Rough Idea for my game?

[nads]

Hey guys,

Thought I would run this idea past you guys and see what you thought. I am planning to make a short/demo game for my folio to get into a Videogame Graphics course next year. I was having trouble thinking of something basic.. haha then I was talking to my mother about how I was having "writers block" and see was going on about this story I wrote when I was in primary school then it hit. Its very loosely based on it, but yeah made changes to the concept which I think was for the better! ANYWAY!

It goes a little something like this.

Ok the main character (lets say.. John for now).. So John is a video games journalist, abit of a hits the piss/drugs type of character, (think Hunter S Thompson but not as extreme) The game starts of in his small apartment, hungover. He wakes up in his bed and remembers that he has to finish a review on a game thats due that night, thing is he hasnt played the game enough to review/too hungover to remember anything about it. A huge electrical storm is heading the worst this city has ever witnessed. But he has to get it done or else its back to washing dishes. So he knucles down and starts playing the game.. the storm hits.. I dont know how this will happen, but I get something along the lines of lighting hiting the house causing an electical serge through the system opening a portal that sucks him in.  He wakes up not in his apartment but later he finds out that he is in the game. If anyone has read my other post asking for C+C on a sprite, you might have a very good idea on what game that is going to be.
And i was thinking if the game gets a good response I could make sort of a series,... It would be kind of like Quantum Leap but you dont control a main character in the games, you are John. I have some ideas as well for story development further in the series but i dont want to express them cause it will ruin the game ..

Anyway is it worth going on with, any ideas on how i could make the story better?

cheers

[Ryan Timothy B]

Sounds interesting.  It's been done before, but what hasn't?  What will the game world be like?

[nads]

LOL Bulls$#! i wrote this story when i was 12 god damn.. haha joking i dont mind.. How do you mean what will the game world be like?

[Ryan Timothy B]

When he gets sucked into the game, what will that game world be like?  And what is his goal in the game world?  Every adventure game has a goal.  This one may just be him trying to find out where he is (like the SLUDGE game Out of Order).  I'm just curious.  And I can't really tell you what I think of it unless I know what the game world will be like.

[nads]

Well, the game world will be based on the game, but it wont be screen captures from the game... I want to try and re-create the games places into pixelized gold (or most likely eyesores) anyway, well the goal is for him to get back to the real world. But while he is trying to get out he is sucked into helping the characters from the game to achieve their goals (but not always going to plan, changing the course of the storyline maybe for the worst) but i kind of want to base it on Quantum Leap, like the main guy in that had to do something/help someone out.. or complete a goal and then he is teleported to a different time. but with this the main character gets teleported into a different game.. I am thinking down the line in the game he is teleported into a MMO and runs into one of his friends characters and thats how he begins to communicate with the outside world. I think i have said too much plus I dont know if i will go ahead with that part..

At the moment I havent really got anythign set.. I just have the basic idea/the first game that he will be transported into and how the game (part one) will end and about half of part 2..hehe i think you guys would like it..

so yeah, thats the basic idea... sorry if there is spelling mistakes.. its 5:45am and I am sooo god damn tired..

[Emerald]

Seems kinda immature, in my opinion. Especially the "magic electrical storm" idea. If you want to do something like that and keep it believable, a common technique is to throw out a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo until even the most hardened skeptics get confused and concede that it might be possible.

Either that, or come up with something a little more fathomable. Like maybe his uncle's a crazy professor who has come up with a way to connect a computer straight into the neural pathways, but something goes wrong and his mind is stuck inside the computer. Or something.

Unless your target audience is for the 12's range. In that case, I wouldn't have a main character who's a heavy drinker/user...


Take Gabriel Knight for example. Without all the impeccable research on New Orleans and Voodoo, it would've probably been a lot less mature and interesting. Thing is, the facts don't have to be entirely correct -- it IS fiction, after all -- they just have to sound real. Take the Da Vinci Code as another example -- the main part of its charm is how it mixes reality into the narrative. The whole time I was reading it, I kept referring to my handy 20-pound codex on Da Vinci




Anyway, like I tell everyone, it's the content of a game that decides whether it's going to be great, not the initial concept.

[nads]

well as i said it rough.. i've been having second thoughts about the storm idea.. anyways thanks for your thoughts i shall keep them in mind

[Questionable]

How will you set up the adventure game in a FF setting? Or are you planning on making it an RPG?

Personally,i'm willing to believe any storyline for a game because usally, what happens is unbelivable anyways, so realism isn't something I think pixel adventure games should neccesarily STRIVE for, so a "magical thunderstorm" would be okay, IF and only IF the game way FUN, COMPELLING and ENTERTAINING. The first thing you should nail down is the gameplay. Otherwise, Emerald is right; we're not going to be engaged in the game and we'll be thinking... this is a little immature... *quits*

Good gameplay will make a gamer forgive anything though. On the flip side, a good story can make a gamer forgive some gameplay flaws. I.E. Gabriel Knight, pacing wasn't right for me, but I was inteested in the atmosphere and the arc.

These things will go hand in hand, BUT remember that the reason we're playing a game is for entertainment, figure out how to make the game good, make the story good, make the gameplay integral to the story, make a good game with a good story! Sounds easy, eh?

[nads]

haha thats for me to work out and for you to play and enjoy.
*hint* its not going to be rpg.

[S]

I were you I'd be fuzzy about excactly HOW 'John' enters into the game world. Let's just say he blacks out and finds himself inside the game when he comes to. It's a drug thing, or a dream/nightmare, or both. Anywho, it is real to him and he will be stuck in drug psychosis/dreamland for ever, unless... well, what happens next is up to you, obviously.