Free Idea Friday

Every Friday I'll do a design type write-up in which I will explain in half detail, a game idea I've had over the past week. This week's game is something that might be called: "RAGE DETECTIVE."

Pitch: I've always liked Flash games more if they have cut-scenes, preferably animated. That little bit of character and charm adds a lot to these short games that are meant to be played in bursts. If a game has a great story and characters I feel it makes them a lot more memorable, which will lead to players coming back to it if the gameplay is really good. There is only so much one can do with Flash game mechanics (unless you're especially brilliant), so adding a great story can make a game stand above the ones with similar gameplay. The problem with cut-scenes in games is that no one really wants to sit and watch something when they want to play a quick Flash game. So I want to attempt an interactive cut-scene based game that determines important gameplay elements based on the player's knee-jerk emotion reactions that happen in the cut-scenes themselves. It's kinda like a mixture between cartoons and games, my two favorite things.

The chart of emotions at your disposal.

The introduction

Premise: The conceit of the game is that you are a detective (this part isn't that important, and was chosen only because I like detectives and would want to write a detective story) who goes into his chief's office to get his next case. This entire part is the cut-scene which would be 60 seconds long and have 6 "flags" that determine what happens based on button presses. These flags are not prompted in an UI or on-screen and are only hinted at by the characters themselves. Each button from WASD would be a different emotion that the player chooses and is to be reflected on the detective character. My main goal is to have the player constantly showing his/her emotions while the cut scene is running, not knowing when they matter. For example, the player could start the cut scene with an angry face for whatever reason, but when the Chief congratulates Rage Detective on a job well done in the Giant Octopus of South Dakota case, the player may want to reflect an emotion of happiness. The player won't know when these emotions will be used, and the plan would be to have the cut scene itself constantly changing. On subsequent playthroughs (the game is meant to be played multiple times), the player probably will know when the cut scene changes, which may be a problem.

Here we see "angry" being used. The results are lava.

Gameplay: While the cut-scene is a major part of this experiment, there will be actual gameplay to come of it afterwards. 3 of the 6 "flags" will determine how the game itself will be played, and the other 3 will determine how the cut-scene will play out. The 3 determined factors would be things like, (but not necessarily) what level you play in, the difficulty of level, and what the main objective is. You could end in a really easy forest level where the object would be to kill all the forest animals, or you could end in a really difficult forest level where the object would be to collect a single leaf. Those two examples are both in the "Forest" category I just made up. The crux of the actual gameplay would be a simple puzzle platformer.

Now the detective is sad, chief feels sympathy

Pros: This game could be played a lot of times, and good return capabilities are good for a Flash game. It also encapsulates everything I like about games, which is pretty important. I would like to think it'd be pretty fun for people to see all the different endings and whatnot, and try to go deeper in the game, maybe even do every single path.

Now he's happy, the chief won't let him off that easy.

THE LAVA ZONE!

Cons: The amount of scenarios would be incredibly large. I believe it is something like 6^4 or something. That is 2000+ gameplay endings. I don't really think that would be possible. Another thing that this would need is voice acting, a lot of it. Since the goal of the game is to emulate cartoons, it really needs to be fully voiced, text would not suffice in this situation. Flash games can't really be all that big, and voice files are pretty big, which is why you don't see voice acting in any Flash games. The game could also not appeal to Flash game enthusiasts, but I'd like to hope that it pulls in both fans of games and Flash cartoons.

So it looks like I have more cons than pros, and the cons are pretty big ones too. I was thinking earlier why this idea hadn't been done, and now after writing all about it, I can see it's pretty ambitious for a game that's pretty short and not entirely innovative.

I use literally in the most literal sense here.

Sorry for the weird formatting. I wrote everything before I drew the pictures, plus I have no idea what I'm doing. I hope this sums up this week's idea pretty well, there may be more to come, as you could tell I really didn't think this one through very much.