Okay, I'm jumping on a wagon here. However, I feel justified in that I have had this idea for quite some time (read: about 2.5 years from its earliest concept stage) and have been meaning to do something with it now.
A bit of background first. Basically, this started out as a concept for a short film I pitched to some friends of mine/fellow filmmakers, who decided not to film it because I hadn't decided on an ending yet (for a 20 minute film). The idea revolved around 4 friends (2 male, 2 female) who go camping in the woods, when one of the girls finds her boyfriend (one of the group) has cheated on her. This girl has an interest in Wicca and witchcraft so she attempts spells that she thinks won't work but will freak her (ex) boyfriend out, however when strange things start to happen for real the girl is scared that she really has cast spells and things become worse. It never had a proper ending, but would have been a psychological thriller, and ended up being shelved.
Cut to the Indie Speed Run game jam last year. I was brought in as a writer for a team of four people, and decided to turn this idea into a game after much development. However, the story was too big to fit into 48 hours of development, the artist abandoned us without warning halfway through with almost no resources, and as it was around Christmas/New Year we all spent way too little time on the actual game. Needless to say it was a mess that has no right to even exist. The music was the only decent part of it, but I didn't give up hope on my game idea, and over the next year I developed it even more in my mind. Which brings us to this...
Hypothetical Game: Fragments
A girl (in her early twenties) wakes up on a beach next to a forest on an island. She knows it's in a Scottish loch, that she was with her boyfriend and two best friends (also a couple), and that they were camping, but everyone has disappeared. The jeep they arrived in by ferry is untouched so her friends must still be on the island. However, although the girl has a journal which she updates throughout the game (as a record of the story and also to give clues and hints to the player where it makes sense to), she has no memory of the night before. As the girl explores the island, she starts to experience flashbacks giving her hints of the previous night's events. Things become more strange though when she realises that the memories she's experiencing aren't all hers - some of them are from events where it would have been impossible for her to be present.
Over time, the girl has to piece together the facts from the previous night to find out what happened to her friends. Instead of a single narrative though, the game branchs into five storylines, each one canon and happening at the same time as the others, with five endings all different yet all true accounts of what happened.
Gameplay and style
The key thing about this game is that it's designed from the off to be episodic. The first episode sets up five branches of the story, or five chapters, that all contradict each other yet take place at the same time, with the same character, and are all considered equally true. The second episode then starts with these five chapters, allows each to be played through separately, then ties them all together with a sixth chapter that explains how the chapters are all linked. This then leads into the different chapters of future episodes (obviously plot details now would be full of spoilers, so no info there...).
The interesting and relatively unique point here then would be a 'tab' system to switch between chapters. It's not 100% new as it's basically a similar thing to the way of switching characters in GTA V or switching a tab in your internet browser. Instead, the unique point is that you're switching entire storylines, entire universes essentially as no branch would affect another branch (until possibly much later in the story, but again, as River Song says - spoilers!).
As for gameplay, I dare say most of you are familiar with Dear Esther and The Path and so on. The exploration in the game would be based on that sort of thing (and I'd love to use the Unity engine as I feel that would be best suited to what I want to achieve), merged with the puzzle based gameplay of Myst and its sequels, or the lesser known (but similar) Syberia series. The puzzles would have multiple solutions too, which would be one of the triggers for the branches that determine the story progression and the trigger for the 'tab' system to kick in. So for example, a locking mechanism may only open one of two doors at a time. Solving the puzzle one way would open one door and cause one story branch, the other way would open the other door and cause a different story branch to progress. The tab would switch back to the start of that puzzle until the new way is revealed. And so on.
Obviously not all puzzles will lead to the branch, but will simply be there for gameplay purposes as well as story reasons...
Could this be done?
I think so. I want to put a team together to make this, ideally people with experience in developing games or in their respective fields (most importantly I'd want graphic artists/designers and programmers) - I can write and act as level designer as those are two things I am good at. Ideally at least a couple of people with experience in using Unity. Also voice actors would be required (either British or able to do a convincing British accent - several major characters are Scottish and the lead character is Irish, though she lives in England). If I could find a team to make this then I'd want to go to Kickstarter - for the campaign I'd want concept art, a video of the developers talking about the game, and maybe even a live-action trailer that I would film myself to show the basic story and character backgrounds. I realise this is all looking a bit far ahead, but this project is something I've held on to and nurtured for over two years and I want to see it come to fruition some day soon.
Finally...
I'm not posting this to ask for help making this game, although if anyone is interested in working with me on it then please, get in touch. This thread though is really me taking an opportunity to see what people think of the idea, and whether or not it has any grounding. I've not given nearly as many details as I have planned, but I want to know people's thoughts. Could this be feasible? Does the story (what little of it I've revealed) hold any interest? In later episodes the player would see other locations (the Scottish village on the mainland near the island, the English city where the main character studied and now works, abandoned mines near the island, an old castle ruin and tunnels underneath the island, and so on...). What do people think of my idea, or am I just talking out of my rear end...?
TL;DR: Read the above, then tell me your thoughts on this game idea...
A bit of background first. Basically, this started out as a concept for a short film I pitched to some friends of mine/fellow filmmakers, who decided not to film it because I hadn't decided on an ending yet (for a 20 minute film). The idea revolved around 4 friends (2 male, 2 female) who go camping in the woods, when one of the girls finds her boyfriend (one of the group) has cheated on her. This girl has an interest in Wicca and witchcraft so she attempts spells that she thinks won't work but will freak her (ex) boyfriend out, however when strange things start to happen for real the girl is scared that she really has cast spells and things become worse. It never had a proper ending, but would have been a psychological thriller, and ended up being shelved.
Cut to the Indie Speed Run game jam last year. I was brought in as a writer for a team of four people, and decided to turn this idea into a game after much development. However, the story was too big to fit into 48 hours of development, the artist abandoned us without warning halfway through with almost no resources, and as it was around Christmas/New Year we all spent way too little time on the actual game. Needless to say it was a mess that has no right to even exist. The music was the only decent part of it, but I didn't give up hope on my game idea, and over the next year I developed it even more in my mind. Which brings us to this...
Hypothetical Game: Fragments
A girl (in her early twenties) wakes up on a beach next to a forest on an island. She knows it's in a Scottish loch, that she was with her boyfriend and two best friends (also a couple), and that they were camping, but everyone has disappeared. The jeep they arrived in by ferry is untouched so her friends must still be on the island. However, although the girl has a journal which she updates throughout the game (as a record of the story and also to give clues and hints to the player where it makes sense to), she has no memory of the night before. As the girl explores the island, she starts to experience flashbacks giving her hints of the previous night's events. Things become more strange though when she realises that the memories she's experiencing aren't all hers - some of them are from events where it would have been impossible for her to be present.
Over time, the girl has to piece together the facts from the previous night to find out what happened to her friends. Instead of a single narrative though, the game branchs into five storylines, each one canon and happening at the same time as the others, with five endings all different yet all true accounts of what happened.
Gameplay and style
The key thing about this game is that it's designed from the off to be episodic. The first episode sets up five branches of the story, or five chapters, that all contradict each other yet take place at the same time, with the same character, and are all considered equally true. The second episode then starts with these five chapters, allows each to be played through separately, then ties them all together with a sixth chapter that explains how the chapters are all linked. This then leads into the different chapters of future episodes (obviously plot details now would be full of spoilers, so no info there...).
The interesting and relatively unique point here then would be a 'tab' system to switch between chapters. It's not 100% new as it's basically a similar thing to the way of switching characters in GTA V or switching a tab in your internet browser. Instead, the unique point is that you're switching entire storylines, entire universes essentially as no branch would affect another branch (until possibly much later in the story, but again, as River Song says - spoilers!).
As for gameplay, I dare say most of you are familiar with Dear Esther and The Path and so on. The exploration in the game would be based on that sort of thing (and I'd love to use the Unity engine as I feel that would be best suited to what I want to achieve), merged with the puzzle based gameplay of Myst and its sequels, or the lesser known (but similar) Syberia series. The puzzles would have multiple solutions too, which would be one of the triggers for the branches that determine the story progression and the trigger for the 'tab' system to kick in. So for example, a locking mechanism may only open one of two doors at a time. Solving the puzzle one way would open one door and cause one story branch, the other way would open the other door and cause a different story branch to progress. The tab would switch back to the start of that puzzle until the new way is revealed. And so on.
Obviously not all puzzles will lead to the branch, but will simply be there for gameplay purposes as well as story reasons...
Could this be done?
I think so. I want to put a team together to make this, ideally people with experience in developing games or in their respective fields (most importantly I'd want graphic artists/designers and programmers) - I can write and act as level designer as those are two things I am good at. Ideally at least a couple of people with experience in using Unity. Also voice actors would be required (either British or able to do a convincing British accent - several major characters are Scottish and the lead character is Irish, though she lives in England). If I could find a team to make this then I'd want to go to Kickstarter - for the campaign I'd want concept art, a video of the developers talking about the game, and maybe even a live-action trailer that I would film myself to show the basic story and character backgrounds. I realise this is all looking a bit far ahead, but this project is something I've held on to and nurtured for over two years and I want to see it come to fruition some day soon.
Finally...
I'm not posting this to ask for help making this game, although if anyone is interested in working with me on it then please, get in touch. This thread though is really me taking an opportunity to see what people think of the idea, and whether or not it has any grounding. I've not given nearly as many details as I have planned, but I want to know people's thoughts. Could this be feasible? Does the story (what little of it I've revealed) hold any interest? In later episodes the player would see other locations (the Scottish village on the mainland near the island, the English city where the main character studied and now works, abandoned mines near the island, an old castle ruin and tunnels underneath the island, and so on...). What do people think of my idea, or am I just talking out of my rear end...?
TL;DR: Read the above, then tell me your thoughts on this game idea...
. Although I think I did post it at the wrong time to catch most people who'll be on the site during the day or night...