Teen Drama

Hello everyone, I’m Elkuhn, a fairly new member (but long time lurker) on these forums.

Now, I didn’t make this thread to introduce myself, so we can save that. I wanted to gauge some reactions, as I’ve been lurking here and seeing so many user-made games, good ones, not so good ones, and many different topics that they covered. It inspired me to try my hand at writing one. Programming wouldn’t be too difficult for me and Choicescript seems pretty straight forward, but I’d like to see what people think of my idea before I put it into motion, as it will definitely be a larger undertaking for me.

The idea is, and bear with me here, high school. I don’t want to just tell the story of some kid in high school, though. I’d like to make a game where you can determine your characters path through high school, live out a different life and see how things would have developed differently depending on choices made, and people befriended. I say this would be a larger undertaking because I don’t want to see it all boil down to one last choice, the other choices just building skills to determine how you handle this last choice and if you succeed or not. I want each choice to directly affect you and the people around you. For example your choice of activities could determine who you spend more time with (and consequently who you’re more likely to befriend) or your gender choice could affect how people see you. While I wholeheartedly intend to make this a game without sexism, I don’t want to just name-change NPC love interests or have hormone-ridden teens oblivious to gender. Depending on your gender and sexual orientation you would have different potential love interests and other NPCs would treat you differently. It’s a lot easier to manipulate someone who wants to get in your pants versus someone who has absolutely no interest in you. I’d definitely like to make the characters dynamic as well, your choices partially affecting their paths (like if you take the last spot on the football team, the character who was the football playing bully when you were less popular would end up somewhere else). And no, even if it is “high school” I do not want to include the classes. I’m sure most people have had enough of that.

I know a lot of the things I’m talking about would take a great deal of coding to figure out, but I’d just like to get a general feel for the forum’s opinion before I started.

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Do it, it’s different, it’s fun, it’s something EVERYONE can relate to!
If you’re looking for some ideas I’d suggest looking up “Surviving High School” on the Android/Apple Market, that’s what I’d be expecting only even more “choicy” and without all the crappy word-finding mini games (the football games are tolerable… Just) :smiley:

I wouldn’t eliminate classes though, just make them more fun… Maybe stuff can happen in classes and you can get sent out/get a detention/pass notes - That kind of stuff :slight_smile:

I played that “Don’t take it personally babe it just ain’t your story” recently and while not very interactive, it’s unbelievably entertaining considering 80% of the game is in a classroom.

Anyway, first fan lining up… :slight_smile:

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I’d definitely pay for it. Give it a shot. :smiley:

I like the concept and definitely see a market for it. As CJW said, there is a popular app out already but it is not a narrative game and has very stereotypical characters.

Your idea of changing the paths of characters due to choices is great, though tricky to implement, but may be an great edge of other such stories.

Good luck with it and keep us posted on your progress.

Hm, I wish you luck, I tend to dislike most media portrayals of high school due to them being shown both unrealistically and kinda silly. But I’m not opposed to the concept, and I’m eager to see how you pull it off.

Not something I normaly read, however it sounds promising and would read it.

Don’t do Classes but have some SAT studying sessions.
Always get some Preschool-Elementary-Middle School questions to form your character.
Like how you spent most of your time or what type of people you spent a lot of time with. This will allow an increase at the very beginning.

Yeah, highschool background is always popular. I don’t think it’d be proper without classes though - at least some sort of studying session/exam event/career choice. The percentage of time you’re stuck in class during that phase of your life is too significant to just rule out.
It will be a big project if you don’t just chalk out the usual stereotypes. i.e. jocks, nerd, goths etc. Will like to try it out if you make a beta :smiley:

Why do people feel the need to romanticize the worst part of their childhood? It’s like High school is so horribly traumatic for some people that their brain replaces reality with warm fuzzy nostalgic images to keep them from going insane. Which of course means they don’t learn shit from the experience. Which means another generation of teens has to suffer the same mental, emotional and hopefully not physical damage it caused their parents.

“Hey, let’s put a bunch of emotionally insane young people together in a small space they aren’t allowed to leave for 7 hours a day in an environment that perfectly directs their emotional insanity towards mentally and emotionally damaging behavior. We’ll call it a school and everyone will assume it’s just something they have to accept.”

Ok… o.o’

@CJW That sounds like an interesting idea, as if any of us paid attention in lessons anyway.

@Shoelip When did I ever say I was going to do a “romanticized” version of high school “nostalgia?” It isn’t “high school” without all the crap that made it an experience. The game wouldn’t be about re-living some past “glory” in high school. The idea behind the game is to show you how circumstances affect people and how everyone goes through bullshit in their teen years. It wouldn’t be high school without body issues, drama, teenaged politics, and cliques (don’t worry I don’t intend to stereotype into the typical cliques, but at the same time you cannot deny that they exist in every school to some degree). Why I want to make this game is to give you a chance to see, through their eyes, what that chubby girl went through because of teasing, how much stress that super-popular girl is under to keep her popularity and due to peer pressure, or how important it was for that gay guy to have friends who supported him during his process of coming out. It is by no means going to be “fuzzy” or “nostalgic.”

Sorry for the double post, but some of you might have gotten a very negative vibe about the game from my last one, and I just wanted to be sure to say that while I intend to deal with all these issues that come up most prominently during our teen years, I do intend for there to be happy, funny, cute, etc scenes as well. Just because you’re dealing with a ton of shit at school doesn’t mean you can’t have fun after. :stuck_out_tongue:

Sorry I was just getting a bit ranty about stuff not entirely related to the specific topic. I do that sometimes.

It also wouldn’t be high-school without sexism, racism, homophobia, and any other excuse a bunch of emotionally insane young people can come up with to segregate themselves from others in an ass backwards attempt at belonging.

Have you ever heard of the concept of “Lockout”? It’s this amazingly brain damaged idea that they have at the high schools around where I grew up where if you’re late to class they lock the doors and you have to go to detention. It’s a perfect deterrent for people who aren’t perfect. Anyone who actually wants to learn and shows up just slightly late is punished for it by being refused entry. Anyone who doesn’t care will just not bother showing up at all since they know they’ll just be stuck in detention. And that’s not even going into the terrible state of the actual educational content of high school classes.

See, there’s another vaguely related rant. I hope this isn’t too annoying. If it is let me know and I’ll try to control myself better.

Personally I was waiting for a life sim, though maybe college over high school, it’s a bit overused

@Person If you’re interested on working on one you can always check out CoGCommunity.webs.com /Shamelesssellwhoring

Back on topic. Sounds like you want it to be a huge project. Can’t wait to see an demo.

Use a Mac so choicescript won’t let me, plus I’m an awful programmer anyways.

I would certainly give this a try. It sounds interesting and I agree about adding at least a bit of interactions in the class rooms :slight_smile:

There is a game called “Surviving High School” that is sort of like the topic you suggested, but short, sort of boring, and stereotypical characters.

Any progess on the game Elkuhn?

@tallen28 I’ve got some rough outlines and a basic plot that I worked on here and there in my spare time, but between my jobs and other hobbies it’s hard to find time to work on this whole-heartedly at the moment. It is a pretty big project, after all.