Concept Idea "Room no 5"

[misterx]

Ok so I jut started with AGS and making adventure games 30 mins ago, but i have this really cool Idea me and my friend <well to be honest more my friends idea> I want to run past you all.....

Room No. 5 is a special kind of game.  This is the story of a single room...a strange place that lies between two worlds -- a free-floating anomaly that bends Space and Time.  This nexus passes from one hotel to the next, but always comes to rest in a room numbered 5.

In some places, it could be a grand suite in a five-star hotel.  In others, a dilapidated motel just off the interstate.  It lies in wait for a victim, then, upon consuming them, it moves on to a new location.

It's origin and purpose remains a mystery...few will live long enough to uncover Room No. 5's secrets.


what you think of the concept?

Any thoughts or other Ideas welcome...

(big thanks to Dominic who came up with most of the idea and text)

[Czar]

well i dont know why but for me this is a mix of matrix and discworld novelty shop...

[Minimi]

It's a great idea, I like it very much!  8)

For instance, you can make more rooms, like you said it could be in different universes at the same time, so you could make it, that you can change whenever you want to another universe, and you must solve everything in all over the universes, in the right way... so that makes it pretty confusing, though a strong story!

I hope this helps you a bit!

[Meowster]

I don't know really, I tried to read it but my brain imploded. But I love this sort of story. That's why I loved Soul Reaver, because I loved the whole "Material World, Spirit World" thing. And Matrix too. It would be completely different, and if done properly could be dead cool.

[Ginny]

Sounds very interesting! You could have the main character just being on a trip somewhere and he gets a room in a hotel, "you're in room 5, sir", and he walks in and then...
Well, I'm not quite sure what is supposed to happen, what the oom is supposed to do, but maybe he gets sucked into a vortex thing and appears in a different universe or something. Hmm, this sounds a bit too much like 'Sliders'. Anyway, his goals - get home, and defeat the force of room number 5 so that he can rid the world of all evil(!!!!) (actually the force is just in your way).
Lol. Anyway this just a little idea. Good luck with the game!

[GarageGothic]

I don't know how I missed it when it first was posted, but I LOVE this idea. I've always been a fan of creepy hotels: The Shining, Barton Fink, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (Disneyworld ride), and most recently, Fear X.

Are you familiar with the movie Hotel Room, directed, in part, by David Lynch? It was originally a short series on HBO, but the three episodes are available on video as a movie. All the episodes take place in the same hotel room, but in different eras - some of it is pretty bad, but the last episode, Blackout, is just incredible.

One word of advice: Don't try to explain it! And please ignore everything GinnyW just said I think the game would be much more powerful if the idea of room 5 wasn't explained in any scientific manner, but rather remain a paranormal or psychological mystery (a la the motel room in Lost Highway). There should be some sort of thematic connection between what happens in the room across ages and locations. An interesting story would be that different versions of the same scenario (say, somebody murdering their lover out of jealousy) was played out in a Viennese luxury hotel in 1899, a dirty motel room in the Nevada desert in the 1940's, the smashed up suite of rock star in New York in the late 1970's, and the honeymoon suite of young newlyweds in Hong Kong at the millennium.

Ideally each era would have it's own player character, so that this strange feeling of patterns repeating would be clear to the player, but never to the characters. Maybe the ending would be to break this circle of events, to refuse to be controlled by fate.

I would recommend watching Lost Highway ("we've met before, haven't we?") and playing I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which is a pretty good example of the "multiple characters failing to run from fate"-theme.

[Ginny]

Hmm..
At a second read, I like GG's idea better actully, though as misterx explained it, it sounds like something more paranormal and mysterious than a say, murder, should happen. This could be done with dif characters, but I don't quite see what puzzles could be used. Maybe just a few chars, each you play for a little while and then whatever is supposed to happen happens, and then you play someone who you must save from the fate, as GG said.

Like I mentioned, what I wrote sounds too much like Sliders, it was just an afterthought. But I think there should be something horrible in the room, I mean, that it should be something more paranormal.