Working title: Ghost
– 5:16
The Hook:
Your character is hit by the 5:16 city bus and killed
instantly. However, the afterlife won’t let you in – your time is not yet up.
After discussions with Death and her boss, the Auditor, who figure out that
Death should have been at the 5:15 bus on the other side of the city, you
decide to become a ghost while they try to find you a new body.
Story Codes:
All codes depend on player choices, as does starting
character sex and gender. That said:
The working assumption is that all characters are willing to
have relations with all genders, but all characters also have specific partner
preferences .
MF, FM, MM, FF, group, Myth, TG, TF, Futa, Furry, M2F, F2M.
all/all, exh, voy, cheat, creampie, reluc, swing, piercings, tattoos,
tentacles, vanilla, some d&s, some b&d,
There is mention of non-consensual sex, violence, and
beastiality, but all such scenes happen off screen and are mentioned because a
character’s response to them is important.
Background:
A couple of years ago I was inspired to do some world
building and develop a magic system that would support storytelling that
included but was not limited to transformations. I have been nibbling away on
it between other projects and have a good enough sense for how things work that
I need to start writing in this world. The details of the system are below.
Personally, I am an instructional designer and eLearning
specialist with particular strengths at building narratives that mix text,
images, and interaction. A few stories have come to visit me, and while most of
them are pretty linear this particular story seemed like it would make a good
game, and the game seemed like a good way to experiment with screen layout and
page flow.
Game Design Goals
(Because philosophy seems too heavy-handed)
·
Keep asking: What does the character want, why
can’t they have it, why do we care?
·
The game is composed of multiple choices. Every
choice has consequences, but no single choice can win or lose the game. (If I
include bad-ends, I will have a button to go back to just before the bad choice.)
·
All selections can be made with either mouse or
keyboard
·
There is more than one way to defeat the final
villain, but victory is not guaranteed. For example, if you determine that you
will have to pass through a locked door and don’t have any of the three or four
ways of getting past that door, you lose.
·
The character must change in some way in order
to beat the villain.
·
Interactions with an NPC affect later
interactions with that NPC and with the NPC’s that the first one is connected
to.
·
Key information will be found in text, images,
and dialogue. Some of it will be signposted.
·
Anything that you can interact with will be
clearly indicated
·
Auto-save at the start of each section.
·
All art and writing will be self-created,
commissioned, donated, or public domain.
Not appearing in this
picture:
·
Railroading – you have a goal, but there are
many ways to achieve the goal
·
Sandboxing – if you run out of time, the villain
wins and the game is over
·
No change clothes / talk to every npc / change
held item / talk to every npc / rinse / repeat grinding.
·
Minimal “get me 1000 rat tails” grinding. In
fact, minimal grinding.
·
No RAGS-style navigation where it can take
fifteen clicks to advance the story by one real scene.
·
There will be no twitch or reflex gaming. This
is about choices and decisions, not clicking the moving target.
Look and Feel
I tell stories through a mixture of text, images, and
dialogue. As such, I see the game as having a lot of art. I am currently
leaning toward vector art because it rescales better and takes less space to
store. I am currently leaning toward black and white artwork for aesthetic
reasons. I will use color to indicate
clickable screen locations and for highlight and accent purposes within images.
The main screen will focus on narrative, with the most
common story pages built on sequential art, text, and dialogue while more
sandboxy decisions will have a map or other navigation image.
Game Structure:
Following classic screenwriting structure, I am breaking the
story down into four sections: Meet the character, flail for a solution, attack
the problem, surmount final obstacle.
Narrative Part A:
Introduction and meet the character.
Duration: a few hours, under a dozen
scenes/screens/decisions
You will have a moment to describe the character you are
playing, focusing on personality traits and picking them by selecting actions
to take or responses to what you observe. You will also have a chance to save
the cat or kick a puppy (literally) before getting run over by the bus. After failed
attempts to enter your afterlife, you discuss your predicament with the auditor
(death’s boss), do some more character defining interaction, and finally decide
to hang out as a ghost while the auditor looks for a new body for you. The
character is androgynous and nameless at this point – a blank slate onto which
the player can write preferences.
Narrative Part B: Fun
and Games
Duration: a couple of days at first. As I thicken the game,
more days wil be added here. One or two scenes each day, with four to ten
decisions in each scene. Some may involve sex.
The character can choose to hang out as a ghost and haunt
the corner where they died, the bus, or its passengers. Haunting requires mana
to maintain the ghost’s existence, but also gives the biggest increases to
magical skill and the potential for large increases in available mana. If you
hit 0 mana while in ghost form, game over.
The character can also choose to assist various
anthropomorphic manifestations in their daily chores. I have scenes sketched
out for the tit fairy, the grill gods (who love burnt offerings), and so on.
Many of these scenes will involve the same characters and locations available
through ghost hauntings. Helping the anthropomorphic manifestations gives some
skills, gives larger changes to personality traits, and can give players key
items that will be useful in other encounters.
During part B the player will also pick up some clues as to
who the villain might be, what their goal is, and how to defeat them.
At the end of part B the player has a chance to pick up a
new body. This body’s shape will be affected by the choices made in parts A and
B, and can be further altered. The encounter that gives the player their body
will also give them key information about the villain and about the sort of
changes or allies that will be required to defeat the villain.
Narrative Part C: Ch-ch-ch-changes
and Ch-Ch-Ch-CHARGE!
Duration: a couple of days at first. As I thicken the game,
more days wil be added here. One or two scenes each day, with four to ten
decisions in each scene. Some may involve sex.
The player now knows what changes they need to make – these
may be physical but will also involve some change to characteristics and
attitude – perhaps they learn that this villain can only be defeated by someone
with high altruism or a low libido.
The player can continue to haunt or to help the
anthropomorphic manifestations, but they can also do some investigation (which
might prove dangerous.) They will learn something of what they need to accomplish
to beat the villain, and will need to assemble some way to solve these
problems.
To clarify this section, players will be given some
information about the obstacles in part D. In classic Dora fashion, they may
know: locked door, jaguar, deception. Good investigation will give them more
information – for example asking the right npc about doors or remembering that
in the drawing of the villain in part B they were driving a Jaguar car.
Part C gives a limited amount of time to complete any
transformation, beat any inner demons, and collect clues. And as with B, there
will be more choices available than time available.
Narrative Part D The
Final Confrontation
One or two days, about 12-15 scenes.
The player collects any allies – npcs that they have close relationship
with, picks up key items (perhaps by trading items with npcs), overcomes the
obstacles (pick the lock or blow the door down - drive the car or
defeat/distract the jungle beast – seduce the guard or drop poison in his beer),
and confronts the villain.
If they win, then we have some loose ends to tie up. If they
lose, they have a chance to jump back to a couple of auto-saved moments.
Magic System
I built the magic system while playing a lot of Corruption
of Champions and Shinobi Girl while reading paleohistory and neuropsychology.
And it all shows.
The system is built around a few basic premises. Players
will get the details they need in exposition scenes.
·
Mind-body dualism – consciousness can exist
apart from its container (wave to the ghost), but consciousness and the
container affect each other. Most of the time, consciousness is tied to a
living creature. However, consider that a mountain may have a mind that simply
Thinks. Very. Slowly.
·
Magical power is created through the interaction
between minds.
·
Interactions can be aggressive, cooperative, or
resistant and share some elements with prisoner’s dilemma.
·
Any being that suffers harm can lay a psychic
punishment on their persecutor. Whether this is a curse, bane, geas, or
something else depends on the actual interaction. This punishment fades with
time, can be cleansed through some actions, but is most rapidly cleared by
repenting and being granted forgiveness.
·
You are what you overeat. If you take in too
much power from a source, especially while punished, you may acquire some
unexpected traits along the way. (Note: It is also possible to learn another’s
shape in a controllable manner after close cooperation over a period of time.)
·
Magic is divided into realms or colors based on
the nature of the action or interaction.
·
Magic is unpredictable, and the cost and
difficulty of spells increase exponentially while casters’ power and mana
supplies increase mathematically at best.
·
Spells and mana stores can be bound to a body
through tattoos and piercings.
Creation Plan
Most of the text for part A is already in first draft.
I am working on building up my lists and networks of
locations, npcs, and anthropomorphic manifestations, but most of these are
things that might be mentioned but will not be live at first.
I am sketching out the user interface, key variables, and
the interaction/consequence flowchart.
I intend to share some concept art, including UI concept
art, and small snippets or scenes as works in progress.
I am currently flowcharting the first alpha starting with
the villain and then working backwards to make sure that the items, variables,
and alternate uses for items connect properly.
The first alpha will have a working engine and interface, a
villain, and the encounters needed to get from the bus to the villain. Most art
at this stage will be stick figures or clip art – the point is to tell the
story.
I will then thicken the game by adding higher quality
images, more locations, more interactions, villains, and items. If there is
sufficient interest I may run a crowdsourcing project at that time to help pay
for my time and to pay a more talented artist than me to create images.
Known Unknowns:
I have not decided how explicit to make the game. There are
good arguments each way.
I have not decided how big to make the game window, which
will then affect images, text per page, and pacing.
I have not decided what software build the game in. Right
now the most likely candidates are TWINE, Flash, and online-only html that will
render elements and text from a SQL database.
I know that I will NOT be using RAGS or Daydreamer.
