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!

Ghostly idea

I was thinking about the innovation in the current ghost busting game.... how about let's change the perspective altogether? Let the character be the ghost!

Ok, this will sound like the romance movie Ghost.. but well, how many games feature a ghost as a main character? (ok maybe Casper the game, but that's a forgettable game on a forgettable console, the 3DO)

You're dead (obviously) and you try to reunite with your loved one (for some reasons which I haven't formulate yet). And for some reasons people are out to get you. (Real life humans) So here's what you can do to outwit and outlast:

This time wall hack is legal! One of your powers would be to walk thru walls! ( But the power will either be limited cos you're "freshly dead", or you can't go thru certain walls. Personally I like the 1st option)

Now those that play half life two are gonna tell you the gravity gun is one of the most powerful and innovative weapon out there. Well... you can control things and throw them around. But of course as a ghostly newbie you can't start turning the house upside down... you can throw cans, chairs... then progress to handling big statues and other supernatural manifestations.

You can float, but probably not too much floating... some high areas you need assistance... and there's no lift up... well, stack things with your powers.

We can still use the lantern as an indicator and probably make some story as to how the ghost and lantern is related. At the end of the experience I want gamers to sympatise and relate to the main character.

Main features of this game:
You're a ghost, that start out pretty weak but your powers will grow.

The stealth elements are there. It's not like you can just zip in and out of walls. You may zip into another room where the paranormal investigators are hot on your heels.

Ability to set traps. Game will reward "combos" like able to lead 2 or more troops into a trap and kill them in one swoop. Hmm... sounds like a vengenful spirit... but well, they are the ones that bothered you in the first place!

Boss battles. Well, haven't really thought of anything innovative with regards to this yet.

Yup... that's my idea so far... what do you guys think about it?

My Idea : Ghost Busters!

Okay guys, here is my share of game Idea.

I read Jinying's and Chong Hao's ideas and try to combine some of the elements of each game, such as 'capturing', 'maze', 'shooting baloons', and 'strategy'.

And i came up with this idea, which i call a 'Ghostbuster' game since it really resembles the Ghostbuster series.

If anyone remember the series Ghostbusters, it involves the guys shooting ghosts with some proton beam thingie which doesn't actually destroy them , but create some sort of a field around the ghost allowing you to pull them closer to you, get a device called the 'Ghost Trap', and at the right time and moment, push to open the trap and capture the ghost.

Similarly in my proposed game, the player explores a haunted maze/ mansion with many rooms.
The player goes around the mansion in darkness, the only visible area is a small circle surrounding the player (fog of war concept)
Inside there are many ghosts, one master/ boss ghost and many little ghosts.
The trick is, you cannot actually capture the little ghosts, you can use your proton beam just to push them away for a while.
The goal of the game is to capture the boss ghost, upon which the stage is completed and you move on to another.
As the player explores the stage they must avoid the little ghosts, and try to find the boss ghost. The stage comprised of many rooms, maybe with openable/closeable doors in which you need to find keys in order to open/ close them. Ghosts can go through doors unless you stick some kind of religious artefacts on them, which will prevent them from coming through. You have a limited number of such artefacts and can be found scattered throughout the stage.

Once the boss ghost is located, you need to trick him into a specific area on the map where the ghost trap is waiting for him.
How to trick the boss ghost? When you spot him, he will try to escape and you will have to use your beam to pull him into your desired area. But the beam can only be activated for a short period of time, in which it will overheat and diminishes its power. Once this happen the boss ghost will be in a stunned state and you have a small period of time to seal the path in which he came through by closing whatever doors along its path and paste the religious artefacts onto them.
Once you trap him in the ghost trap room, you can safely use the proton beam to guide him into the trap, upon which the ghost trap will react and suck the boss ghost in.


So the game flow is something like this:
- The player starts in the room with the ghost trap. Maybe in some advanced stages the player starts in another room, and need to locate the room with the trap first.-
The player explores the mansion for the boss ghost, finding keys to open/ close doors, collecting items such as artefacts to prevent / avoid little ghosts from coming through/ disturbing you.
- The player locates the boss ghost, force him back to the trap room, locking whatever path you came through.

What do you guys think? I think it might be fun!

Some Game Ideas

Ok here's a kind of action game which I have been dying to play if I can get my hands on. It involves an epic battle of castle offence and defence. The closest I come so far in such a scene would be Lord of the Rings the Two Towers. But anyway here goes...

Castle Siege

Since we're using gamemaker the perspective would be top down aka Warcraft 2. I notice in WC2 usually some troops would just beat the crap out of some buildings and the only way to defend it is to beat the crap off the enemies.

But this time is a full scale castle offence and defence. You have to strategically place your troops on various point of the castle wall. It wouldn't be turn based as it would look pretty much like Romance of Three Kingdoms. What I would ideally want is possibly recreated scenes like those in Kingdom Of Heaven.

The whole game could be about castle sieges. Attacking an Ancient Chinese Capital would be different from engaging A Roman Capital and so on. Sounds pretty much like age of empires but it would be more action based. And no miniturised buildings that just sit there waiting to be torn apart. Troops can march straight into a town and destroy aspects of it.

Game ideas

Halo,

I am brainstorming some ideas for the game. Here you go.....

1. It is using a mouse to move a digital camera on the screen to capture moving animations. For instance, you are a private investigator and you are being hired to capture, let's say a husband in an affair. So using the mouse, you have to click to capture the evidence. Rates will be given to see if the photos can be used. So if you manage to get a rate of 7/10 for one level, then the photo can be used. You can zoom in and out like a real camera.

2. Another is like pacman version. You have a screen like a pacman, but your character is one whole row of coloured balls (or sections). And you have to clear the all those coloured balls by going through coloured holes that corresponds to the colour of the balls. Alternatively, you can eat up another coloured ball to have 3 adjacent coloured balls in your body and then it gets "digested" and is removed.

As the levels go up, there will be bonuses and "germs".

3. Shooting balloons competition.
There will be floating balloons (can be anything actually, bubbles, etc) and each level, the balloon floats up in a different way. For instance, one level can be random, one level is one whole straight line, or one with balloons that need more powerful arrows. So an archer will have to shoot the balloons down. The archer can exchange charms with other archers, such as metallic arrows, or make the balloon smaller charms, or freeze balloon charms, etc, to make the competition more difficult or easy. These charms can be put on during your turn or when it is an opponent's turn. So you can counteract the charms that your opponents made on you or you can use the charms for your won advantage.

That's all for now, do comment!

Cheers,
Jingying

Some games to get us inspirated

Hey guys,

There is this site www.playfirst.com where there are lots of 2D mini games that we can get our inspiration from. =)

As for the name of our group, let mi rack my brain first!