Evening all, here is tonight's homework: read this : P
For those of you who didn't make it to the meeting today we clarified a couple of things, the most important thing being our first game for next year. We decided on the interactive, potentially iPad-orientated interactive storybook.
The game will, of course, be narrative focused, meaning the mechanics of the game need to primarily work around improving the player's experience of the story. We decided the best and easiest way for the game to work was by leading player's along a set path broken up by various rooms, each with puzzles that need to be completed to progress. Naturally, the gameplay wouldn't be as linear as I make it sound : P. But yeah, rooms were the easiest way to get the player to experience the story the way we want them to. Also makes development easier e.g. each room is a level.
The most important thing about a narrative-driven game is the narrative! And I promised many of you I'd write out my totally erratic and very unstructured game idea : P. I usually have difficulty keeping things short, but I'll do my best to keep this down to base ideas and not go into an actual narrative.
---------------------STORY! ----------------------
A girl* wakes up in a locked room. She has no recollection of anything; complete and utter amnesia. She doesn't know her name, where she is, or why she is locked in the room. The room appears to be a storage area of some kind, full of crates and lockers. The narrator^ begins to detail the girls thoughts and her lack of memories, speaking like he's reading a book, describing the situation etc.
After solving a relatively simple puzzle, the girl opens the door and makes her way out of the room. She finds herself in a much larger room, potentially a kitchen. The narrator continues to detail her exploits, surroundings and situations, he focuses a lot on her thoughts and fears.
For the beginning of the game there is no one around. Not a single person. Anywhere. The narrator's explanation of the protagonist's thoughts focus a lot on her paranoia e.g.
"As her eyes darted back and forth, once searching for danger, now they searched for anything at all. The lack of life, the lack of movement...it was inexplicably unnerving. A thought crossed her mind. Maybe there were people around, maybe she simply couldn't see them? What if they were everywhere, watching her, giggling at the fool she appeared to be? What...what if they weren't people at all? Her thoughts grew ever darker and, when fear had almost frozen her, something moved. She jumped. Her heart felt, for a second, as though it would explode." yada yada yada...
Eventually, the character begins to uncover knowledge of the occurrences upon the ship% via journals, computers etc.# She also begins to randomly enter strange, out-of-place worlds seemingly modelled around works of fiction the player finds about the ship. For example, the player finds a child's room where a tv shows a short and cute cartoon about bunny rabbits. Upon entering another room the player finds themselves in the cartoon world seen on the tv. Eventually (possibly when entering another room) the player turns into one of the bunnies. Puzzles are solved and the enemy is often met in these dream worlds.
The enemy in the game is a strange entity that doesn't truly exist in corporeal form. The ship encountered it when travelling through an unknown phenomena in space and was immediately infested. The creature feeds on logic, reason and memories, using these things to strengthen itself and hold its form in our reality long enough to, in fact, devour the crew.
The crew's natural reaction to the infestation was to plan, learn and search for a weak point, not knowing this approach would ultimately empower the monster and lead to their steady defeat.
Soon the girl finds out she was brought upon the ship from another planet, one completely devoid of life. She was found in a catatonic state, rarely reacting to outside stimuli. Eventually she began to communicate with the crew but could not remember anything of her past. The captain locked her in the storage room, hoping to keep her safe.
After further exploration and puzzle-solving, the player learns the creature's weakness is imagination. The dream sequences are triggered by the creature attempting an attack and encountering imagination rather than memory or logic. The girl is consequently pulled, temporarily, into the strange reality of the creature which has moulded around her imagination. The puzzles she completes in these worlds are modelled around the actual stories of the works of fiction she draws her inspiration (the cartoon of the bunnies). Completing the puzzle actually harms the creature, sending it back to its reality and keeping the girl safe.
Eventually, a fantasy novel from the captain's room$ leads the girl to enter the final fantasy! world where she defeats the creature. At the last moment the creature reaches into her mind to make a final attempt to draw out her memories. In doing so, the girl does remember a short glimpse of her past, however this allows her to unleash some sort of power she once learnt, which destroys the creature for good. @
The final sequence shows the girl reaching the cockpit and starting up the ship.
* The main character doesn't have to be a girl, but I'm going for a less crazy Alice in Wonderland feel for this. I was thinking the narrator says something along the lines of "She didn't remember her name. For the sake of the story, let's just call her Lost". That would act as her name throughout the game.
^ I was thinking of an awesome, wise-sounding male voice for the narration. Like freakin Morgan Freeman. Reckon he'll come in and do it for free?
% Doesn't have to be a ship, I was thinking spaceship because of the inherent claustrophobic, can't escape sort of theme that would work well with the idea. But yeah, could be in a jumping castle for all I care.
# Probably could work out a more unique way to unveil most of the story, but we'll worry about that later : P
$ Could have a rather large story surrounding the captain and his character development.
! Unintentional : P
@The ending is very much open to change. Well, everything is, but the ending more so.
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Ok! So that's the very skin of what I've concocted in my crazy brain. You guys can now pick it to pieces ; )
