Game Pitch Competition - Round 6 "The Pitch-hiker"

Started by Stupot, Mon 17/09/2018 04:17:46

Previous topic - Next topic

Which is your favourite game pitch?

Fall Flat
2 (18.2%)
N00b
1 (9.1%)
Homo-Sapiens
1 (9.1%)
Town of Nightmares
2 (18.2%)
Chekovââ,¬â,,¢s Balance
0 (0%)
A Break From Reality
0 (0%)
Happy Scrappy Hero Pup
0 (0%)
The Other Paperclip
0 (0%)
Found Footage
5 (45.5%)

Total Members Voted: 11

Voting closed: Tue 09/10/2018 12:21:34

Stupot

While Snarky is away on Mittness, I'm sharing Game Pitch duties. so I hope you're ready.  It's time for another...

Game Pitch Competition â€" Round 6: "The Pitch-hiker"

The object of the competition is to present the best possible "elevator pitch" for an original adventure game.
So, come up with a cool idea, and explain it very briefly to someone in order to catch their interest and make them excited about it.

We're being strict about the word limits so if you go above the max length, the remaining part will be placed behind a spoiler tag, and voters may choose to ignore that part of the pitch.

Procedure

  • Submit your game pitch via this form.
  • I will post the entries (anonymously) as they come in. Hopefully this will inspire others to join.
  • Submissions close October 1st. I will then open a thread poll for voting.
  • Voting will last 1 week (until October 8th). Discussion and feedback on the entries is encouraged, but make sure to maintain anonymity.
  • After voting is over, the results become public. I will post the list of participants, and we can then work to identify the authors and discuss the entries further.
Rules

  • The pitch should be for some kind of adventure game (under a broad definition of the genre).
  • Try to stick more or less to the word limits: An elevator ride is not that long!
  • You may submit only one entry in the round.
  • The entry should be anonymous. Do not reveal your authorship until voting closes.
  • Do not vote for your own entry. It's not cool.

All clear?
Then start sending in those pitches!


Here are all nine entries:
Spoiler

1.
FALL FLAT

5 people wake up free-falling in the skies, with no memory of how they got there.


No time for chitchat when you're falling to your death.

"Who are those people? do I know them? What is that thing we're falling towards?
What are those devices we carry?
One of the devices is a communication device, and somebody is talking!
It looks broken, though (on purpose?)."

As they try to figure things out, they'll start to experience (playable) flashbacks which will slowly reveal what's going on.

Will they make it in time, or will they.. FALL FLAT?



2.
N00b

A game thriller set where you live: On the Internet!


Kara is the founder and admin of a tight-knit online community, until one day her identity is stolen and she is locked out of her own site. With a new account and a collection of hacker tools, she sets out to rebuild her status, uncover the usurpers and take back control before it's too late. But how far will she go?

N00b is a simulated alternate reality game with chats, video, images, etc. across multiple social sites and services.



3.
Homo-Sapiens

Find out the secret of the exodus. A true classic point&click adventure.


Half a millennium ago the last remnants of the homo sapient left Earth and settled in a planet to and start a new life.

While cleaning your parents' attic you find an old metal box, which reveals a 500 year old journal! It account for life on Earth, leaving it and their hopes for the future. What you do not find is the answer you always wanted to know: Why?

Intrigued you decide to embark on a journey to Earth.



4.
Town of nightmares

Save the town of Braden!


In the small town of Braden the townsfolk are plagued by nightmares from which some never wake. As the sheriff of Braden you have to find what's causing it.
Gameplay is divided into two parts, day and night. During the day you're investigating, while on the nights you enter a nightmare where you try and save the townsfolk from a grim monster. Your actions during the day have consequences at night, so remember, the monster is after you too.



5.
Chekhov's Balance



A short adventure where two friends have to deal with slice-of-life topics (first love, bullying, trying stuff out). They are writing a fantasy novel, the progress of which the player can take part of in dialogues between the two (simplified: “Should we kill this side character?” â€" “Yes/no!”), but thus also affecting the game world which respectively also reacts to your decisions, forcing you to balance between an interesting and a boring story for the sake of your characters' well-being.


6.
A Break From Reality

Why is reality starting to break down?!


The plane you are travelling on has to ditch in the ocean near a coastline. Upon exiting the plane you find that it is now too small for you to fit back inside. One wet arrival at the nearby coastal town later and you find reality breaking everywhere. A man disappears/reappears every 17 seconds. Posters of famous people are not them. Outdoor spaces shrink while indoor ones stretch. Combination adventure/survival gameplay.


7.
Happy Scrappy Hero Pup

A little good dog in a big bad world


The dog Scrappy must save his human friend Baby kidnapped by filthy people then moved in an occupied mall! He have to make his way through devasted stores, weird guys and girls who crave something. And find the kidnappers hideout before some very bad happen to Baby! But he can count on his fine nose, his smartness and the power of his happyful smile!


8.
The other paperclip

A kidnapped engineer has to escape a strange city that's an amalgamation of alien tech and various human cultures


An engineer finds himself kidnapped by aliens and sent to their planet. He soon learns that the aliens are using a human workforce to terraform the planet, and in addition to a large native population of humans descended from slaves taken centuries ago, the aliens have in regularly kidnapped various earth scientists in order to expand their knowledge. An elderly german scientist, himself abducted in the 1950's, tells the engineer that this their version of ""Operation Paperclip"".

The engineer has
Spoiler
to pretend to go along with the engineering tasks he's given while devising a way to reverse-engineer the alien technology and find a way back to Earth.
[close]

9.
Found Footage

A comedy adventure game that revolves around the found footage craze of the early 2000s. No monsters, just real problems.


It's fall of the year 2000, and you've secured funding to shoot a found footage horror movie on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. You as the director only have a week to overcome a number of challenges related to shooting in an isolated environment. Deal with odd locals, manage a B-movie diva, convince the crotchety widower to let you shoot on his lawn, and engineer props out of the materials on hand. Can you produce a found footage hit?
Screen reader support enabled.

[close]

Snarky

So have there not been any entries yet, or are we back to only posting them at the end of the submission period (though the instructions say otherwise)?

If you want an email notification when someone submits an entry, you should go to edit the form, choose the responses tab, and click the three-dot options button nearby. It should have email notification in the menu.

KyriakosCH

#2
There are four days left :)

(edit: lol, wrong contest (laugh) )
This is the Way - A dark allegory. My Twitter!  My Youtube!

CaptainD

 

Stupot

There have been four entries so far. I haven't had a lot of time the last couple of days so I was waiting until there was a small handful to do a few at once.

1.
FALL FLAT

5 people wake up free-falling in the skies, with no memory of how they got there.


No time for chitchat when you're falling to your death.

"Who are those people? do I know them? What is that thing we're falling towards?
What are those devices we carry?
One of the devices is a communication device, and somebody is talking!
It looks broken, though (on purpose?)."

As they try to figure things out, they'll start to experience (playable) flashbacks which will slowly reveal what's going on.

Will they make it in time, or will they.. FALL FLAT?



2.
N00b

A game thriller set where you live: On the Internet!


Kara is the founder and admin of a tight-knit online community, until one day her identity is stolen and she is locked out of her own site. With a new account and a collection of hacker tools, she sets out to rebuild her status, uncover the usurpers and take back control before it's too late. But how far will she go?

N00b is a simulated alternate reality game with chats, video, images, etc. across multiple social sites and services.



3.
Homo-Sapiens

Find out the secret of the exodus. A true classic point&click adventure.


Half a millennium ago the last remnants of the homo sapient left Earth and settled in a planet to and start a new life.

While cleaning your parents' attic you find an old metal box, which reveals a 500 year old journal! It account for life on Earth, leaving it and their hopes for the future. What you do not find is the answer you always wanted to know: Why?

Intrigued you decide to embark on a journey to Earth.



4.
Town of nightmares

Save the town of Braden!


In the small town of Braden the townsfolk are plagued by nightmares from which some never wake. As the sheriff of Braden you have to find what's causing it.
Gameplay is divided into two parts, day and night. During the day you're investigating, while on the nights you enter a nightmare where you try and save the townsfolk from a grim monster. Your actions during the day have consequences at night, so remember, the monster is after you too.



For me:
Spoiler

#.




[close]

Mandle

Quote from: KyriakosCH on Wed 19/09/2018 16:02:15
There are four days left :)

There are four days left until October 1st?! Did you type that on a quantum-eraser keyboard next week?

Also, this post was edited by Snarky?

Scary stuff going on and it's not even October yet! (or is it...?)

Snarky

Oh, is this round two weeks? I hadn't noticed. I just removed a reference to when an entry was/would be submitted, to preserve anonymity.

Mandle

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 20/09/2018 03:00:13
Oh, is this round two weeks? I hadn't noticed. I just removed a reference to when an entry was/would be submitted, to preserve anonymity.

Whew... I've been studying a lot of disturbing stuff about quantum mechanics lately and I got paranoid that it had affected my time/reality frame or something... (laugh)

Stupot

Quote from: Mandle on Thu 20/09/2018 07:48:02
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 20/09/2018 03:00:13
Oh, is this round two weeks? I hadn't noticed. I just removed a reference to when an entry was/would be submitted, to preserve anonymity.

Whew... I've been studying a lot of disturbing stuff about quantum mechanics lately and I got paranoid that it had affected my time/reality frame or something... (laugh)

We know. You told us this tomorrow.

CaptainD

Quote from: Stupot on Thu 20/09/2018 09:04:04
Quote from: Mandle on Thu 20/09/2018 07:48:02
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 20/09/2018 03:00:13
Oh, is this round two weeks? I hadn't noticed. I just removed a reference to when an entry was/would be submitted, to preserve anonymity.

Whew... I've been studying a lot of disturbing stuff about quantum mechanics lately and I got paranoid that it had affected my time/reality frame or something... (laugh)

We know. You told us this tomorrow.

It's what he said next Friday that really bothers me, although he later retracts his statement 2 months ago.
 

Mandle


Stupot

Here are a few more pitches for your delight:


Chekhov's Balance



A short adventure where two friends have to deal with slice-of-life topics (first love, bullying, trying stuff out). They are writing a fantasy novel, the progress of which the player can take part of in dialogues between the two (simplified: “Should we kill this side character?” â€" “Yes/no!”), but thus also affecting the game world which respectively also reacts to your decisions, forcing you to balance between an interesting and a boring story for the sake of your characters' well-being.



A Break From Reality

Why is reality starting to break down?!


The plane you are travelling on has to ditch in the ocean near a coastline. Upon exiting the plane you find that it is now too small for you to fit back inside. One wet arrival at the nearby coastal town later and you find reality breaking everywhere. A man disappears/reappears every 17 seconds. Posters of famous people are not them. Outdoor spaces shrink while indoor ones stretch. Combination adventure/survival gameplay.



Happy Scrappy Hero Pup

A little good dog in a big bad world


The dog Scrappy must save his human friend Baby kidnapped by filthy people then moved in an occupied mall! He have to make his way through devasted stores, weird guys and girls who crave something. And find the kidnappers hideout before some very bad happen to Baby! But he can count on his fine nose, his smartness and the power of his happyful smile!



The other paperclip

A kidnapped engineer has to escape a strange city that's an amalgamation of alien tech and various human cultures


An engineer finds himself kidnapped by aliens and sent to their planet. He soon learns that the aliens are using a human workforce to terraform the planet, and in addition to a large native population of humans descended from slaves taken centuries ago, the aliens have in regularly kidnapped various earth scientists in order to expand their knowledge. An elderly german scientist, himself abducted in the 1950's, tells the engineer that this their version of ""Operation Paperclip"".

The engineer has
Spoiler
to pretend to go along with the engineering tasks he's given while devising a way to reverse-engineer the alien technology and find a way back to Earth.
[close]


Stupot

Just one more entry since the last batch.
I'll leave it here and combine them in the first post.
I'll set up the voting a little later today.


Found Footage

A comedy adventure game that revolves around the found footage craze of the early 2000s. No monsters, just real problems.


It's fall of the year 2000, and you've secured funding to shoot a found footage horror movie on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. You as the director only have a week to overcome a number of challenges related to shooting in an isolated environment. Deal with odd locals, manage a B-movie diva, convince the crotchety widower to let you shoot on his lawn, and engineer props out of the materials on hand. Can you produce a found footage hit?
Screen reader support enabled.

CaptainD

 

Stupot

Quote from: CaptainD on Tue 02/10/2018 08:21:28
Oh rats I completely forgot about this. :-[
Me too. And I was running it.8-0

Voting is now open. You have one week from NOW!!!

Please refrain from speculating about the authors at this point. We'll spend a few days discussing it once the results of the vote are revealed.

Cheers.

Snarky

Nice.

What I've noticed in past rounds is that my opinion on some of the entries changes as I'm writing up my comments (when I'm having to read and think about them more closely). On the one hand I think there's a case to be made that a pitch should be judged on the first impression it makes. But just to switch it up this time, I'll try writing my comments first and only voting afterwards.


Stupot

Three days left to vote.
Feel free to discuss your opinions.

Cassiebsg

Thanks for the heads up, had actually forgotten about this. :-[
Voted now... some interesting pitches this round. (nod)
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

Stupot

So the voting is over and the winner is Found Footage. A cracking pitch. I would love to play this game.

Now is the time for guessing who wrote which pitch.
Here is a list of people who entered:

Mandle
Blondbraid
Bulbapuck
tzachs
nihilyst
Snarky
Durinde
Cassiebsg
TheFrighter

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