I’ve been wanting to make a choice of games game for quite a while, but it occurs to me I could use someone to help me make that a thing. My issue tends to be that I have plenty of ideas but I need someone to bounce them off of (and it would also help to have this person pitch their own ideas and fill in some plot holes etc.)
Themes: Loss of Sanity, questioning of what’s real and what isn’t, a
niggling feeling that something just isn’t right, conspiracy and
intrigue.
Plot: There’s been a murder and you’ve been called in to investigate
but as you keep on investigating you come across things that are almost
otherworldly. Are you losing your mind? or is everyone else just blind
to what’s really happening?
(some influences: Spec Ops: the Line, Shutter Island, Call of Cthulhu, True Detective)
A piece of humble advice from one writerly type to another:
Your suggestion so far is “Either something modern, or something in the past”, which aside from being a little vague also encompasses all of human history.
Maybe you’ll have more takers if you come to the table with a little bit more. Maybe an idea that is a little more formed (themes, time period, basic plot etc).
People are more likely to commit to working with you if they have a better idea of who you are as a writer, and what kind of stories you’d be writing.
Firstly when I say 20th century or fantasy I mean It’ll either take place in the 12th century with warriors bards and mages or the 20th century with hardboiled detectives and noir monologues. (Personally, I’m leaning for the 1920’s but I could also make it work in the medieval age.)
Themes: Loss of Sanity, questioning of what’s real and what isn’t, a niggling feeling that something just isn’t right, conspiracy and intrigue.
Plot: There’s been a murder and you’ve been called in to investigate but as you keep on investigating you come across things that are almost otherworldly. Are you losing your mind? or is everyone else just blind to what’s really happening?
(some influences: Spec Ops: the Line, Shutter Island, Call of Cthulhu, True Detective)
So like some sort of “I can see the unread” or “why can I see demonsx and you can’t” sort of thing? If it is like that I have a few ideas of how to go about it if you wish to hear them .
I’m not sure how to describe it via this post thing, it’s not like there’s some kind of magical barrier preventing people from seeing it. More like people just being ignorant of what’s really in front of their eyes, instead choosing to believe in the lie that humanity is the dominant species on earth.
The basic idea is that throughout the game the player will have to question their sanity at the events going on around them, providing explanations like a magical or tech barrier allows them to hand wave it off. I’m not crazy it’s just some kind of conspiracy or something along those lines.
I like the more modern setting better. In a fantasy setting, it would not be unusual to see dragons, orcs, elves, magic, and not normal things and see humans as a race that is not stronger or smarter than everybody else. But, you could use this to your advantage and slowly reveal that this fantasy world is not realistic and maybe break the fourth wall a little bit if you want.
I like realistic characters who do not ignore the obvious just because they are dumb. A good example of people unintentionally ignoring the bad around them is the rich not understanding the poor or realizing they exist because the two exist in different neighborhoods, social groups, and “worlds”.
I’d like to see how you blend the seemingly normal parts with the not so normal parts to create a seamless (or jaring if you want) transition into madness. I find it’s easier to write mystery stories backwards and once the end is concreate, go back and create hints, red herrings, and puzzles that connect to the end (or multiple ends). You can also have multiple POV (like in the Silent Hill movie or Icarus Sun WIP for how to code POV switches) that contrast between the real and fake, or you could use the endings to reveal the truth and have some endings where the player never realisad that they are in a fantasy world (a well done “it was all a dream”) like in the Silent Hill Game Series or The Dreaming game above .
Really like this idea, while a fantasy setting would be cool I think the 1920-1930 would be a much better fit for the theme. I would be really interested in talking to you about this and I already have some ideas on what you could do. Let me know if you’re interested.
It would be something similar, it’s more of that people are too wrapped up in the great depression, how am I going to get money, food a place to stay, etc. Things like people going missing, they must have just gone somewhere else to get food or work or a shady individual, they just ignore him because what this person does has barely any effect on their lives.
I definitely like the 1920’s-30’s period better. I feel like enough doesn’t get written in this time period. There’s the Depression, there’s flappers, there’s the Prohibition. There’s so many story arcs to follow in relation to a murder, plus it’s just fun. I would love to have been a flapper who carried a gun on one thigh and a flask on the other!
Anyway, out of my own head now. Have you ever played TellTale’s Wolves Among Us? At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was called. Basically their world is full of fairytales like the three little pigs and Cinderella. They take these things called Glimmer (I think) which allows them to look human to the real humans. The story follows a detective, who is a wolf, as he tries to solve a murder and keep the fairytales from being exposed.
I’m not saying you should go that route with fairytales, but ultimately it sounds like your plot goal is similar, but your characters are reversed. They would be the humans in this situation, unaware of their surroundings, and your detective could be the one trying to expose them because he/she is intuitive and can see the things around them that don’t quite fit.
I’ve played and quite enjoyed wolf among us, and I have to say it’s not really like that at all. If you have ideas I would be happy to hear them, but when I say, creatures of magic, I mean demonic entities a la Cthulhu and Lucifer. As for how the detective stumbles upon the demonic entities presumably, the murderers are cultists of said demonic entity.
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