Friday, July 1, 2016

The Big Awful Game Jam #1: Concept

Still haven't been updating this blog, but I'm still doing game jams and working on various side projects (like Cove).  The latest is the Big Awful Jam being hosted by the Something Awful Forums.  It's a one month online jam for teams of 1-4 people based on a particular theme.  This time around, the theme is "Games for Grandpa."

My project's angle is to alter the role of the protagonist in a typical fantasy RPG or roguelike.  Most games are built around the youthful hero going on a quest to save the world.  What about a game built around the wise old sage who gives quests to heroes?  It's not a completely new idea - I'm sure that I've read about games that do this sort of switch-up - but it should be interesting nonetheless.  So instead of wandering around slaying monsters and exploring dungeons, you go around studying, advising, and telling tales to motivate and guide would-be adventurers in the right direction to save the world.  The goal will be to guide various artifacts of power into good heroic hands before the return of the eeeeeevil dark lord (whose existence no one else believes in until too late, of course).

So that's the concept: a Gandalf-sim.  Next is figuring out the framework: what player actions are available, what NPC actors to simulate, and what sort of world generation to surround them all.

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