I think if I did something like that, in the end it would be some kind of alternate timeline, much like how in Doctor Who they go back in time and events that really never happened end up being an incredibly improbable series of events.
“The Man Who Sold The World A Coke”
Entrance
You are at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
x me
You are David Bowie.
u
Stairs
You encounter a man who wasn’t there.
x man
He’s impossibly old, bald with old-fashioned spectacles. He’s wearing a lab coat and in his hand is a Bunsen burner. Deep lines mark his face, and his tired eyes speak of someone who has lost a both a wife and a child to suicide.
man, I thought you died alone a long long time ago
“Oh no, not me. After I perfected my process for fixing nitrogen to produce chemical fertilizer, I went on to develop the means of extracting starch from corn and converting it to high-fructose corn syrup.”
laugh
The man laughs too.
shake hand
You fix your eyes on his with a gazely gaze and squeeze his hand firmly. You never lose control.
*** You are face to face with Fritz Haber ***
The working title of the game I’m working on is Pantheon. You are a man touched by prophecy, starting in young adulthood you get caught up in an epic war of the heavens, where gods vie for controll of mens souls and you must choose a side; fate or chance. Each side will have it’s own pantheon with the various gods forming oppinions about you dynamically, if a god doesnt like you don’t expect any miracles from him.
Yeah, quiet complex, I’m not doing it on my own but I want to have something to show before i put up a collab request.
I have more of a “comp” idea than a “game” idea, forgive me. But I think it would be tits if there was a MST3k comp wherein the games submitted have to have something to do with Mystery Science Theater 3000, be it an adaptation of one of their flicks, or something starring the bots, or even another mst treatment of a notorious IF. This isn’t anything serious to consider, I’m just high and rambling. Thank you for reading this post. Plz don’t make fun of me k thx
LOL
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10081 Some may not be suitable for IF, though. But, some are! Furthermore, some may be adaptable.
Well, just registered because this topic interested me. Found this forum and been lurking it for the past few days now in hopes of figuring out a way to make an IF game that has multiple choices at certain points. Anyways, the game idea I’ve been working on is, for lack of a shorter summary, a cyberpunk Hitman meets Repoman. For whatever reason (industrial accidents, diseases, etc.), various people find themselves in need of cybernetic implants all the time. People who cannot afford said implants often turn to various mafia-esque groups for them in return for servitude.
You seek out individuals who have tried to run away from their debts and reclaim the parts. Most Repomen, including yourself, have their very own cybernetic which is a relatively thin strip of metal running up the left part of your back, over the shoulder, and down a bit on the left side of your chest. An even thinner robotic “arm” unfolds from the metal like a machinery arm at a manufacturing plant and has a tiny, free-rotating, high-powered laserpointer on the end. It is used to perform surgery on the people you track down. It may be nondescript, but it’s pretty much the uniform of a Repoman, so everyone knows what you are the moment they see it.
The gist of the gameplay is that there are many ways of getting the organ from your target, much like there are many ways to kill someone in the Hitman games. You are scored on how pristine the part is in the end, so straight up killing someone aggressively won’t earn you as much as knocking them out and extracting it. Also, disguises are recommend so they won’t see your implant and try to run. Combat and coversations that what’s going to be the multiple-choice part of the game, where you choice one of so many options which lead to other options and so on. But, and I got this particular idea from Bioware, even though you have like thirty options through a chapter, the end results are only one of like three or four at the end of every chapter; I think it gives the player the feeling that all choices they make matter, but doesn’t place an obscene amount of work on me. In short, the way you reposess the parts determine your score and the plot-relevant choices like dialog and other options will affect the way the story progresses, to an extent.
Sounds very doable. Once you’ve chosen your development system, go on to the appropriate authoring forum for help - don’t be shy!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo_the_genetic_opera
(Although, to be fair, those weren’t cybernetic parts…)
Anyone remember an old FMV game about setting traps to catch vampires in a house? I remember very little of it aside from the fact thqt you were aome kind of dude in a control room who activated the traps to protect some college kids, or something. It was terrible. Anyway, I think that could make an interesting IF game, sort of the reverse of Lock & Key. You’re some omniscient whatever thing tasked with protecting a group of not-too-intelligent horror movie victims from a group of significantly more cunning horror movie villains that would change each playthrough - one playthrough they’re, say, The Strangers-esque masked killers, another they might be aliens, and in another they’re vampires. You protect the would-be victims by manipulating the environment while they’re not loooking as they make their way through the house to both make it easier for them to navigate and/or slow down the pursuers. The game would be short but difficult and dense with timed puzzles, leading to multiple playthroughs to get optimal results. You win by having at least one kid alive at the end, but earn progressively better endings for saving more of them (even the obnoxious rich girl and th loveable stoner dude who says “I’ll be back in a minute” before heading off alone). Not sure what a good name would be though.
That was it! I remember we had it on our computer when I was little; I have no recollection of actually playing it, but I remember the cutscenes pretty vividly.
That’s our national treasure, Dana Plato, in it.
That would make sense if I had a clue where you’re from :mrgreen:
Sorry, U.S.A. here. It’s a bad joke, nvm.
Also, there is a list of titles in the ifMUD library (dbref #20313).
Recently I was reading Emily Short’s transcript of the IFMud discussion on interiority (still haven’t finished yet), and the subject of Suspended came up. I was thinking about how the various robot companions need to work together to solve the game. Then I started thinking about other forms of collaboration, and then it hit: Suspended meets Twitch.tv Plays Pokemon, where instead of one person controlling the robots, there’s like a billion. I’m envisioning it as a choice-based game, where your options are randomly changing every few seconds, and maybe if you take too long on a choice you get a game over.
That sounds awesome. SUSPENDED is my favorite Infocom game, and it would be fascinating to see what would happen if multiple people were controlling it at once.
The big problem I imagine would come up is sharing information: how would everyone know where all the robots are and what their short- and long-term goals are?
Doesn’t that kinda defeat the strategic aspect?
Also, an echo of Draconis, would we be talking cooperative gameplay? Each robot (player) thinking for itself, deciding whichever goal is best, or a bunch of the guys working together? Suspended had as its core the omniscient player. If you strip that, it sounds very cool, but a bird of a different feather.
Mind, I got nothing against birds in any way, it’s a great aviarium we got here. Just saying, if you glue a peacock’s tail to a turkey, it’s still a turkey. But it’s definitely a cool turkey.
(bird cosmetic surgery? I blame the “Fear of Twine” thread. It must have rotted my brains)