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

[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]

There are four days left

(edit: lol, wrong contest )

[CaptainD]

I'll hopefully have an entry done in time.

[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]

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]

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...

[Stupot]

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...

We know. You told us this tomorrow.

[CaptainD]

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...

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]

Nice "Schrodinger Humour", guys...

[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]

Oh rats I completely forgot about this.

[Stupot]

Oh rats I completely forgot about this.

Me too. And I was running it.

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.

[Mandle]

Voted.

[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.

[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

[TheFrighter]

I voted for N00B, I guess it's Mandle's!

_

[Mandle]

I voted for N00B, I guess it's Mandle's!

_

Nope.

I voted for Found Footage.

I'm guessing it's Stupot's.

[nihilyst]

I voted for Found Footage. While I think that the gameplay itself might not be as innovative as other entries, the setting sold it to me. It sounds like a modern version of Monkey Island, simultaneously ridiculing and embracing the genre of found footage, and that, I think, could be lots of fun.

[Durinde]

Some interesting entries with some great ideas this go around.

Here's my (subjective) hot take:

Fall Flat

I like the idea of the sense of discovery through flashbacks as you uncover the mystery of situation. It goes along with the sense of urgency of the situation, but the pitch felt a little too frenetic for me with a bunch of questions and no answers.


N00b

Great concept, but I think the Alternate Reality line may have thrown off some voters. I'm not sure if you intended this, but I like the idea of the game switching between the "real" world and the internet. There could be some interesting narrative events involving the fact that the players identity had been stolen.


Homo-Sapiens

I like the idea of humanity re-discovering itself. I really wish I had a better sense of the sci-fi world. Is there FTL travel? Is it a difficult journey? What kind of challenges will the protagonist face?


Town of nightmares

This one got my vote. It was a tight pitch that gave me a sense of both the narrative and gameplay. Kind of gave me a "Stranger Things" vibe.


Chekhov's Balance


Cool concept of the "real" world affecting the fantasy of it. Interesting take that the character's well being is tied to the narrative of the fantasy story. My concern is that the pitch presented more of a "Choose your own adventure" visual novel rather than straight up adventure game.

A Break From Reality


I'm surprised this didn't get more votes. A world where the laws of reality don't really apply seems ripe for a classic style adventure game. I'm also intrigued by the survival aspect of the pitch, wish there had been a little more on that.


Happy Scrappy Hero Pup

OK pitch for what I assume to be a game for small kids. If anything, a heroic dog might be a little too generic.


The other paperclip

I like the idea using a concept from history to help drive the narrative. I like the idea in general, but what weakened the pitch for me is the why of the thing. If a species has already tackled intergalactic flight, why would they need human scientists at all? Are they a species that are unable to develop technology on their own so they steal it? Is it a misguided attempt to save "The best and brightest" humans from some sort of unknown looming disaster?


All that being said, an engineer escaping from an alien planet is ripe for classic adventure game type gameplay.

Found Footage

This pitch mentions a B-movie Diva, but at the same time it is a found footage movie? Isn't the idea to cast unknowns for a found footage so people will accept the "reality"? Not sure if younger players would be too familiar with the whole "Blair Witch" craze.

[Cassiebsg]

Here's some feedback (hold on reading it, if you wish to continue the guess the pitch game, otherwise you'll know which one was mine)

Spoiler

- Fall Flat

I think this might be interesting and could work. However memory loss seems so used up that kind of put me off slightly. The story and game play would have to be awesome for it to work good.

- N00b

This one could have gotten my vote and sounded rather interesting up until the "simulate alternate reality...". So I most likely not be interested in it. Others who like this kind of game would surely be jumping in joy yo play though! So make it for them!

- Town of Nightmares

Sounds like a great game, though it kind of makes me unease how night sequence would work. Action? Something else? Probably the only reason i didn't vote for this one.

- Chekov's Balance

Another one that sounds a bit out of my definition of "adventure game". Felt more like an interactive novel, where you basicly just make some dialogue choices that take you on a new story path.

- A Break From Reality

Another one that grabbed my attention to the end! Even though the start made me think of Lost... Why it didn't get my vote? I'm not really into survival games. Only reason! Honest! Story was really interesting.

- Happy Scrappy Hero Pup

I think this game will be so sweet and a kids game! Make the game play with pictograms and little to no text and you got a hit with small children! And I would play it to, cause I'm a sucker for dogs.

- The Other Paperclip

I like the setting and would probably play it, yet, like others have mentioned I have a bit of trouble figuring out how those smart aliens need humans to expand their knowledge. They seem to have the knowledge for space flight, terraforming and kidnapping already. I'm not sure what knowledge they could gain from "primitive" human brains.

- Found Footage

I liked this one from start to finish, so it got my vote! Even if I'm one of those that never got into BWP... I think the story is fresh and interesting, there's already a ton of potential puzzles to solve and a clear goal! Just not sure why the "screen reader" would be needed. Or is it just a nice feature you would like to implement?

[close]

[Blondbraid]

If anyone wonders, my pitch was:

Spoiler

The other paperclip.
In hindsight, I guess my idea was too complicated for the word limit of the pitch. My main idea was partially inspired by The Shadow Out Of Time by Lovecraft,
but the focus would be exploring a city that was an amalgamation of various cultures and periods. As to answer the questions by Cassiebsg and Durinde,
the reason the aliens would use human labor to terraform the planet was because they decided it would be more resource effective and require less supervision
than their own technology, and being a long-lived species, making humans spend centuries working on a project wasn't considered a long time from their perspective. As for why they wold
want to study human scientists, they would be curious and want to learn technology adapted to different planets and cultures, and it would be strongly hinted that
humans wasn't the only species they had studied.

[close]

[Stupot]

Found Footage was not mine.
None of them are mine as I didn't enter.
I'll give it another day or two before revealing the who's who.

[Snarky]

Some comments on the various entries:

1. Fall Flat
This feels a lot like the setup for a high-concept TV show like Lost. It's a good hook, but I think for an adventure game, the time limit would just stress me out.

2. N00b
Conflict on the internet? Isn't that a little far-fetched? The bit about video chats and the game taking place through a computer interface sounds a little Her Story-like. Since social media involves so much communication (much of it deeply trivial), a satisfying way to control what you say and somehow ensuring that it's actually fun to delve into the social media streams are musts.

3. Homo-Sapiens
I do like the very old-school science fiction vibes here, but I'm having a hard time quite buying the premise that it wouldn't be generally known why people left Earth. I'm also not sure what the game is about: Finding a spaceship and putting together a crew? The journey to Earth? Exploring the planet? Any one of these could make for an interesting game, I just don't really have a clue what this game is. (And like Durinde, I'd like to know whether there's FTL travel.)

4. Town of Nightmares
This reminded me a lot of entry #5 in round 2, about teens going to high school during the day and fighting monsters at night. I think this pitch works a good deal better, because it's much clearer how the two parts fit together. I like that your actions during the day (and presumably other events) have consequences in the nightmares, and would expect that vice versa, you can pick up clues from the dreams that can help your daytime investigation. The pitch has me imagining a lot of cool elements and twists, so this got my vote.

5. Chekhov's Balance
A fantasy story focused on more mundane, universal issues sounds interesting. But I'm not sure I understand this idea, because it doesn't seem like there's anything to balance. If the choices they make are “real”, it would be absolutely monstrous to sacrifice people's well-being for the sake of a good story. And if not, then there's no well-being to worry about. Like I said, I don't think I fully understand this idea.

6. A Break from Reality
Hmm… Sounds a bit Alice in Wonderland-y. Not really my cup of tea: in a surreal world, finding the solutions to puzzles seems more a matter of trial and failure than reasoning and inspiration.

7. Happy Scrappy Hero Pup
I like “the power of his happyful smile”! This sounds like a cute game for smaller kids: all the details remind me of classic cartoons, and with graphics to match and editing by a native English speaker, I think this could be a great game, and one I was considering giving my vote.

8. The Other Paperclip
Escaping from an alien planet could be fun, and random mashups of different eras and cultures makes for a cool setting. I'm not really getting what Operation Paperclip has to do with anything, though. Are the kidnapped scientists Nazis or other war criminals? Are you?

9. Found Footage
It sounds like a really fun game, but to me the description makes me think less of an adventure game than one of these job-sims where you have to deal with lots of challenges cropping up constantly. I think as an adventure, it would need a bit more of a character-based through-line to the story to be satisfying, so that you're not just wrangling all the chaos because it's your job, but for some more personal motive. (Of course, maybe that's all worked out already and you just couldn't fit it into the pitch.)

[Cassiebsg]

To answer your questions about my pitch:

Spoiler

There is a perfectly good reason for "them" not knowing. Let's say that someone, for 500 years ago, decided it would be best the general population did not know. So history kind of tells a washed out and PC version of the events without going too deep into it, focusing more on the accomplishments since they got there.
And yes, story and play wise it would probably fit into two "chapters". Where in the first one you would need to get a ship that can travel the long distance (and yes FTL would be a necessity if the guy was to reach earth in his live time. No hibernation!). So in this chapter you would explore his home planet and do what needs to be done.
The second part of the story would start with him arriving on Earth and exploring. Guess he would probably look up his old old old old old ... old grandparent home and start from there as he looks for answers and eventually finally figures out the reason (which I'm not disclosing, unless you want to write the story . )

Why you guys so focused on FTL? I have nothing planned for the travel part and feel that anything I could throw in there would just be perceived as "noise". But sure, if one wanted to expand the game, one could throw some obstacles and puzzles in there...

Anyway, unless someone likes the plot and wishes to write the story, I'll probably won't do more with it cause I suck at writing.

[close]

[Stupot]

No one's guessing, so here is the list of authors with their entries:

tzachs   FALL FLAT
Snarky   N00b
Cassiebsg   Homo-Sapiens
Bulbapuck   Town of nightmares
nihilyst   Chekhov's Balance
Mandle   A Break From Reality
TheFrighter   Happy Scrappy Hero Pup
Blondbraid   The other paperclip
Durinde   Found Footage

Well done Durinde. A deserved win.

[Mandle]

My "A Break From Reality" simply came from a weird dream I had so I typed it in for my game pitch.

I'm starting to feel though like slightly longer pitches should be allowed. It seems a lot of people are cutting or not being able to explain core game concepts along with setting and story. To have enough space to even briefly talk about all important concepts just a bit more length to do so with would be nice.

[Durinde]

My "A Break From Reality" simply came from a weird dream I had so I typed it in for my game pitch.

I'm starting to feel though like slightly longer pitches should be allowed. It seems a lot of people are cutting or not being able to explain core game concepts along with setting and story. To have enough space to even briefly talk about all important concepts just a bit more length to do so with would be nice.

I've won 2 of these things and I can say it's definitely tough. I probably spend more time trying to boil my pitch down to the word limit than coming up with the initial idea. It is interesting to see how other people's vison of your pitch can vary widely from your intentions.

For me, a good pitch would have who, what, where, why, when and how. An extra say... 20 words might give people to the extra wiggle room needed to answer these questions to everybody's satisfaction.

I believe 100 words would keep the to spirit of the pitch being "bite-sized" yet would allow people to address both the plot and the gameplay.

Just a suggestion. If others are getting frustration rather than fun out of the contest, I'm open to a change.

[Stupot]

For me the word limit is arbitrary. Whether it's 80 or 100 or 50, you would always wish a few more words to really explain your idea.

[TheFrighter]

Happy Scrappy Hero Pup

OK pitch for what I assume to be a game for small kids. If anything, a heroic dog might be a little too generic.

Eh eh! This time i was just kidding! The title is a reference to the movie Clerks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSmE7mhmCUY

Personally I don't find that movie a masterpiecie of comedy as many says, to me it's funny but nothing more. But I liked the idea of a little videogame based on the fictional Scrappy cartoon.

So this turn you win Durinde, but next time beware of me 'cause i'll fight for real!

_

[Snarky]

I voted for N00B

Thanks! 

N00b
Great concept, but I think the Alternate Reality line may have thrown off some voters.

This one could have gotten my vote and sounded rather interesting up until the "simulate alternate reality...". So I most likely not be interested in it. Others who like this kind of game would surely be jumping in joy yo play though! So make it for them!

Hmm, what is it about "simulated alternate reality game" that puts people off? ARGs, as I understand the genre, are usually about investigating clues on the Internet, usually with some kind of conspiracy-based storyline and with prompts coming in on multiple devices and mediums (phone calls, emails, text messages, etc.). That's the sort of thing I wanted the game to be, but done in-game rather than out in the real world and in real-time (so the character gets an email or a video call on their in-game mail client/video chat app, rather than you getting it on your real applications/devices).

I'm not sure if you intended this, but I like the idea of the game switching between the "real" world and the internet.

No, I was pretty set on the whole game taking place on the Internet (via phone and laptop). You'd only see your character when she's having a video chat, livestreaming or similar. All events happening in the "real world" would be conveyed through these devices. For example, to go to a different location you'd call an Uber, the screen would fade to black, maybe some sound effects of a car ride, and then fade back. You'd know you were in another location based on the WiFi network name and atmospheric sound effects, and by checking your location in a map app.

The inspiration for the idea was twofold: on the one hand, Her Story, and on the other, thinking about text adventures and how online forums and chat platforms are these largely text-based environments, so it might make sense to combine them somehow (it veered off a little from there, though).

[Snarky]

Oh, and regarding Cassie's entry:

Spoiler

There is a perfectly good reason for "them" not knowing. Let's say that someone, for 500 years ago, decided it would be best the general population did not know. So history kind of tells a washed out and PC version of the events without going too deep into it, focusing more on the accomplishments since they got there.

I just don't quite see it. I don't think there's any way to do a massive thing like that while keeping the whole population in the dark: people would demand answers, so some explanation would have to be given. And even if the truth was suppressed and the initial official version wasn't convincing, in 500 years enough people would have noticed that and proposed revisions to it that it would have evolved into something very plausible. So it's hard to see how some person would have spent their whole life wondering "why?"

Maybe there's some way to have it make sense, and it sounds like you've already worked out what the truth actually is, but from the pitch it didn't sound convincing to me.

Why you guys so focused on FTL?

Sort of the same reason, really â€" trying to understand how difficult the journey is, because there seems to be a contradiction: if going back to Earth is simple enough that one person can do it just because they're inspired by some old book, why hasn't anybody done it already?

[close]

For me, a good pitch would have who, what, where, why, when and how. An extra say... 20 words might give people to the extra wiggle room needed to answer these questions to everybody's satisfaction.

I believe 100 words would keep the to spirit of the pitch being "bite-sized" yet would allow people to address both the plot and the gameplay.

I'm not opposed to changing the word limit if that's what people want, but I don't think it's really necessary, either. And I do want to point out that now having the title and the "hook" line outside of the 80-word limit already gives us about 20 more words to convey the concept than in the original version of the contest. For me, at least, that has helped, and personally I'm OK with these limits.

(I think each phase of the contest is too long, though. I would say 1 week for entries, 4-5 days for voting, and then revealing who did what as soon as voting closes, without any guessing, would give it a snappier rhythm.)

[Durinde]

Happy Scrappy Hero Pup

OK pitch for what I assume to be a game for small kids. If anything, a heroic dog might be a little too generic.

Eh eh! This time i was just kidding! The title is a reference to the movie Clerks:

Personally I don't find that movie a masterpiecie of comedy as many says, to me it's funny but nothing more. But I liked the idea of a little videogame based on the fictional Scrappy cartoon.

So this turn you win Durinde, but next time beware of me 'cause i'll fight for real!

_

I knew the name sounded familiar but I couldn't place it! It's been a long time since I've seen Clerks, so I guess it's time for a re-watch. Funny thing though, my first attempt at an AGS game took place in a video store because I was partially inspired by the movie.

Also... Bring it on

[Snarky]

So what do you say: another round?

[Bulbapuck]

So what do you say: another round?

I'm in! Love this competition ^^

[Mandle]

For sure!!!

And how about a round for scary game pitches only for Halloween.

Call it "Pitch Black"?

Or to get a bit silly and include both Halloween colours:

"Orange Is The New Pitch Black"?

[Snarky]

For sure!!!

And how about a round for scary game pitches only for Halloween.

Call it "Pitch Black"?

Or to get a bit silly and include both Halloween colours:

"Orange Is The New Pitch Black"?

Thanks Mandle, that's a great idea! New round here.