I haven't decided yet if I'm moving forward with it. There's for sure stuff there I want to explore more.
And yeah to give a bit of a rundown of the plan, Inscryption was a pretty big influence for where this was going to go. I did most of the art for a creepy pixel smiley face that would talk to the player before rounds and after. I was going to have a way to input a name and pick a face for your player. Then it would be an increasingly creepy arcade game where after you lost, you got sucked in. I played around with having a first round be very normal and then having the face invite the player to come back to the arcade after hours and giving them the code. When they came back at night, the player would learn it was a trap to suck their soul into the machine. The next round, you'd essentially be playing as a different person, and you'd see the face of the previous player as part of the centipede. I was going to have some easter eggs depending on the initials the player picked, too. When I was feeling really fancy I was thinking killing a segment that used to be a player would give extra points or drop powerups so that you essentially had to destroy previous players to get far enough in the game to not get sucked in.
That was about all I had planned for the jam, but if I move forward with it I want to have different games happen for when the player gets sucked into the arcade, and essentially have it be a process of working with people who lost and got sucked in to learn more of the secrets and eventually defeat the arcade. I'm thinking if you manage to "free" a centipede segment that used to be a person by shooting the segment before and after without killing it, it can escape and either guide the player to secret ways out of the main level or be available to help the player if they get sucked in to get further and explore more of inside the arcade game.
Anyways, long comment but I was really excited to make a horror story puzzle game with scoring higher in centipede as a story progression method and uncovering secrets as a way to do better in centipede. I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out all things considered but I really wanted to showcase the full idea!