Game idea based on a dream
Oct. 3rd, 2021 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI am very sore today so this will be a bit incoherent and may not be as interesting as it feels. Anyway!
It started out as a sort of point and click adventure game: we were a bunch of people trapped in a Mysterious Maze, and there were items we could find/(were assigned?) to help unlock stuff/gain powers etc.
Some items would only work for one person, and people tended to keep the one they had to start with. I/the player character had a Special Key that was the most powerful item anyone had found so far, and so I became the sort of defacto leader. I went around seeing what I could unlock/change with it, and people lent me/helped me with their items. I had to make some effort to stay agreeable so people would help me out but mostly everyone did, and so it wasn't much different to a regular adventure game where the player holds everything, just plus a little bit of social engineering.
And then a new woman arrived, whose item wasn't as powerful as my key when it came to solving mysteries, but could be used to hurt other people. And she used that threaten people (including me) into doing what she wanted. Which was a bunch of weird pointless stuff that wasn't getting any of us out of the maze. (She was later revealed to be a child using her item to disguise her appearance)
So now suddenly trying to solve the mysteries involved a bunch of sneaking around, figuring out who I could trust to work with me against the woman, in one case passing the key on to someone else I trusted so I couldn't be coerced to use it for something bad. All of which relied on the social bonds I'd built earlier. Meanwhile new people were arriving/new items were being discovered etc, but the dynamic was different.
Anyway! I thought it was interesting. It's inspired by Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem, which combines a dating sim "get people to like you" points system with balancing personal attributes/knowledge, and then at one point you have to solve a mystery and it's as much about the character having built up the right combination of skills and friends as figuring out clues as a player. And there's no one single best approach, but there is a single answer to work towards.
It started out as a sort of point and click adventure game: we were a bunch of people trapped in a Mysterious Maze, and there were items we could find/(were assigned?) to help unlock stuff/gain powers etc.
Some items would only work for one person, and people tended to keep the one they had to start with. I/the player character had a Special Key that was the most powerful item anyone had found so far, and so I became the sort of defacto leader. I went around seeing what I could unlock/change with it, and people lent me/helped me with their items. I had to make some effort to stay agreeable so people would help me out but mostly everyone did, and so it wasn't much different to a regular adventure game where the player holds everything, just plus a little bit of social engineering.
And then a new woman arrived, whose item wasn't as powerful as my key when it came to solving mysteries, but could be used to hurt other people. And she used that threaten people (including me) into doing what she wanted. Which was a bunch of weird pointless stuff that wasn't getting any of us out of the maze. (She was later revealed to be a child using her item to disguise her appearance)
So now suddenly trying to solve the mysteries involved a bunch of sneaking around, figuring out who I could trust to work with me against the woman, in one case passing the key on to someone else I trusted so I couldn't be coerced to use it for something bad. All of which relied on the social bonds I'd built earlier. Meanwhile new people were arriving/new items were being discovered etc, but the dynamic was different.
Anyway! I thought it was interesting. It's inspired by Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem, which combines a dating sim "get people to like you" points system with balancing personal attributes/knowledge, and then at one point you have to solve a mystery and it's as much about the character having built up the right combination of skills and friends as figuring out clues as a player. And there's no one single best approach, but there is a single answer to work towards.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-03 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-07 12:28 pm (UTC)All the elements are from the dream, but there was a bunch of other weird stuff I didn't mention because it was just silly, and it was all much less coherent until I retroactively retrofitted a meaning to previous semi-random events partway through the dream.