I was excited when the list of seeds for SeedComp! came out, but a little surprised at how little discussion they provoked.
But looking at the list, I realised: there are a lot of seeds. If you want to dip in and take a look around at some of the ideas on offer for turning into a game, it’s difficult to know where to start. I thought one starting point that might maybe help someone out there would be to break down the range of seeds on offer in terms of what kind of input they provide into creating a game.
The largest category are what I’ve termed “whole-game fictional premise”. This is where the seed basically tells you what game to write in terms of setting, viewpoint character, general plot structure, etc. These are generally the most “oven-ready” seeds if you want to make a game and don’t have and idea of your own. On the other hand, they are the ones which least really lend themselves to combining with other seeds.
Whole-game fictional premise
• RE: God (Max Fog)
• The Search (okushimo)
• The Split (dsherwood)
• (Our) Futures Market (pinkunz)
• Bad Weather (pinkunz)
• Cart Quest (pinkunz)
• Cloak and Tailor (pinkunz)
• Court Intrigue Simulator (Sanadi)
• Damn Dog (pinkunz)
• Death in the Guildhall of Virtuosity (dougegan2)
• Escape the Sitcom! (Robert Patten)
• Favors Owed (Sanadi)
• Funky (pinkunz)
• Galactic Delights (Onno Brouwer)
• Hexed (pinkunz)
• Keys to Redemption: A Slumlord’s Salvation (pinkunz)
• Lysidice and the Minotaur (manonamora)
• Memory Issues (Sanadi)
• Quarantine (Rovarsson)
• Refuge (pinkunz)
• Resurgence of the Jedi - Mace Unleashed (pinkunz)
• SecedeShip (pinkunz)
• Spreading the Mail (pinkunz)
• Studio Interference (pinkunz)
• SuperFly (pinkunz)
• Tact (pinkunz)
• The Last Book You’ll Ever Write (manonamora)
• The Murderous Apprentice (Sanadi)
• The Understudy (Lucian Smith)
• Undercover (pinkunz)
Then there are fictional elements that don’t necessarily dictate the entire structure of the game containing them - just a setting, just a character, just a situation, or a premise with a lot of scope for filling in additional details. The line between this category and the previous one is a bit blurred, so there are a couple here that define quite a lot of the premise, but might provide more options for combining them with other seeds or your own ideas.
Fictional content
• Side of the Tracks (Lionstooth)
• The Toybox Green Codex - Ducktective Deirdre (Andrei Wasotelo)
• Khelmara (kylaras)
• Thoroughly, Cheerfully Miserable (JoshGrams)
• Story B (FlintstonesShapedVitamins)
• Crystal Sprouts (ilustreco)
• Dominoes & Gigolos (manonamora)
• Fantasy Quest (Robert Patten)
• Indiana’s Tombstone: Unfinished Business (pinkunz)
• Insinuations (kenped)
• Temporal Leech (pinkunz)
• That’s not an Elf (Sanadi)
• The Colossus of Rhodos (Rovarsson)
• The Murphinator (pinkunz)
• The Spires on the Salt Plains (Rovarsson)
• The Sweetest Villain (mathbrush)
• The Unsuitable Suitor (Sanadi)
• Virtual Reality Haunted House for the Discriminating Artificial Intelligence (pinkunz)
• Waypoint (pinkunz)
Then there’s a second category of whole-game seeds, which don’t define the fictional premise for the game but rather an overarching mechanical one. Again, there are a couple of overlaps here with the fictional premise category, where the premise implies certain game mechanics that would need to take centre stage.
Whole-game mechanical premise
• Jelly-cut Deli Fish (Charm Cochran)
• One Small Change (Amanda Walker)
• Counterfeit Funky (pinkunz)
• Inverted Parser (filiaa)
• Localization (pinkunz)
• Perry Beagle: Paralegal (pinkunz)
• Refraction (pinkunz)
The list of seeds that suggest individual mechanics to incorporate into a game is surprisingly short…
Individual mechanics
• A Moorbead Game: Silence (Max Fog)
• Git Gud (pinkunz)
• Historical Potential Energy (pinkunz)
• Inventory Puzzle (Charm Cochran)
• Die & Retry in Bullet Time (CrocMiam)
• Unreliable Memories (CrocMiam)
… although that’s partly because I separated some of them out into a “meta-mechanics” category for those that propose meddling with the nature of interactive fiction itself.
Meta-mechanics
• Blind Vote (pinkunz)
• Cached (pinkunz)
• CYOC (pinkunz)
• I Jekyll, you Hyde (pinkunz)
• Mayor McStuffins gets McStuffed! (pinkunz)
• Nuts! (pinkunz)
• Spy Guy (pinkunz)
Then there’s the audio and visual assets, some of which could easily be combined with any suitable game, and some of which are more specific and might be a source of inspiration in themselves.
Audio and visual assets
• Palettes 2 (Charm Cochran)
• Moans & Tones (Charm Cochran)
• Door to Nowhere (Lionstooth)
• A Dismal Vessel (DemonApologist)
And finally, the “wild” category, for seeds I couldn’t work out how to categorise anywhere else. Mostly these are interesting ideas which aren’t accompanied directly by a suggestion of how to incorporate them into a work of IF, or ideas that could have gone into either the fictional or mechanical category depending on interpretation.
Miscellaneous inspiration
• Carmine Darkness (DissoluteSolute)
• Anthropocene (MartynJBull)
• Horror Snippets (KADW)
• Reversible (JoshGrams)
• Chonky Chicken (manonamora)
• CottageCore Frog Game Idea (Ashlee Craft)
• Smithing Seed (Aster F)
Finally, there are four (edit: three) seeds not included in any of the above categories because I couldn’t find them (I haven’t looked terribly hard, because there were a lot of seeds to get through already, but the links on the giant spreadsheet of seeds didn’t work).
Missing seeds
• Memory Quilt (Amanda Walker)
• Mr Nice, Mr Mean, Mr In-Between (manonamora)
• The Last Seed at the End of Time (manonamora)
I don’t know if this categorisation will be useful to anyone but maybe it will at least probably some discussion about the types of seeds people are excited to see. I can’t promise the categorisation I’ve used makes perfect sense, and sorry if you think I’ve put your seed in the wrong category (let me know and I’ll edit it!).
