Oh, sorry for not announcing the end of the contest. I've been a bit preoccupied the last couple of days. Since people are revealing their identities, let's skip the guessing and go straight to the list of contestants:
Snarky:
Dash & Nicky in: Serum ScarumDurinde:
Dwarffallartium:
Serious GamesStupot:
Bedroom VigilanteDurq:
The Cripple in the CastleBulbapuck:
The Luck Goblinsselmiak:
the bookwormTheFrighter:
Luxury item mayhemSo congratulations to Bulbapuck!Well done. I loved the world you created in a couple of sentences, and you got my vote. I also really liked
The Cripple in the Castle, so it came down to a tough choice between those two for me.
Thanks to those of you who voted for or said nice things about
Dash & Nicky. I'm a big fan of
Tintin and (particularly)
Spirou, and think they would work really well as adventure games. It's actually a bit curious to me that there haven't been more adaptations or fangames of these and other classic Franco-Belgian comics. Or maybe comics that had their glory days in the 1940s-60s and never made it to the US are even more niche than adventure games in the first place. Anyway, since it has to be an original property for the contest, I came up with a slight spin on it (though in my mind's eye, the art is totally by Franquin). I had a lot of fun with the names; "Addlepaight-DeRange" as the name of an eccentric aristocratic clan cracks me up.
I now have an embarrassing admission and public apology. My entry was Bedroom Vigilante. It wasn't until I saw cat's comment that I realized I had essentially ripped off Snarky's idea from the previous round. It's made even worse by the fact that I even voted for Snarky's pitch last time and thought it was brilliant. But had completely forgotten all about it by the time I came to write my pitch for this month. So sorry, Snarky.
Oh, no worries. I think they're different enough, and these are just ideas anyway.
In fact, Bedroom Vigilante wasn't initially supposed to be a Rear Window ‘em up at all. When I first started thinking about it I was thinking of the book “Sorry, Wrong Number” which I read last month. It's about an invalid woman on her own in an apartment who, due to some crossed wires, learns of a plot to murder a woman (her). The whole book (film, play etc) is set in one room and the woman makes a lot of phone calls in order to eventually find out the truth. It was from there that I thought I could combine it with Rear Window and have the protagonist solve a series of crimes with the telephone. So Snarky's pitch may have been in the back of my mind somewhere but I wasn't consciously thinking of that when it came to my pitch.
I know it as a radio play, which might be the perfect format for it:
In answer to your questions, Snarky, I didn't actually intend for the character to be unlikeable. I actually envisioned him as just a downtrodden guy who's just had enough of being too scared to leave his room and decides to do his bit to make the streets a little safer.
He comes across a little Travis Bickle/
Death Wish-y.
As far as examples go, I imagined there would be multiple solutions to every puzzle but you'd also be looking at routines. So, for example, you would use the phone to send a pizza delivery to inturrupt a crime or call a public phone box to warn a passer by of a mugger waiting just around the corner. That kind of thing but preferably with lots of little side-stories and mini-character arcs.
Cool, thanks.