The 7th Month (working concept title)
After some thought about my game I would like to propose my conceptual idea.
Alex Lee died in an unknown case during his sleep. Yet due to some circumstances he was unable to go into the nether world. Little did he realised that he had died on the 7th month of the lunar year--- where spirits are let out from the gates of hell and free to roam the earth.
He found himself on the very bed he died, staring at his own body. His wife and kids were missing and he tried to pick up the phone to call... only to find out that he is unable to hold onto anything. Thus Alex began to find the mysteries of his death, and the whereabouts of his family...
Ok game feature wise would still be somewhat similar to the previous post. Alex has the power to levitate things and throw them about. But when he does so he would subject himself to being seen. He can stay invisible as long as he wants but certain enemies are able to detect him and elminate him.
Here are some initial plans for the game:
Game might be story driven, a compelling story that has twists and turns with regards to how Alex died, where are his families, and why are people out to get him.
Gameplay wise must be focused on ghostly powers. And some RPG element to it would be he would acquire more powerful skills.
Marketing wise I perceive it as it's gonna be very strong. It is based on an Asian culture and people would be interested to know the background story to this game. Also when you type in google or yahoo, not only would it show the game's walkthru or main website, it would probably show sites related to the 7th month. Thus creates a whole new interests on this age old hungry ghost festival.
I'm not sure if we're able to do cut scenes as they would make a good addition. Of course with time constraints we would focus on the gameplay only and probably have some conceptual artwork in cut scenes. (ie non moving cut scenes with texts) Thus some elements of interactive storytelling involved.
I was thinking of going even further and let our ghost character roam the town freely, ala Grand Theft Auto. So if you want to really be some vengenful ghost and throw things around you can do so.
Also I have some idea of incorporating traditional chinese legends into the mix, have characters like "Yan Luo Wan" (king of hell), niu tou ma mie (cow and horse head) and the black and white guards (forgot the name) .
Yup... I'm still thinking of making the gameplay more innovative, but I think the content is quite innovative eh? So far I dun think there are games that deal with the seventh month. And again games with a ghost as main character are few.
Oh yah... one more thing... if say we work on this title, we have exactly "one year" forecast of production time (meaning from concept to making the game hit the shelves) so that it can tie in with the next hungry ghost festival!
Alex Lee died in an unknown case during his sleep. Yet due to some circumstances he was unable to go into the nether world. Little did he realised that he had died on the 7th month of the lunar year--- where spirits are let out from the gates of hell and free to roam the earth.
He found himself on the very bed he died, staring at his own body. His wife and kids were missing and he tried to pick up the phone to call... only to find out that he is unable to hold onto anything. Thus Alex began to find the mysteries of his death, and the whereabouts of his family...
Ok game feature wise would still be somewhat similar to the previous post. Alex has the power to levitate things and throw them about. But when he does so he would subject himself to being seen. He can stay invisible as long as he wants but certain enemies are able to detect him and elminate him.
Here are some initial plans for the game:
Game might be story driven, a compelling story that has twists and turns with regards to how Alex died, where are his families, and why are people out to get him.
Gameplay wise must be focused on ghostly powers. And some RPG element to it would be he would acquire more powerful skills.
Marketing wise I perceive it as it's gonna be very strong. It is based on an Asian culture and people would be interested to know the background story to this game. Also when you type in google or yahoo, not only would it show the game's walkthru or main website, it would probably show sites related to the 7th month. Thus creates a whole new interests on this age old hungry ghost festival.
I'm not sure if we're able to do cut scenes as they would make a good addition. Of course with time constraints we would focus on the gameplay only and probably have some conceptual artwork in cut scenes. (ie non moving cut scenes with texts) Thus some elements of interactive storytelling involved.
I was thinking of going even further and let our ghost character roam the town freely, ala Grand Theft Auto. So if you want to really be some vengenful ghost and throw things around you can do so.
Also I have some idea of incorporating traditional chinese legends into the mix, have characters like "Yan Luo Wan" (king of hell), niu tou ma mie (cow and horse head) and the black and white guards (forgot the name) .
Yup... I'm still thinking of making the gameplay more innovative, but I think the content is quite innovative eh? So far I dun think there are games that deal with the seventh month. And again games with a ghost as main character are few.
Oh yah... one more thing... if say we work on this title, we have exactly "one year" forecast of production time (meaning from concept to making the game hit the shelves) so that it can tie in with the next hungry ghost festival!
posted by zhonghao | 8:50 PM
3 Comments:
it's steppiing into the religious thing already cos you might over step the boundaries. You know what I mean?
I actually feel that though it's the other way round, meaning now the player is the ghost, it still has the same game mechanic I think. Just that now the character is different.
Storytelling element is like a frame of the game so I think that it can also be added into Donny's idea.
How about the others? From my view, I find it similar to Donny's with the exception of changing the character.
If I do sound fierce in this comment, I do apologize first. But I would clarify on the the above comments.
If this idea is over the boundaries, then I personally think the da vinci code should be banned totally. What I am doing here is loosely basing the game on something that's existent. So if don't want it to be called 7th month, can always call it "the return" or something. In the game universe the character can become a ghost at any other times.
The idea is also loosely based on a PSOne game called fear effect, which feature the final level where the character burns paper guns and ammo so as to gain weapons to defeat enemies. The final boss is the king of hell.
Ok, I do admit I'm thinking big here. But do bear in mind my objective is to create something that's SELLABLE. In fact, I would steer clear of having to target the casual gamer. In my opinion the casual gamer look out for value for money games. In other words... FREE to download games. The ones who would really buy good original games FREQUENTLY are the hardcore gamers.
Hence I hope not to create something under the "most downloadable game" category but something that is potentially a big hit.
If my idea seems wide a scope, can always scale it down. I rather have alot of things at first and start scaling it down than to start with a few things.
From what I see, the gamemaker is used to make a prototype of the game. If we are to treat ourselves as the modern game developer we would have been using all the latest 3D programmes. Admit it, gamemaker belongs to the SNES era.
So even if I have the 3d FPS perspective in mind, we can still use the gamemaker to create the look and feel of the game.
The core game mechanic is the ghost's ability to levitate things and move it around. It is a gravity gun kind of power, but no one would know unless they played half life 2. There is a 2D platform version of half life. And it captures the look and feel of half life 2.
So hope you do see my perspective of things. I do stress that if end of the day my idea is not your cup of tea, it's ok, I'll do my best to market the eventual game we come up with. Yeah... but do make sure it's sellable yah?
Ok, after seeing your technical explanation I'm more convinced about the difficulty of making the gravity gun part.
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