I agree with Sam. Write what interest you. Some of my favorite games aren’t always my favorite genre but have a compelling narrative that keeps me wanting to play more than just one playthrough
Update: I posted the demo!
Have been working on a demo for a while, so thought I’d share what I have for the teaser/description so far. Hoping to have the demo out within the next couple of months. Any thoughts and feedback are welcome! Working title is ‘Magician’s Voyage’
(Also, please excuse any formatting errors. This is my first forum post! Yay.)
Summary
It’s your first job as a full-fledged Green Magician! The Magicians Order has hired you to transport magical artifacts across Midland, where they will be studied and their true natures revealed. You must travel to The Library with a band of magic users, making friends and enemies along the way.
This game takes inspiration from solarpunk, steampunk, and high fantasy. Explore a world where life runs on magic or the power of the sun, where flowers grow from magical influence, ships sail on golden wings through the sky, and where everything is under the watch of the Magicians Order. Will you join the Order, or rebel against them?
Features
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Play as woman, man, or nonbinary; straight, gay, bisexual, or asexual; polyamourous or monogamous.
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Follow the law or break it. Stick to tradition or forge a new path.
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Perfect your plant magic with knowledge gained from books, gardens, and hedge witches, or learn technological magic and shapeshifting.
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Watch airship races, fight using magic swords, and cook a meal with enchanted ingredients.
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Guard magical artifacts and uncover their mysteries. Visit a Solar Commune and use your powers to defend it.
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Explore themes of trust, comradery, and friendship. Relax on cozy, sun-filled afternoons, fly through the air during spellbinding battles, and unravel cryptic secrets with the help of ancient wizards.
Romance Options (subject to some change)
There are 6 main romance options, which are listed below, as well as 4 additional characters the player can have a ‘brief encounter’ with in some playthroughs. There are no penalties for dating more than one RO, and, if entering into a relationship with more than one, unique interactions between those RO’s can be unlocked.
Aja
Specializing in Field Magic, Aja is the archivist in charge of the artifacts during the journey, and she plans to stay on at The Library after the delivery of the objects to aid in their study. She and the Player Character both graduated from The University in the same graduating class. Character Traits: Outwardly chill/inwardly anxious, huge nerd, gets along with everyone.
Rem
Another magician in the Player Character’s party, Rem was also hired by the Magicians Order to help deliver/guard the artifacts. They knew both the Player Character and Aja at The University, where they studied Shape Magic. Character Traits: Flamboyant, knowledge-seeking, impulsive, gregarious.
Kel
Kel is a SolGuard Healer, and he was hired by the Magicians Order to provide Healing to the party in the event of an emergency. Character Traits: Stubborn, idealistic.
Grusk
A representative from the Magicians Order who will be traveling with the party to ensure the delivery goes smoothly. She is a magician who specializes in Field Magic. Character Traits: Ambitious.
Luc
He is a mechanic working on the airship the party takes over the mountains. Character Traits: Thoughtful, nurturing, generous, industrious, creative.
Ines
She is the swashbuckling pilot of the airship.
You had me at apocalyptic.
I’m going to join in on the notion about writing what feels more comfortable. I know I had two concept I thought about writing, one being the futuristic wasteland that I’m working on now, and the other with some sort of military/mutant/desertion theme. You can already tell which one I now feel more passionate about.
Maybe try writing the intro chapters for both and get a feel for what gets your inspiration flowing the most? Writing shouldn’t feel like a chore, that only serves to hinder the true potential of your story.
Make a few Pinterest boards with aesthetics? That’s how I got more depth into the settings and characters before I started writing.
Good luck!
Mind if I private message you some spoilers and talk about writing with ye?
I’m definitely most comfortable writing scifi. I’m also, however, a student that’s about $5,000 in debt and make only about $8,000 yearly. Fingers crossed, I can pass early this semester and start as an engineer but holding pipe dreams is… dangerous at best.
All three of these books will be written. I don’t necessarily have a “favorite genre” to write other than scifi. I can’t write mystery or pure romance though.
I already know I’d buy this. The setting is unfamiliar to me since I rarely play high-fantasy IF games, but this felt so clear from the beginning, I feel like it would be easy to get immersed.
Can’t wait for the demo.
Also, welcome to the community!
Go right ahead! I’ll help you however I can
Interest check for a story I just started making.
The game is called “Outbreak: Infected”, it’s going to be part of a series that focuses on how different survivors handle living through a zombie apocalypse, with each one being focused on a different survivor with a different problem. For example - Outbreak: Infected is going to be about the MC starting off their apocalyptic journey as infected. However, they aren’t like any normal zed out there. While the other infected are mindless, hungry, feral, flesh lusting creatures who aren’t considered to be human anymore, you have control over your urges. You’re able to either gather infected/zombies and try to work with them, help survivors, join a group of bandits, start a cult, help find a cure, just try to survive, or a combination of those.
The next book I have planned is Outbreak: Dependent, where you have to take care of your niece along with your own survival. Your options in the game will influence what type of person she will become, where if you’ve raised her a certain way she will either kill zombies, shy away from violence, or even murder other survivors for supplies. You can also decide whether to focus on finding her parents or your own survival. Two completely different concepts, but both set in the same universe.
Along with that, I have what I think is a unique take on the zombies themselves. There’s both infected AND undead, with those being considered separate life states and posing different problems. The infected require sleep, food, and water to survive. They’re also easier to kill, and can die from most things that regular humans would, but they’ll come back as a zombie if their brain isn’t destroyed. Undead are slower, rotting, but they don’t need rest. They just keep coming, and they won’t stop until their brain is demolished. So, along with surviving, you’ll have to worry about two different classifications of zombies.
I plan to make more books in the series, each with their own problems and factors for the MC to deal with. Are you guys interested?
Guess I need to hurry up and get my zombie one out there interesting take. Mine is actually based in my book series and provides a back story for some of the characters in the series, while bringing the reader into the books universe. Don’t think there’s anything out their with the infected needing sleep etc.
Since my last reply was about my zombie game and I jumped in a topic about death scenes. I do have some unique death scenes written in and with out disclosing much information you create four other characters, besides you character. So it really got me thinking about, if you die you assume the role of one of the other four characters. Would that be interesting to anyone or would it just take away from the suspense of death possibly around every corner?
It’s a game still in it’s early stages since it is actually based in my book series’ universe and I don’t want to get too far into it in case I get further in the game than my book releases. Also for my next demo what would you be more interested in seeing? I’m in the process of finishing out my PI Heirless Wonder chapter one and implementing the birthday scenes for Extreme Ball, which will be the last update for them for a minute (unless issues arise). But I have 5 more ideas I would like to work on next to get a little something different out.
- Old Western (Under the Willow Tree)
- Warrior (ZER0)
- Zombie (Zombiearth:Choose Your Fate)
- Fantasy (Infinite Light/Darkness)
- Alt. Roman Empire (Fate of an Empire)
0 voters
Here you had me immediately. Will be waiting for a demo!
Same
That sounds interesting. Looking forward to the demo
I see that Western isn’t a really popular opinion, but I’d love to see more games like that!
There’s only 4 games in the western section rn, and 2 of the western games are gender-locked
@Mistyleaf123
No worries, I’ll eventually have a demo out for all of them. None of my games are ever gender locked.
Perhaps more information on each would have had slightly different results. But a demo will be out for each one at some point.
Might check out Swamp Castle and there are a few others with similar mechanics. Not sure what all you’ve read or are looking for but thats also the type of story I like and normally come to read.
You honestly had me at ‘Infected’. You should definitely go through with this, I for one would jump to play it immediately! I love any game that let’s you play as a infected/zombie from the jump cause it’s such a unique and cool concept. More games IF or otherwise need to let you play as one, it’s a very very good concept. If you do go through with the idea, I’ll be right there the second a demo goes live I promise you that!!
I did forget to ask though, will there be any ROs? I’ll play it and love it either way mind you, ROs would just be the cherry on top of a already delicious cake in my opinion lol
That sounds interesting. I look forward to playing the demo
Thanks! I am still new to choice script but I will figure it out, demo won’t be out until mid July though. Computer needs to get fixed.
I have no clue how to put things under cuts
Hmm, that’s a really big scope you have there, especially as you note you’re still learning to code. That said, I do think the idea has potential. I always find sci-fi fantasy mash ups really cool and interesting, and the literal battle of the bands thing caught my attention. The ROs, too, are quite unique.
A few other things:
Intersexed is not a gender. It is, as it sounds, a sex. You can incorporate it into gender selection (“I’m intersex, though I was assigned me female at birth. I’m perfectly fine with designation”, “I’m intersex, and though I was assigned male at birth, I’m a girl”), but it’s not a gender to play as. If you meant something more along the lines of a character whose gender is both male and female at the same time, that would be “bigender”.
You also forgot to include female (I assume, anyway, since the ability to play as male and non-binary but not female is fairly unusual).
There’s nothing wrong with cultural inspirations, and I don’t really have the whole story on these peoples, but you’re definitely falling into some stereotypes here, and you always have to be careful with that when you’re heavily inspired by a certain group or setting. It can fixed by flesh out the cultures of said people, making them less one-note and a little more diverse.
Speaking of diverse, another thing is that you’re falling a little bit into Planet of the Hats here, as well, and the implications are a little different when you’re doing it for racial groups within the same species. I’m certain any unfortunate implications were unintentional, but at worst it implies that races are biologically distinct species or that certain races are hardwired to be certain things, at best it’s a fairly boring, stereotypical way to portray different group.
I know you already said the name’s pending, but good gosh could I never stop thinking about the Guitar Hero video game franchise throughout this entire synopsis. Hilarious, but probably not what you were going for.
Having specific names like “elves” and “fairies” alongside general like stuff “cat boys/girls” is a bit jarring. I think you’d better come up with names for the species in question. It’ll also solve the problem of non-binary cat people, so long as you keep it gender neutral. Generally it’ll just help with confusion.