So too much is going on for me to compete this year. I'm laying laminate floors, I'm repairing my car, the kiddo just started 3rd grade, and a few other minor issues are mounting to be the perfect storm of anti-participation this week. I'd still like to participate though and it looks like there's a prize for being the best unofficial reviewer. This gives me an excuse to follow the teams a little more closely and still lets me be part of the Week of Awesome.

There's not much for me to do yet. I'll try to post something at the end of each day once more starts happening. But for now, there's not much for me to do other than slog through Real Life for a bit.
I may do a Week of Awesome by myself just for the fun of it sometime when I have the week to give. I'll dock myself one day for thinking up the idea, and give myself 6 days to complete it. I'll share my idea now so you don't think I'm pulling any funny-business and giving myself gobs of time with the theme, "Death is Useful"

The game I'm officially not submitting:

Better Living Through Necromancy!

This idea is based on a Dungeons and Dragons character I ran Zarisarillamos Kirandoor, a high-elf wizard who persued Necromantic studies and was exiled from his people. Necromancy was decreed a dark art by the High Elves and only evil can result, but Zaris didn't understand why. Animating dead is no different than animating clay or summoning an earth elemental. It is only a tool. How you use it is what makes it evil. Perhaps waging war on your neighbors would be considered evil, but what about defending your town from an orc raid? What happens if we use skeletons to dig an irrigation ditch during a drought? Surely that can't be evil.

I had some trouble deciding on the type of gameplay this should be. I was thinking some kind of city builder or management sim, but that seems a little too ambitious for my team of 1 programmer, 1 graphics artist, and an 8 year old sound effect generator. I narrowed the game down to two choices: a clicker heroes style game, or a WoW garrison mission style game (I first saw this in Star Trek Online, but more people might recognize WoW). I decided to go with the garrison missions style, because I think it will be a little more fun and a little easier on the content.

So, you would be playing as Zaris the Necromancer and you would be part of a border-town community trying to convince the town that Necromancy isn't necessarily evil. The town will be in the process of expanding: constructing buildings, maintaining guards, etc. And problems will be popping up: wolves attacking farm animals, orks rading the town, bandits hassling trade routes, etc.

There will be a town Trust resource. At first the town is distrustful and won't let you do much. You want us to let a bunch of skeletons in here to help build the Inn? No thank you! But you could deal with external problems for them like deal with the wolves hassling the livestock and that would let you earn some trust. The more Trust you have, the more you can help out the town with their goals.

Dead Bodies would be a resource (Death is useful), that you can use to turn into various undead types at first, just Skeletons and Zombies. The bodies themselves might also have a classification (Animal, Humanoid, Humanoid). You dealt with the wolves? Awesome! Now you have some animal bodies to work with.

Zombies are strong but slow (and stinky). Useful for defense, to siege an enemy, or strength tasks like mining. But if you use them for something like Farming, it causes some townsfolk to get sick and die... (giving you more bodies).

Skeletons are fast, and less displeasing to the common man. Useful for attacking moving targets like wolves or roaming bandits.

I'm thinking there will also be a gold and a goods resource.

You can equip your followers, and possibly level up Zaris to control more total undead and gain access to more types.

The user interface will be similar to the garrison missions screen:


There would be a Task List screen of various tasks you could participate in. And you'd be able to assign your units to the various tasks. The game would be turn based and assigned units would contribute towards the progress of completing that task. For problems, there would be a turn count-down for negative effects. Bandits might steal gold every 3 days. An emergency like a fire in town might destroy buildings and kill people (more bodies!) if you don't assign enough units to deal with it.

For game-end conditions, I'm thinking either reaching X-turns or X-trust with the town. Possibly calculate a score for completed tasks and resources.

So, that's the gist of my idea. I'll start my own timer when I start work on it (maybe in a few months). In the meantime I'll be watching you guys kickass from the sidelines and judging you harshly when it's all over! MUAHAHA!

Have fun everyone!
- Eck