june gloom on 31/3/2010 at 06:11
Oh god YES I would love overgrown apocalypse. This desert shit is so fucking tired.
Nameless Voice on 1/4/2010 at 14:43
A random idea that occurred to me recently was a game where you play someone with a lot of enemies that want to kill you, perhaps the leader of (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LaResistance) La Resistance.
You would have to go about various activities, such as travelling, meeting people, arranging attacks, and making deals, all while avoiding being assassinated or caught by the police.
You could use a variety of methods, including always keeping your own true identity a secret, using decoys and doubles as targets instead of yourself, constantly changing meeting locations at the last minute, carefully going over the floor plans of any location you visit to avoid places where you could be easily targeted by a sniper, constantly moving your base of operations, carefully monitoring your accomplices to be sure that they won't betray you, etc.
I have no idea if such a game would really work mechanics-wise.
Jason Moyer on 1/4/2010 at 14:48
This is neither crazy nor zany, but I was watching the first Star Wars movie the other day and I realized there's never really been a game that portrayed force users the way the original trilogy does. Maybe this is a shitty idea, but it made me think that a Jedi game with Thief-like mechanics (obviously, the elemental arrow stuff would be replaced by similar force powers) would be ridiculously badass. For the obligatory franchise tie-in the first mission could even be as Obi-Wan as he sneaks around the death star.
Volitions Advocate on 1/4/2010 at 15:57
Quote Posted by Chade
One obvious answer is to turn the player into a pathetic weakling relative to other (non-human) enemies, and build the game up around stealth rather then combat.
Sounds like Penumbra to me.
demagogue on 1/4/2010 at 21:36
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
A random idea that occurred to me recently was a game where you play someone with a lot of enemies that want to kill you, perhaps the leader of (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LaResistance) La Resistance.
[...]
I have no idea if such a game would really work mechanics-wise.
I've had a similar idea before ... mine was a little on the futurist end, though, like the underground in Farenheit 451, but similar thinking ... setting up assassinations and symbolic hits, smuggling weapons & supplies in, always being hunted by the police, worrying about infiltrators in your own ranks, recruiting. And in my version, running the show is some Philip Dick-esque mega-gov't / corporation that has cameras and spies everywhere that you're trying to overthrow, with the climax being either a raid on or sneaking into their main complex to uncover some gastly secret or whatever. I didn't want it to be too cliche, but considering there isn't really a game like this it's sort of fertile territory.
gunsmoke on 2/4/2010 at 11:18
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Oh god YES I would love overgrown apocalypse. This desert shit is so fucking tired.
Did you ever see that Smith movie 'Legend'? Except for the goddamn lions :rolleyes: (yeah I know, they broke outta the zoo) the city looked great.
dethtoll: this is a great read (
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/enslaved-odyssey-to-the-west-preview)
june gloom on 2/4/2010 at 13:57
Oh my god this looks fantastic.
One of the things I always loved about the Fallout series was the robots- ancient rusting hulks with no idea that the world they were once programmed for no longer exists. This looks to be completely centered around that idea, which is awesome.
This is a definite buy.
Neb on 14/8/2010 at 10:55
Random scenario: You are trapped among a civilisation of primitive insect-like aliens. They will attack you on sight unless you smell like them. By day you try to integrate with society to try to find a way out, and at night you stalk victims, harvesting their bodies for hormones. They are suspicious and the net is closing in on you.
Perhaps they live on Earth and think that they're actually human. You could bundle all sorts of Kafkaesque allegory in with that.
june gloom on 14/8/2010 at 12:02
Full-blown concept:
You are one of an expanding colony of people living deep within a long-abandoned underground complex, that began when a small group of people left the surface generations ago for a reason that has not been passed down. While the colony is self-sufficient, with its own means of food production and some light manufacturing ability, a population explosion has given rise to the need for more room. The problem is the complex is vast and much of it has been thrust into pitch blackness after hundreds of years of disuse. This alone wouldn't be so bad, if not for the fact that the complex is also patrolled by security bots of all shapes and sizes, as well as strange, monstrous lifeforms only vaguely resembling their normal ancestors.
Here's the kicker: the game is semi-randomized. It would be divided up into cells, each cell holding a randomized type of section- everything from an abandoned living quarters area to a power station to whatever. If a cell draws a certain type of area, it would affect other cells for congruity- so, if a cell draws an underground transport station, then every cell in a straight line from that station would be a tunnel or another station, and the tunnel may have maintenance doors. Certain cell types would be limited in number, so there would only be 3 or 4 stations in the entire game, for example. Moreover, exactly the sort of thing you see in a given cell would be randomized- sometimes doors won't work, maybe a tunnel is collapsed, forcing you to go around, et cetera et cetera. On top of that, there are multiple levels, so 30 cells in a given level times let's say 10 levels equals 300 cells to explore, each taking up roughly the same amount of square feet (if you consider the whole cell and not just the walkable area) as a massive warehouse- and you'll never explore them all.
The basic goal of the game would be to slowly but surely expand your colony. You would have to explore each cell one by one, and make sure it's secure enough to be properly defended so that the colony could expand into it. As you progress through the game, you may want to establish camps far away from the central colony, so that you may rest and reequip. The catch to doing this is first you have to make sure that there is a quick and easy path from home base to the camp site, so that supplies can move out.
Throughout the game you would begin to find hints that yours is not the only colony down here, and the complex itself is unimaginably vast. You'd find dead soldiers here and there, signs of recently-abandoned life in a living-quarters area, so on and so forth. The important thing, however, is that you never meet anyone alive who isn't from your colony, with the possible exception of a survivor of some horrible massacre.
Which leads me into something else- throughout the game, you and your colony will be stalked by something worse than the average mutant bug, some strange shadow beast that prowls the darkness, its growling audible for what must be miles. You can fight it off, yes, but you can't kill it, because it'll only come back for more later. There's only one, but the way it strikes repeatedly gives the impression that there are so many more. The finale of the game would involve fighting the creature off just beneath the surface, and finally cranking open huge bay doors that let sunlight in, killing the thing.
The twist ending is when you finally reach the surface, and find that everything is in ruins, overgrown and falling apart, and at night the shadow beasts come out...
