Looking for a game idea - any suggestions?

General
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I’m not sure if I could comment on this here, or if I should make my own post. (Edit: Probably definitely the latter.) I had a similar thought of “the scale of human effort makes a letter like this one - A - appear on your screen”, though focused more on technology/irrepairability of modern electronics. Short of completely re-creating electricity inside a game, and having the player build transistors, here’s a base skeleton of the idea. I’m thinking a first-person point-and-click adventure.

The main character is piloting a spaceship, fancy newest top notch tech, voice control and all that. (With some obligatory marketing/advertisements talking about how reliably will-not-fail-under-all-circumstances it is). The further you get through the game, the more the ship fails around you, needing you to use GUIs/text menus.

Puzzle ideas:

  • There could be some interesting puzzles regarding building logic out of logic gates to fix a device.
  • A section where you only have a DOS terminal to work with. Somewhere in the lockers of the ship, there are some books on how to use DOS, which is where you get the information from. With FreeDOS and the option to connect C with Godot, it could even be possible to do a full emulation… :slight_smile:

Goal(s)

  • Show the importance of knowing why things work, and being curious
  • Show how much effort goes into modern computers
  • Show how irrepairable modern tech is

Lingering questions

  • How to adequately structure such a story? For the ‘irrepairability’ goal I mention below, there needs to be a point in the game where you obviously need to get the modern system online, but can’t. Does the flow go from modern tech → complete blackout → repair older systems → cannot get modern systems online, or would a different flow work better for teaching this?
  • Am I focusing on too many goals at once?
  • Should all the information neccessary to complete the puzzles be contained within the game, or do I do a scary thing and expect users to have a paper/pencil for notes and internet/library for research? If going with the ‘outside research required’ option, users could be warned in advance, and critical information still provided in in-game books.
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Its an interesting idea. I have seen games do the terminal thing before, and the logic gates thing before. However I think a game like this would need a very strong storyline, combined with accessible puzzles, and puzzle making is hard, very hard to get just that sweet spot.

Personally this is not my type of game but I have friends that love these detective work type games and play them all the time. (The ‘Who murdered someone on a boat’ type games with clues hidden and you have to speak to tons of characters to work out who did it.) Not for me but they love them.

However, what you describe is also more like a survival adventure game. And I get those. The slowly increasing number of systems you have to keep maintaining is interesting too.

I recall a game I played where you just had a monitor and received messages from a distant stranded astronaut. They were asking for help in what to do and you told them what you thought they should do to survive. And that was it. But the story was absolutely intoxicating and after you told them what to do, you literally had to wait for them to do it. (It was a mobile game.) So sometimes the next step was hours and often a day or two wait. But when the next message arrived you got so engrossed in the story. I wish I could remember what it was called but it was the most I have ever been absorbed in a story. It really captured that feeling of helplessness when you want to help more, but can’t.

So it seems with your idea you could go in lots of directions. I love ‘lost in space’ type games too. Although the surviving on a spaceship that is slowly failing has been done quite a bit I think. That doesn’t mean there is not room for another one though.

Thanks for sharing your idea. It is interesting.

EDIT:

Yes definitely. Its not a bad thing in the concept stages of course. But with some honing down perhaps or refining, I think you could encompass all these things in one game. Just be wary of scope creep of course. And you do need that one theme to stick all the concepts around too.

Final Edit:

Yeah, you start with transporters, replicators, radar systems, analysis tools, and end up warming a can of beans on a fire to keep warm and eat! And just as your about to starve and freeze on a dark wrecked carcass of a ship, ta-da, rescue finally arrives and your back in the futuristic world again.