Interest Check Thread

In the spirit of “Osmosis Jones” and “Cells at Work!” anime, what if there was a CS game focusing on the human biology and the daily life of one individual bacterium in a person’s body. Or would it be too complex?
Plus it would be informative and education to set each organ as a physical location.

I was thinking it in terms of this example of a possible stat page:

Profile (main stat page)
Host’s name (Custom name and surname)
Cell population: 50, 000+ (can be customised through choices ingame)
Host’s body status: (activity such as eating, sleeping)
Emotion of host: (random)

Current Bacterium: (Custom name)
Job Id: (random number)
Cell’s job: (custom job)
System of organs: (Digestive/Lympathic, etc)
Cell’s location: (body organ)
Organ status: (Healthy to sick)
List of duties inside the body: (blahblah)

  • I’m interested!
  • Not interested
  • I don’t like biology
  • Games should be educational

0 voters

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Sounds interesting. We had a scientific/educational-ish cs game before. It was a tad dry and I couldnt quite connect to my character. Which can be quite hard (understandably so) to achieve seeing as we play as an otherwise unfeeling phenomenon.

To strike a balance between informative and fun would be quite a feat that I would love to see be conquered in the cs medium.

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curious what game was that

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Trans Discussion In and Out of Choice Games

No. Seems engaging, actually.

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So… while talking to one of my friends about my story, they gave me an idea for a spin-off story of one of my characters.


You play as an angel in a fantasy world, and your job is to listen to people’s prayers, guide souls into the afterlife, grant wishes, blessings and forgiveness, watch over people, and other similar stuff.

I guess it’s a bit like the game Papers, Please if you’ve heard of it, but with more decision making and less checking. And a bit more lighthearted. So now it has a working title of “Prayers, Please”. :smile:

You’ll have limited power each “week”, so you have to be careful balancing which prayers you should listen to. Ignoring trivial and harmful prayers might seem like an easy decision, but not so much when it can potentially make people less religious (which will decrease your power) or even make them resort to crimes, which will add new dilemmas into the mix. And what if you have to pick between the lesser of two evils?

You can also do some cool stuff like appearing in people’s dreams or physically manifesting or intervening if you have enough power. Who knows, you might even be able to romance someone…

There’ll be a bit of randomization going on, but I’m planning to make characters and families with their own storylines, so you’ll actually see the effects of your decisions the next time they pray… if they’ll pray again.


Yeahhh, I know I already have a WIP going on, but I have a particularly heavy load this term, and I figured a lighter writing project would fit me better while I continue plotting and outlining my WIP.

So…

  • I’m interested!
  • I’ll try it, at least.
  • Ehh, it’s not for me.

0 voters

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My favourite part about this is the sibling rivalry stuff, and especially how the protagonist of one game is the antagonist of someone else’s!

You could totally play that up by having a few opportunities to gain intel on your sibling and check out the choices they’ve made (determined semi-randomly, I guess). You could even critique them on such choices, given that you might actually have more information on their situation looking from an outside perspective.

Then, when you play the second campaign, two things change: the choices you made in your first campaign stick, and you can make more informed decisions for your second campaign because of your extra knowledge of the story.

Knowledge your character would only have if they had played through their sibling’s campaign. Hey, wait a second, doesn’t one of the religions support the idea of resurrection?

So after playing both campaigns, you unlock a short third campaign where, based on the choices you made in both campaigns, you play as both siblings against a common enemy. Or against yourself? I don’t know, you could get totally surreal with it. I’d dig it.

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@Franzinyte That’s a very cool idea! I’ve thought of doing something familiar before but with a minor god instead of an angel. Have you heard of the game WILL: A Wonderful World? It’s something of a visual novel/narrative game that you might be interested in checking out!

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I very self-centredly thought you had tried to tag me and you were recommending a game where you complete the same campaign from two different perspectives. Ha ha nope that’s just the name of the game!

Speaking of which, does anyone have recommendations? I know that Nier: Automata does something pretty cool with that idea.

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Coming close to something playable on the prison game. Character initialization is nearly finished, then a brief hearing before a judge, and that’s the prologue completed.

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So you are basically suggesting to put an option at the end of campaign 1 to play as the sibling? (Probably with the option to alter their name, gender, etc) And letting the first character exist, just the way the first playthrough went. That would be a really rad thing. The only “problem” I see are my programming skills. Mh, we’ll see If I get them honed enough to pull this of. (I’m in the middle of chapter one and it works okay. Ich guess.^^)

Anyway you gave me a few things to think about.(To be honest with you I didn’t think about resurrection at all, but it totally fits.) :wink:
Thanks for your input!

(Also thanks for Till death do us part. I played it, and I can honestly say it’s amazing! :smile:)

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Separate the variables between the two campaigns, include a few that track specific decisions made at certain points, and keep them the same after doing a new game plus.

Throughout one campaign, make frequent reference to the variables of the other campaign.

If it’s the first campaign, have a toggle like *create newgame_plus false that randomises the variables for the other campaign when you check them while it’s set to false. set newgame_plus true after you restart, and just refer back to the variables that tracked the choices you made.

It sounds complex, and it’s probably a bit fiddly, but totally doable even without complex choice script commands.

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Remember when I put this out there well here it is Rise of Games

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Alright so I have a rather complex plot for a potential WIP already but am only vaguely determined since the plot has existed for years and was/is meant to be a book. However, maybe making a game out of it could help me explore options and write the actual novel for it. Who knows who knows.

You might be interested if you’re into…

Dragons? Medieval times with lots of fantasy elements? A toxic relationship between your MC and their partner - the rulers of a kingdom? A secret which is one big reason for that clusterfuck of bad blood between you two? Lots of ignorant and impulsive souls, basically calling for war?

That was the teaser lol. But no, the actual plot is this:

"Munda, 893 (or some other random year)

You are the child of a very old queen, who is approaching death on her sickbed. You have been married for decades and will ascend to the throne with your partner, becoming the rulers of the Northern Kingdom. However, despite the old bond between you two, they don’t know everything about you. No, far from that. They don’t know your biggest secret. The secret which could end up ruining you and everything you love - the secret which has poisoned your marriage, unbeknownst to them.

You are a half-dragon.

That’s a pity, seeing as the public eye shuns your kind - at least where the lands you have now inherited are concerned. The dragons weren’t purged from the whole of Munda for no reason. That was decades ago. Their spawn, the very half-dragons, have stubbornly remained. Yet few of them are brash - or daft - enough to show their true faces. Only in the East they experience more freedom, whereas the three kingdoms of the North, West and South stress the importance of purity on their territories.

They see half-dragons as uncontrollable beasts, devoid of the purity ‘complete’ humans verbally roll themselves in.

Your spouse, the one who now holds the other side of the crown, is no different."

I think you can imagine the kind of conflict involved. Would anybody be interested?

26 Likes

Definitely. My favourite part is that the main character starts the game married. That’s a dynamic you don’t often see. Guinevere did it well, though there was a focus on extramarital affairs of course. :wink:

It would be easy to say that the MC only married for political reasons and actually can’t stand their partner, but I believe it would be a far more interesting game if the intention is that there is genuine love between them from the start.

So instead of a game where you balance a harem of ROs, you spend the game working through your issues with just the one partner, like adults must do. Your partner is fundamentally a good person that you love, except for the niggling little problem of racism.

Speaking of which: the race-politics overtones here are pretty overt. Was that the intention?

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@will I very much intend for the MC to have married out of love. Adds a lot more pain and I am an unashamed masochist. Though whether that love remains the same over the years is another matter entirely. :wink:

“Niggling little problem of racism” - I had to stifle a laugh. Yes, very little. Not problematic at all. But yes, I intend for the partner to be relatively kind (racism makes the whole “good” deal relative, dontcha think), with other flaws of course. I think we know which one is the most glaring one though. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

The race-politics is one of the two main themes, next to (toxic) love. So far, at least. I am also trying to decide whether to include racism where skin colour is concerned, or just not mention skin colour at all and leave it freely to imagination. I am white and don’t want to offend anybody who has been affected by racism themselves just because I’m too ignorant. The whole dragon thing is a metaphor I can at least safely use.

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Woah!

Take my money now! I’m very interested to see the MCs relationship develop. If we could just take all the sh*t our partner can throw at us throughout the game & still come out the other end with a loving relationship rekindled kinda achivement would be the best payoff IMO.

Half Dragon as metaphor for racism… Hmm. Interesting again. If we could end the game with putting things in motion that’ll eventually snuff the racist thinking out of our subjects minds, would again be a great payoff.
Though I’d add that graphic scenes describing how half dragons who are dicovered are dealt with might trigger some people.

Instead a brief description could be added to decribe the consequences of such discovery. Adding euphemisms to describe those scene while might sap at the power of those scenes, would still prove usefull in the long run.
That though, is just my opinion as person with brown skin.

All the best for your Game/Novel, whichever way you choose to go :smiley:

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Could always keep the graphic scenes optional

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I know I have a WIP going on and that it’s been on hiatus due to health reasons. But I have this itch about creating a WIP that would be based on a disabled swordsman with the dream of becoming the greatest swordsman that ever lived. The choices of the disability could be an missing eye, an missing arm or complete deafness. (I was born deaf and unfortunately there seems to be only one WIP where you are deaf so I’d like to see more of this.)

I don’t really have everything worked out on it yet but I feel like it might be a neat story to write.

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I was born deaf

Please make your game about a deaf protagonist! :slight_smile:

(I mean you don’t have an obligation to, I just think that it would be a really unique viewpoint not often explored)

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