for the idea that someone disappears out of sight rather than in front of you? If they disappear in front of you it confirms: something is wrong. If they disappeared into the small toilet room with only a tiny window for escape, which is open, then… Did they climb through the window? No way, how could they - it’s too small? What happened? Something definitely occurred but we still don’t know what.

My two cents :) Plan and don’t show everything :D