Interest Check Thread

Sounds sci-fi to me, somewhat along the lines of Michael Crichton’s books.

2 Likes

It sounds like a Sci-Fi mystery? Maybe drama? There’s a lot that could go wrong with this supposed Dream Project if I’m looking at other types of macguffins like this found in other media (i.e. the STEM system from The Evil Within video games).

2 Likes

Maybe mystery and thriller are a bit of a stretch, but sci-fi/drama sounds about right. Thank you all!

And yep, the plan is to not just letting things naturally go wrong, but allow the player to break havoc at their heart’s desire. Chaos is just really fun, so :smile:

2 Likes

So like Paprika or Ai?

Paprika was using it as a kind of experimental therapy thing (before someone started using it for other things).

Ai was using it for times when questioning suspects and witnesses hit a wall.

2 Likes

@Adam_VanCleave_Perro Yep. Although I’ve been meaning to watch Paprika for a while, I haven’t seen either yet, but that’s the general idea. Tho I doubt they could actually get any actual evidence for the police to work with, to have an hospital dedicated to enter people’s dreams just sounds like a pretty neat idea to explore, so.

2 Likes

Hello, awesome forum!

Just wanted to see if anyone would find interesting the idea of a game where you are a teacher, and the primary overarching “motivation” of the game (so to speak) is to impart your MC’s values and way of living onto your students through the choices you make in the game, and see how your style of teaching impacts the kinds of people your students grow into, how they live their life, what careers they get into, (and how they possibly impact American history! If you’ve been a reeeaaaaally great mentor :wink: )
The setting will be the 1870’s in the state of Kansas, America. Yes, this is usually the automatic recipe for a super awesome Western story, but I thought it’d be interesting and cool to write a game set in a Wild Western setting, but from the perspective of a schoolteacher instead of more popular Western roles. My game will still feature a lot of traditional Western-genre characters and elements in it, though, because it is the history after all :smiley: And I’ve done a lot of historical background research for this game (in fact, the history is what inspired me to write this in the first place! ^^)

I will be focusing more on the character-development side of things for these students; as in, choices will not be like “Which subject will you focus on? Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, etc., etc.???”.
The story will focus a lot more on how you choose to guide your students through their daily problems and challenges/conflicts, whether with themselves, their families, or between students. You are their mentor during one of their most impressionable stages of life!
How you treat them will shape their beliefs, moral compasses, and values for the rest of their lives!

About endings: I don’t think I’ll write any real “Bad Endings”, I’ve always loved games where there were multiple endings that were different enough to justify replays, yet also more or less “equal” in how satisfying they are.
P.S. There will be RO’s, but those will not be the students… just wanted to make that very clear lol

Thanks for reading this really long post, any thoughts would be appreciated very much!

35 Likes

Can the mc come off as intimidating to the students only for them to realize that the mc is actually a gentle soul?

2 Likes

as in, after the MC establishes themselves as an intimidating personality, later in the story they get opportunities to act gentle/“actually really caring” when certain students go through something where they really need the emotional support? lol yeah this is actually something i definitely wanted to design game mechanics for, bc i personally knew several good teachers who were like this
(i have never personally been a teacher, but i have huge respect and appreciation for teachers)

3 Likes

I think it sounds very interesting and it’s definetly something I personally would wanna read, hope you decide to go through with it :goat:

2 Likes

@dumpling-clouds – Welcome to the community.

I would love to see your game made. With that said, historical based games often do not do as well as other genres, although the Western theme might counter the disadvantages of most historical games.

Some of the most loved games are historical and/or western based games, although some of these do not sell well, according to staff of Choice of Games.

I thought I’d be up front with this because you may be investing a lot of time and effort into making this game (for some of us this means over a year or more) and depending on what your goals are, this might be a tough first project to complete.

4 Likes

@Eiwynn Thanks!
And also thank you for the heads-up. I’ve been browsing this forum for quite a while before i actually made an account two days ago, so i was sort of aware of the genre preferences of the community, but hearing it from someone directly now is reassuring, because now i have a more concrete idea of what to expect :+1: (shoutout to the folks on here who do love history in all its forms tho hehe >:) )
although, I personally love the historical genre, I really like incorporating historical elements into my writing (although i will admit this is the first time i’ll be trying to write IF and not just regular stories), so i think (hope) writing for something i like will lessen the admittedly daunting challenges for a first game maybe just a little bit

11 Likes

I would enjoy something this nuanced. Kind of like worldbuilding but shaping people.

2 Likes

Can I teach people “proper” palentolagy?

2 Likes

Hmm… i’m afraid i won’t be getting into the scholastic specifics of any academic field, really, (although that’s a cool idea! if someone wants to write a game where you challenge the scientific standards/ideals of whatever time period ur in :smiley: ) it’s going to be more about the conversations you have with them, and those conversations will be designed specifically to have an impact on their values and personalities, i guess? Although these conversations could definitely be inspired by certain academic fields tho. E.g. a student might ask you about an important discovery/advancement in the field of paleontology that they heard about in the news, and in the conversation that follows, you can choose whether to encourage them to always look for flaws/areas of improvement in scientific theories, to learn from the methods that those scientists used, or to ponder what comes next for the scientific community to discover.

10 Likes

What would you guys think of having a game where the relationships are the skills?

For instance, I mentioned earlier thinking of doing a Halloween/monster-based game. What if you were some kind of baby spirit/demon that needed to latch onto humans to gain form? Like, you have a month (October) to make friends and play with powers until it settles down forever.

So you start off with a weak, high-school kid body and whoever you become friends with, it influences your abilities. Your bond with the gruff, tough kid makes you have werewolf powers (strength, healing, etc.),your friendship with the goth kid gives you vampire powers (charisma, bloodsucking), your love with the science kid gives you mad scientist powers (making golems and potions).

So there wouldn’t be any stats in the game besides relationships. Some of the kids would resent you using them, once they find out, while others would think it’s amazing.

What do you think of relationships as skills?

35 Likes

I’m reminded of “My friends are LITERALLY my power!”. Well okay that is just quoting myself talking about something.

I had an idea somewhere where you seem to be an ordinary person but synchronizing with monsters turns out to give you powers.

2 Likes

I’ve always sort of thought of relationship stats as skills in their own right, from a gameplay perspective—meaning specifically that in a game that vibes with me, there’d definitely be stat checks involving NPCs and plot points surrounding them.

But nothing has made me go “Yes!” so much as the idea of an MC who literally gains functional skills depending on relationship stats. I need this game in my life, like yesterday.

5 Likes

That’s encouraging! I have about a year’s worth of obligations before I can begin any new projects, but I can’t stop ideas from popping in my head. I’d be very pleased, though, if other people made games with similar approaches in the meantime!

8 Likes

That is a very cool concept you have there, friend. I find Omir’s backstory to be especially compelling.

I can’t wait to see what you make of this!

2 Likes

I would love to play this😄. Can the gods have children with jumanj and make half gods? Also could you corrupt a god of light and make them become evil/ Your slave or god of darkness.

1 Like