So I have a two hour commute every day, and when I'm not thinking about writing stuff, I'm theorycrafting video games. Here's one I've been playing with for a while: Spoiler: SETTING It's set in my Metastatic verse, about a week post Rip. (The event that allowed the extradimensional nasties that the first book in that series will deal with to come to our plane of existence. Takes place Wednesday, November 26th, 2025 @roughly noon, central time.) You play as Margaret "Mags" O'Rorke, a pre-med student at UC Denver. The game *starts* about three or four hours post-Rip with you driving south to Colorado Springs to visit your family on Thanksgiving, only for you to be run off the road by a giant, multi-limbed *thing*. You wake up a week later in an empty, damaged version of Castle Rock Adventist hospital (ala 28 Days Later) with head trauma, a cracked femur, three broken ribs, and minus your right hand. This is a problem as you are not left-handed! You're completely alone, unarmed, and there's *noises* coming from outside your room... Spoiler: GAMEPLAY I'm picturing it as a 3rd person RPG/Shooter, kind of like The Last of Us but with more RPG elements. You control Mags as she makes her way back to Denver, finds transportation, and slowly gets south to Colorado Springs only to find her family evacuated West across the Rockies. You have to follow the evacuation route and fend off nasty critters, desperate humans, and an increasingly hostile and alien environment to get there, only to find that Salt Lake City has been nuked to shit and your family is so much radioactive ash. The last segment of the game is you forcing your way through the Salt Lake Rip and finding a way to seal it from the other side. Spoiler: HEALTH/STAMINA/SANITY Like pretty much every shooter, you've got a Health bar. But I'm stealing a thing from Pillars of Eternity and dividing it up between Health and Endurance. Endurance starts at 100/100 and is a measure of how much punishment you can take before passing out. Passing out is Game Over. Health starts at 400/400 and decreases at the same rate as Endurance (IE ten points of damage is ten to Endurance and ten to Health at the same time) but when your Health drops to zero you die, even if you somehow still have Endurance. You can recover Endurance in several ways, either by performing "triage" after a battle, which is basically Far Cry's healing animations: pulling out bullets, setting limbs, etc. This restores your Endurance to max. There's also various meds and stuff you can take in combat to give your Endurance a temporary boost. Health can only be restored by resting, which can only be done at set areas and advances the game clock by eight hours and restores Health up to 100 by default, or to max if you use a set of Medical Supplies, which are hard to come by and take up inventory space. You also have Stamina, which covers sprinting, melee attacks, and other physically taxing things like climbing or dodging. Stamina starts out at 100/100 and recovers naturally at a fairly good rate as long as you aren't exerting yourself. Several items can boost maximum stamina or restore it quickly. If you have zero Stamina you can still exert yourself to sprint or attack or whatever, but it will cost you Endurance (but not Health) at half the rate you would use Stamina, making this a risky thing to do. Sanity covers, well, "sanity". It starts at 100/100. Like in Metastatic, the Rip and the creatures that pour through it project a psychic field that causes intense depression and hallucinations. Simply being around them or in environments affected by them will be enough to drain your Sanity at a slow rate. Fighting them is even worse. Also traumatic events will damage your Sanity significantly. The first time you kill a human will be a major hit (like, 40 points or so?). Every time after that will be a smaller and smaller hit until you're no longer taking Sanity damage from killing people. The same with the creatures. You'll slowly become inured to them (but never immune). Sanity builds back up slowly, but can be increased with certain consumables like cigarettes or anti-psychotics (all of which have unpleasant side-effects gameplay wise). Sanity can also be increased by resting in a safe area, and more by using certain items while resting (using a photograph of your family during the resting period to help you focus and carry on, for instance). When Sanity hits zero, you have a thirty second window to get it back above zero, or Mags will use whatever weapon she has equipped to kill herself (or if nothing is equipped, slip into a psychotic state and you'll get a Game Over, or something). Spoiler: ABILITIES I said RPG elements, right? Experience points are gained *only* by completing quests/objectives and exploration, not by combat, so as to not penalize people who want to sneak/talk their way through as many encounters as possible. There are no "levels" exactly. Every 1000 EXP you get you are given three ability points to spend. There's a hard cap of 72 ability points, but probably not enough EXP to reach it without NG+. The abilities are divided up into three trees: Body, Agility, and Mind. Each category has eight abilities, and each ability has three levels. The first level of each ability can be accessed at any time. The second level requires four points in that tree. The third, eight points. Body is just what it sounds like, physicality: Tough: Gain an extra 25/50/100 Endurance. 3rd rank gives you minor regen in combat. Hardy: Gain an extra 50/100/200 Health. 3rd rank makes resting restore 200 Health without Medical Supplies. Energy: Gain an extra 25/50/100 Stamina. 3rd rank gives +25% stamina regen. Strong: Melee attacks (and pistol whips) do 25%/50%/100% more damage. Each rank unlocks "finishing moves". Sturdy: Carry 10/20/30 more lbs in your inventory. 3rd rank also gives +25% stamina regen. Metabolism: All healing items are 20%/35%/50% more effective. The 3rd rank reduces overdose penalties. Steady: Recoil is reduced by 25%/50%/75% for all firearms. Durable: 10%/20%/30% base resistance to Poison, Radiation, and Blunt damage. Agility is a measure of how well you have adapted to your injuries and how well and fast you can move: Fast: Move 10%/20%/30% faster when walking/running/sprinting. 3rd rank reduces sprint stamina drain by 50%. Quick: Reload 20%/40%/60% faster. (Pretty necessary: reloading takes a while with one hand.) Accurate: Weapon sway reduced by 25%/50%/75%. 3rd rank increases hipfire accuracy by 50%. Recovery: Recover from getting knocked down/combat rolls 20%/40%/60% faster. 3rd rank reduces Stamina cost of rolls by 50%. Quiet: Reduces noise you make by 25%/50%/75%. Does not affect guns. 3rd rank increases sneaking move speed. Sniper: Increase Critical damage done by 50%/100%/150%. (For headshots/other weaknesses.) Rapid: Increases semi-auto firing speed and melee attack speed by 10%/20%/30%. 3rd rank unlocks "double tap", lets you fire a semi-auto two times as fast as you can press the fire key. Dodge: 15%/30%/50% base resistance to any AoE damage. (Grenades, ect.) Mind: Mental abilities, basically. Lockpick: Lets you pick Easy/Medium/Hard locks. "Simple" locks are doable by default. Hacker: Lets you hack Easy/Medium/Hard computers. "Simple" computers are doable by default. Study: Get 10%/20%/30% more EXP. Each level unlocks "bestiaries" with info on enemies. Stable: 10%/20%/30% base resistance to Sanity damage. (This is the only way to resist Sanity damage in the game.) Medicine: All positive effects over time last 50%/100%/150% longer. 3rd level reduces overdose length. Scavenger: Find more ammo/Find more health items/Find more weaponry. Anatomy: Do 10%/20%/30% more damage to all enemies. Crafty: Make items of level Easy/Medium/Hard. "Simple" items are available by default. Spoiler: ARMOR Armor is essential for survival. It's applied in several slots, with different items for each slot. Each item has several "upgrades" available for discovery/purchase/crafting. Slots are: Under Armor (clothes/jumpsuits), Head(helmets/gas masks), Chest (bulletproof vests/jackets), Arms (elbow pads/gauntlets), Legs (kneepads/greaves), Shoes (exactly what it sounds like). Armor is cumulative, for ease of calculation. Armored boots will protect your whole body (magically). Armor weighs stuff and will contribute to your max weight. Armor has two attributes for each type of damage: Threshold and Reduction. Threshold is a number the damage is reduced by. Reduction is a percent amount the damage is reduced by. For instance, a leather jacket might have the values [2/20%]. If you took 22 damage, you would first reduce it by 2, to 20, then subtract 20%, to 16, for the final damage you would take. It is thus possible to take *no damage* from certain attacks. Certain armors will also *reduce* your resistance to certain attack types. Metal plate isn't great against electricity, and a wool undercoat might help vs cold, but it burns pretty well. There are several damage types: Blunt (Physical trauma that involves smashing or crushing.) Slash (Physical trauma that involves slicing or cutting.) Pierce (Physical trauma like a stab wound or a bullet.) Heat (Burns. Rare.) Cold (Freezing damage. As the Outsiders bring more and more of their environment in, the temperature will drop steadily, making this more and more important. There are freeze DoT effects in particularly cold areas.) Poison (Just what it sounds like. Rare. Need a gas mask or something similar to protect from it. Only in DoT area effects.) Shock (Electricity damage. Rare.) Radiation (Duh. Found in the ruins of Salt Lake City. Special in that it does damage directly to maximum Health, Endurance, and Stamina (like in FO4), but there's *no* way to get rid of it. Ever. Will only reduce your max Health, Endurance, and Stamina by 50% total. Cannot kill you, for gameplay purposes, but will give Mags radiation sickness.) Sanity (Exactly what it says. Damages Sanity directly. No armor protects from this.) Corruption (Special type used by certain Outsider enemies. Need a fully sealed NBC suit to protect from it. Reduces max Health and Endurance and cannot be healed. Ever. Rare, only present in late game. Will kill you if your max Health or Endurance is reduced to zero.) Example: Leather Jacket Slot: Chest Weight: 2kg [0/0%] Blunt [2/20%] Slash [1/10%] Pierce [2/20%] Heat [3/30%] Cold [0/0%] Poison [0/0%] Shock [0/0%] Radiation [0/0%] Sanity [0/0%] Corruption Upgrades: Chain-mail Weave: +2kg weight, + [2/20%] Slash. - [1/10%] Shock. Extra Padding: +1kg weight, + [2/20%] Blunt. + [1/10%] Cold. Metal Plate: +2kg weight, + [2/20%] Pierce. + [1/10%] Blunt, Slash. - [1/10%] Shock. Late in the game you'll have access to Powered Armor! This will require a dedicated under-armor suit, but will give you access to cool things like super-heavy weapons, increased carry capacity, increased speed and jumping, very heavy armor, and other fun stuff! I'll update this with more later. Feel free to give feedback, or suggest ideas, or post your own game ideas. This is a free-for-all thread, and it's just for fun, so go hog-wild!
More EXP is great, but how useful are the bestiaries? I've got an idea to post, it's supposed to be a magical-girl kind of thing, inspired by Sailor Moon inasmuch as 'magic people for each celestial body', but the Bad Idea version is pressing on my mind. It just seems so much better, gameplay wise. Do I go with the kinda-cute story with sorta basic mechanics, or the snappy mechanics with a 'creepering-headlong-into-disaster plot'. So for now I'll post a game that's actually reasonable. Reliquary: Descent of the Guardians Spoiler: Setting/Plot You are Diane, daughter of a computer scientist in the year 2132. As the game opens, you're riding along in an autocab, when something malfunctions and it smashes into a highway barrier. And then you're... somewhere else. Different. A voice inside your head introduces itself as PEARL - Protection and Education Assistance Routine... L. It is 2947 - you died, and your father illegally transferred your mind to a robot body. PEARL was entrusted to guard you, and so hid you on Titan. But now it has recieved a signal from your father, a call to meet him within the Heart of the Pendulum. Unfortunately, for generations the system has been ruled by the Guardians, an order of gene-modified Darwinist 'primitivists', and whole Sol system has generally degenerated almost entirely. And worse still, bringing you online has revealed the secret base you were hiding in, and the majority of its defense have been compromised over the centuries. There's no time to absorb all this. You need to find a ship, and an interstellar warp drive. There should be a ship at a nearby refueling facility, but to gain power for the warp drive will require scrounging the system... luckily, your father equippped your new body with all the necessary components and subroutines for hostile environment navigation and combat... After defeating a Kraken Bionaught to retrieve the ship and the necessary fusion fuel, you leave Titan - a massive defense network surrounds Earth, so you travel to Venus in order to retrieve the necessary access codes. There, you fight Janet Sikorsky, one of your father's old colleagues, transformed into a horrific 'organic factory', apparently willingly. Finally arriving on Earth, you find it systematically stripped of civilization, overgrown with strange, out-of-place flora and fauna, inhabited by hunter-gatherer tribes ruled over by Guardian overlords, bioengineered into predatory inhuman monsters. In the bombed-out ruins of the last city, you discover the true nature of the Pendulum Heart. Around the distant star, Sirius, orbits a metastable wormhole known as the Pendulum - and balanced in the center of that folded space-time lies a secret station, the Pendulum Heart. Your father awaits. But first, you make your way to confront Gaia, a titanic-tree thing that directs the Guardians, and which has seized your ship. With the coordinates in hand and (hopefully) enough power to cross the great distance, you head to Atlas, fourth planet in orbit around Sirius, colonized long after your death, sterilized long before your rebirth. Within a shattered fortress, on the surface, you'll find the wormhole key, that will modulate your warp drive to allow access to the station, so you descend. There, you find guardians and drones fighting alongside one another, as well as other strange things. As you reach the fortress, you realize it was destroyed from the inside, a conundrum that is explained(?) when you confront the berserk AI controlling, and defeat it to recieve the key. Now, the only thing left to do is to enter the wormhole and travel to the heart of the pendulum, where you will be reunited with your father. But can he really be alive after all this time? Is something concealed within your memories? What's on the other side of the wormhole, and why was the Heart built? Did you complete all the secret levels? And just what happened to bring ruin to the Sol system... Spoiler: Gameplay Overview It's a 3d action platformer/collector. Really. There are plethora of enemies to battle and a decently robust combat system (with combos, dodges and executions), but the ultimate focus of the gameplay is to navigate the (relatively) open, freeform levels, overcoming obstacles, puzzles, and other challenges to acquire collectible items. As one progresses through the game, new upgrades are collected, which allow new (and old) challenges to be completed. The various levels are mostly non-linear and can be tackled in different orders and (sometimes) with different methods. Inter-level progression is a bit more linear - a specific number of Fusion Cores are required to access each level, and progress through later levels will often be dependent on abilities from prior levels. Additionally, every third level has a 'key challenge', generally a boss fight, which must be completed in order to progress to the next world. However, it is possible to complete the game with a *minimum* of content completed. Basically every level after the first has a boss enemy, these fights are meant to be fairly intense, and challenge the player's combat skills - no 'repeat simple strat three times' business, though some may have aspects of that. Likewise, platforming is meant to be fast-paced and dynamic, rewarding efficient motion and quick action rather than methodical approaches and pixel-perfection. Think Prince of Persia rather than, say, Banjo Kazooie. Spoiler: Collectibles Naturally, a game such as this requires no shortage of collectibles. Fusion Pod - A special self-contained fusion unit requiring minimal infrastructure, making it highly suitable for use within starships. The Descent left these scattered throughout the solar system. The game's main collectible. Required to get to new levels. Datacore - A digital archive containing designs for systems or machinery, complete with an automatic adaption routine allowing it to dynamic integrate with available resources and hardware. New items. At first, picking up a datacore immediately gives you the item, but later items may require more than one. Data Fragment - A splinter of information from a datacore. Useless on its own, but if sufficient data can be collated, it may be possible to derive optimizations of existing modules. Upgrade currency, used to purchase upgrades to your existing items. There aren't enough to purchase every available upgrade. Luminum Shard - A small bit of self-powered conductive processing medium, collaquially known as 'computronium'. It could possibly be used to harvest component data... or to upgrade your ship's efficiency. Another currency collectible, spread all over the place. It can be exchanged for Data Fragments, or used to reduce the number of fusion pods required to reach new levels. Code Droid - A small security droid, designed to take cover in the event of a calamity, allowing key material to be secured. Your backdoor program allows you to download their code sequence. Sensitive material is typically split up. Collect all of them to access a secure area. 3-5 are present in each level, and can be exchanged for a fusion pod. Other code droids may serve to access other areas. [/SPOILERS] Level Descriptions to come.
They're mostly for lore, but unlocking the bestiary for an enemy enables a secondary "weak point" on them that you can attack for Massive Damage. I really, really like your idea. Collection games were my jam when I was younger, and extropian themes are a way instantly pique my interest.
I might be semi-leery of putting too much lore behind game mechanics... +XP is generally a pretty good obvious choice, but still. Well, the setting is pretty bad at extropianism, given that the survivors of humankind are pretty much: a bunch of primitive hunter-gatherers, the weird predatory things that are the Guardians, and you.
A bit of a quick one: Blood/Glass A Battle Royale/Hunger Games Roguelite with 'base-building' elements. Generally creepy as hell, with the protagonist firmly in the 'villain' category. Spoiler: Story You're a government official in dystopian Imperial Japan (from my Cytan Cluster setting), and you've just been promoted to be the sponsor of a Grand Combat stable, following your predecessor's... unfortunate demise. Now, you find yourself responsible for training a bunch of more-or-less random teenagers to compete in battles to the death. But it's not about winning. No, it was never about 'winning'. It's about making a statement. And it's about proving to your worth to those above you, expanding your political base and serving the Immortal Empire of the Rising Sun. Build your stable. Train your contestants. Make connections. Creep the hell out of foreign diplomats. Send terrified children to their doom. And always remember, death is as light as a feather, duty is as heavy as a mountain. Spoiler: Gameplay Gameplay of Blood/Glass is split into two parts. The Stable phase and the Combat phase. During the stable phase, you manage your contestants, while during the combat phase, you take part in combat! ... obviously. Stable Phase During the Stable phase, you manage and train your contestants. This starts with researching their possible strengths and weaknesses and bidding for the 'best' ones. Next, you bring them to your 'gym' and train them in various possible ways, generally improving various skills or other characteristics. There are a lot of different factors that go into development, although they aren't always transparent, and you can control most of them. For instance, you can adjust not only the training regimen but also quality of room, food, company, etc. But make sure they stay working. And that no one finds out about anything... untoward. Well, more untoward than what you're already doing. Combat Phase During this phase, you control your contestant in combat. The combat arenas are, of course, all procedurally generated, with opposing AI (multiplayer possible?) contestants and sometimes other AI enemies. The exact format varies widely (though you'll be told beforehand). This portion of the game controls like a fairly typical 3rd person shooter, but is more RPG-like in its mechanics - you can designate targets and move, but the actual attacking and such is rolled. Think of something like Full Spectrum Warrior or (sort of) Mordheim: City of the Damned. Tactics are important here, but twitch skill doesn't matter - you can't make up for a low character skill with high player skill. Additionally, sometimes your contestant won't do what you want for various reasons, which can be... decidedly inconvenient, so you need to pay attention to morale and psychology. (The concept is, essentially, the player's commands are what the coach/sponsor would *want* the contestant to do, but not necessarily what they will do.) Resolution After the battle, whether your contestant lives or (more likely) dies, you gain approval based on their performance, as well as cash and (potentially) favors. Victory matters less than whether things were suitably dramatic, and even a spectacular loss can grant significant approval under certain circumstances. (Some formats are, in fact, almost unwinnable.) Some of the contestants traits can also affect the resolution. (Some contestants will result in approval loss if they win...) Approval is used as 'research', to unlock new features and to hire new coaches/trainers/etc. Money is used to pay for expansions, salaries, supplies, as well as bidding. You can spend favors to gain boons like choosing the type or location of the next battle, scouting your choice of contestants, or accessing special missions. Contestant Characteristics The real focus of the games is dealing with all the different characteristics possessed by contestants... somewhat similar to Sims traits. You don't necessarily know what these traits are, which is why you have to research and discover them over the course of the Stable Phase. These traits can all affect the outcome of the battle in different ways, as well as the development of that individual. Contestants also all have different skills and backgrounds, which also have an affect. And some are... weird. If you happen to select one of these, the consequences may be entertaining... or dire. And whatever you do, don't let anyone escape! [/QUOTE]
