This is a mid-zombie apocalypse idea I had recently and that I’m hoping to work on when I can.
Summary
In this game, you will play a character who has lived the last nine years of their life in a controlled district after the outbreak of a parasite known as the Thorned Crown Infection.
Twenty years old at the start of the game, years will go by as your character faces challenge after challenge that will change the way they see the world, themselves, and even the people around them.
Features
What you can expect from this story:
Character Customisation.
-Character options include gender customisation (male, female, and non-binary).
4 ROs.
-Two ROs will be present from the Year One, both gender flippable.
- The third and fourth ROs, both of which are non-binary, will be accessible in Year Two and Year Three as events progress and the MC meets new people on their journey in a dangerous world.
Romance.
-I plan to include four individual romances, including one asexual romance. I want each romance to feel natural, so while flirting moments will be available, this will
Stats.
-There will be five main stats: muscle, stealth, will, order, and humanity. These will impact the story as necessary.
Note: the demo consists of the first chapter only, which is a small introduction to your character and the world. This is a story I’m really excited to write, and I’m hoping to work on it whenever I can spare time and over weekends.
If you got this far, thanks and I hope you enjoy the small demo!
I’m still learning code and choicescript, but it’s been a lot of fun and I look forward to writing more!
I’m super interested in the premise and the implications of the Enforcers, and how the MC’s last name connects to the parasite. It’s also nice to be able to customize their height, I can’t really think of the last game I played where I was able to do that. The stats also make sense for the setting, and it’ll be interesting to see how they’re going to affect the story as it goes on.
I do have a few questions, however. You mentioned that this will span years, are you planning on putting any micromanaging elements into this or will it stay primarily romance-oriented? I’m also curious as to how choosing to stay silent causes the reckless stat to rise instead of the cautious stat, as well as how choosing to leave your room as it is raises order instead of chaos. ^^;
That being said, I’m definitely looking forward to meeting the ROs (An asexual romance! I’m pumped!!) and learning more about this world you’ve created. Happy writing!
Really love your style of writing here, it’s very vivid and cuts straight to the point. Love the emotions you’ve managed to stir up with such a short demo so I’m very excited to see where you take this story!
Regarding stats, I’m hoping to play around with certain thresholds impacting decisions as events happen (such as things going south if you don’t have enough stealth, or certain options getting unlocked if you’re brave enough, that kind of thing).
Can I ask what you mean by micromanaging though? (Still fairly new to all this haha) but ultimately it will be story based and character-driven with romance as an addition to that! Also thank you for letting me know about that stats! Those options should definitely be reversed, cautiousness should rise with staying silent while speaking up is reckless.
As for leaving your room, it raises order because you’re not causing trouble with the Enforcers, while taking the “F no” option should raise chaos since you’re not falling in line, but I’ll double check those now to make sure they’re in order, thank you!
But thank you!! I’m really looking forward to writing, and the ace romance is definitely a path I’m excited for because the RO in question will have an interesting story
Ah, let me clarify! I meant leaving your room messy, as compared to picking everything up! Sorry, should have specified a bit more clearly with that. ^^;
Micromanaging, however, is probably best described as making a tonne of tiny decisions that could go very wrong very quickly if you make the wrong choice? I’m not as familiar with CoG/HG titles (Tin Star is the only one that comes to mind but I’m fairly sure there are other popular ones I can’t think of), but along the vein of city managers/sims or titles like Crusader Kings, Sengoku, etc.
I’m looking forward to seeing how you play with stats going forward, though, and good luck!
Ah I getcha now, no stress! That should be fixed now, I updated the demo stat file so that Order/Chaos are reversed in order (same with Recklessness/Cautiousness) so that negative and positive stat increases won’t be reversed based on the choices.
I would say (based on that explanation of micromanaging) that that may not be the case? At the moment, I have a general idea of how I want the first “year” in terms of the story to end, so while there will be potential for some choices to go wrong, it wouldn’t necessarily be because of several decisions you made which resulted in a bad ending (if that makes sense?).
The most micromanaging I believe there will be will just be in terms of some stat options, but those will mostly be for flavour and providing additional action choices.
But thank you again! I’ve got some ideas of stat options to play with down the line which should be fun!
Hey there, very cool premise! (I can never resist zombie apocalypse narratives!) I found your way of introducing appearance customization very smooth and natural, and I’m very intrigued to see where the world (and the Enforcers and inspections and our last name) takes us!
One quick thing: I noticed that before you choose your gender, your default gender is set to “You are a man” in the stats screen. To avoid this you can always *set [gendervariable] “person” in your startup file, or even leave it blank as “”: variables only need numbers or quotation marks to define them as strings or numeric! Just in case you didn’t know! And good luck with this project!
Thank you so much <3 I’m glad I was able to leave an impression despite the demo being so short, I’m hoping to expand on everything in more detail as we lean into the story more! (And I will likely revisit that first chapter to flesh out some scenes more, I know some of the transitions are rather short).
Thank you so much! I’m glad you thought the customisation was smooth, I’ve just made some little changes that’ll be carried over with my next update in the future that will hopefully make this even more so! (And things will certainly get interesting for the MC very quickly in this world~)
I didn’t know that actually! I’m still learning as I go, so thank you for this! I was thinking of using a true/false mechanic to hide the appearance until the MC’s look is “confirmed” but I’m not quite familiar with that code type just yet, so it’s nice to have an alternative to fall back on. Thanks again!
Oh thank you so much!! That makes perfect sense, I was actually wondering how to hide it properly cause I’d been thinking “do I need to put “look true” after each custom option” but knowing the “if” code for the stats hides it until necessary, that’s perfect.
Great game so far, loving it! Though in the case that you keep your hair completely shaved, I think “but you keep it completely shaved” would be better than"and…"
Thank you so much, twice over for the nice words and the suggestion!
You’re right that it does sound better, so I’ve updated my choicescript stats file and tweaked how certain passages are locked in to give the shaved hairstyle a different description. I’ll be updating the demo later today hopefully with this and a few other tweaks. Cheers again!
Ah thank you so much <3 I’m hoping to update as regularly as I can, so fingers crossed my job doesn’t get super busy just as I start this haha! Thank you again for the nice words and for your interest in the story!
Howdy! I really enjoyed this demo and thought it had some solid explanations despite how short it was. It also reminds me of The Last of Us, which is always good.
Anyway I’m just gonna inform you that I will be stalking this thread like a Pigeon stalks a bread. Hey…that rhymed!
You’re the sweetest pigeon ever, thank you so much for the lovely comment and the rhyme <3 TLOU is definitely a point of inspiration though I’m hoping this story will be able to stand on its own and be unique in the kind of post-zombie apocalypse genre!
