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Hi, BSP. I'd be interested in play testing as long as the game can run on Mac

Hi, Moving Thread
I just woke up and decided that today I'm totally gonna work on that album cover commission that I have been avoiding, but here I am eating my french toast and who do I run into but you, MT!
Gonna go to lunch with a friend later today. She has a BABY!

Dead Space is one of my favorite franchises, too, and it really is for the reasons you mentioned of the storytelling style and how well it immerses you into the game. I think the key to how they get such a great atmosphere is in their use of the "show, don't tell" principle, and using the setting as a character. I think you're right that Dead Space 2 does this really well. They end up essentially giving you all of the backstory for the world in that game, and they do it without any of the characters ever explaining what is going on to you. You have to turn to the setting - the events, sights, and sounds around you - to figure out what's happening. The setting explains the important information, instead of the NPCs. A great example of this is the introduction to Unitology; rather than have one of the characters explain to you who the Unitologists are and their goals and how messed up they are, you get to walk through the Unitogist church, gaining the information the way that any "visitor", as you put it, would, and also witness the aftermath of their suicide rituals and such. I think this method of giving the player information through experience is a lot more visceral, and not to mention fun because it makes you have to think about things and piece elements together.

I remember there's this one moment when Isaac is walking through a residential corridor, and through all of the eerie noises of the building, you hear the sound of a baby crying from one of the locked, abandoned rooms. My brother and I were immediately like "Nooooo, that's so sad " It gave this sense of doom and hopelessness to the events of the story that couldn't have been achieved any other way. Strangely enough, to me, that was one of the most chilling and memorable moments of the game.

I've only seen playthroughs of the Bioshock games, but it seems like they take a similar approach to things, and I'd say the Portal Franchise is pretty amazing at it, too. It's a matter of resisting the urge to explain to the players in detail everything about the world and the characters, and instead setting up "clues" and letting the players discover for themselves what the world is about. The minimal interface idea you mention definitely plays a key role in this, since you want the player to be looking at the environment, not their HUD